May 15, 2025 • 130 mins
This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Korama Danquah dig deep into the movie Holes (2003)!
Follow Korama on social media at @koramadrama
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast. 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, Zephyn Beast.
Start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello Bechdel Cast listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello Jamie and Caitlyn.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Here a little plug at the top.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's all coming together, It's all happening. I am going
to be going on a book tour for the paperback
release of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about
Hot Dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Ever heard of it?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
It is coming out in soft cover this may. If
you're hearing this, it is out right now. If you
are the kind of person that doesn't want to spend
twenty eight dollars out of book, fair enough, we have
a more affordable option. And if you haven't purchased the
book and you know, maybe you're able to now, you know,
it's also a great gift. I've sound so desperate. The
(00:55):
thing is, it's a soft cover book, and people love those, and.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I love a flaccid book.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do
have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also
a brand new ForWord that I wrote, and also the
acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists,
so I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a
(01:21):
thrilling edition there as well. But there is new stuff
in the book and it costs less, and we love that.
I will be going on tour throughout the country to
promote the new book, and if you're a Bechdel head
and you're in the area, this is a really great
chance to come and hang out. It's all I'm at bookstores.
(01:42):
I did kind of bigger shows the first time around,
but this time we're just chilling. So you kitling with
your permission. I'm just going to rattle off some dates.
What if I was like, no, no, click, I'm going
to go pee.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
No please, by all means tell us okay.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, almost my birthday. So I
know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence.
I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles,
hosted by friend of the cast Julia Clair May fourteenth.
I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. On
May fifteenth. I will be at the Cambridge Public Library
(02:24):
in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be
in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own
Tory Bedford. On the nineteenth of May, I will be
in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, hosted by friend of
the cast Mayo Williams. I am very very excited. On
(02:45):
the twentieth, I will be going down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
my home state. Know they're going to be begging, They're like,
where are they? I will be at the Midtown Scholar
Bookstore and Cafe in conversation with Joe Piazza. Then on
May twenty first, I will be at the Fountain Bookstore
(03:05):
in Richmond, Virginia. And on May twenty second, I will
be at Coppersfield Books in Pedaluma, California. And finally, on
May thirty first, I will be at Marin Country Mart,
which is also with Coppersfield's book in Larkspur, California. So
if you live in those areas, please come out. I
(03:27):
would love to see you. I'd love to chat. Please
recommend your favorite hot dog. Let's talk Beck tol cast,
Let's do whatever. And there will be dates announced later
in the summer. So if you would like a show
or a signing to happen in your town, please reach
out and I will send it to my publisher and
(03:48):
be like, see, I should go there. Anyways, that's a
great it's begging works sometimes and we'll link this full
thing and that isscription. But see you soon. I'm making
a little outfit and that's the Jamie Loftus promise.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I can't wait to see.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So if you click the link in the description, it
will take you to the full page where you can
register to go to these events. They are all free events,
so come and hang out and provided that I get
my shit together in time, there will also be speakers
from local unions at all of these signings, So come out,
make some friends, come hang out, and uh, let's eat
(04:30):
some hot dogs.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Beautiful. We'll throw the link to be able to access
registration for the events on our link tree as well
link tree slash Bechdel Cast, so there's no excuse not
to come.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit.
Come buy the book, yay, enjoy the episode the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Dig It All on, dig It dig It Out, dig.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It I Wow, I rewatched music video and it seared
into my brain.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Oh wait, I didn't know about the music video.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Oh, Caitlin show, you didn't know about ship?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Pause the show it just started.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
But it's so good.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They're having such a nice time. The boys are having fun.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Okay, I believe it.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's the most important thing about the music video. And
also the song is great and oh my gosh, two
thousand and three, what a time School of rock an
holes be serious? Wait, sorry, I you singing that song
just really put me in a great mood. And I
forgot what I was gonna say. Oh well, oh, I
was gonna say, we need to bring back movies where
(05:41):
there's a song during the credits that summarizes the movie
you just watched. Yes, you need that. We need to
bring it back. Maybe it is back in kids' movies.
And I'm just no longer a child. I hope it
never stopped. I find it difficult to believe that there
is a credit. This is like a Will Smith grade
(06:02):
credits song.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
True Wild Wild West, Men in Black.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, the list goes on. I think I'm not actually sure.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Might be just those two.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
It might, but they're impactful, impactful, welcome, to the Bechdel Cast,
Do I think one of the one of our our
longest holdouts for a beloved movie.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Hold out whole out, whole.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Again?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
We have our holes out on this episode.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
During this children Yes, we have our holes out during
the Children's Prison Industrial Complex movie episode. My name's Jamie.
Locked is my holes not in a way? It's away?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
So are mine talking about that?
Speaker 6 (06:47):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
The hole in my damn face I is going to
be flapping.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, And it's like that line from Titanic when the.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Wave you out shut that out? Yeah? All right, well
things have already is already erupting. What's your name?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
My name is Caitlyn Durnteme awesome. And this is the
Bechdel Cast, a podcast where we examine movies through an
intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test simply as a
jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it though?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Well, I'll tell you. The Bechtel Test is a media
metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the
Bechdel Wallace Test. Created as a test in response to
the fact that queer women were never in movies at all,
it has since been sort of more generalized into what
(07:43):
we use. Our version of the test requires that two
characters of a marginalized gender with names talk to each
other about something other than a man for two lines
of dialogue. This is an interesting case. This is an
interesting case. We're spiritually this know this movie passes the
Bechtel test to.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Me, sure, but it is. But there is.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think there's two women and one is dead. They
don't exist on the same timelines. So it's a challenge.
It's a challenge. Patricia Arquette and Sigourney Weaver are separated
by generations, true and political differences.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yes, all of the above. Yeah, well, we'll talk about
that further, but we'll also talk about so many other
things because this is a rich text.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yes, because it is a perfect movie.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
It's so good. And joining us for this discussion is
writer actor. She's in an upcoming horror comedy movie called
Bad Karaoke. You know her from our past episodes on
Us Get Out and Cheetah Girls. It's Carama Donquay.
Speaker 6 (08:52):
Welcome, Thank you for having me again. I would like
to just issue a correction right off the bat. Five
women in this movie.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
That's true because there there's a lawyer Stanley's mother. Yes,
what else we got?
Speaker 6 (09:08):
There's there's the former student of kissing Kate Barlowe, whose
name is said. And I think it passes because they
talk about how she used to be a student.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Right, yeah, okay, we're going to talk about the treasure.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
So legally it passes, not just to you, Jamie, not
just spiritually.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Okay, that is that is a relief.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
But it was it was tight.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
It was very close, and they made us wait to
the very end. Then.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
But I think maybe the lawyer and the warden also talk.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I think they're talking about Stanley.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Yeah, they're talking about the boys at all times.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
We're talking about the crime as a.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Boy of man is a.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Man, no women and children. This is getting complicated. Thank
you Karma for solving the podcast right at the top.
And now we you just talk about the movie itself
because this is a rich text. Thank you for coming
onto the Wholes episode. Can you tell us about your
history with this movie, the book, the Holes Expanded universe.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
I'm gonna start with something that sounds like it's not related.
I promise it is related. So recently, I was at
a family friend's house and one of her neighbors came
over and she was like, why do I know you?
And my friend Jackie was like, oh, well, Karama used
to come over all the time when we were little,
and she didn't have cable at her house, so she
would come over here. And so I had like a
(10:36):
cable friend, as many kids who didn't have cable had.
And I watched this at my cable friend's house when
I was growing up, and I would see the Diggot
music video on Disney Channel all the time. I still
knew all the words. I don't know if I can
say them on the podcast. I don't want to get
you guys in trouble for singing too much of it.
But when he started spelling like a MP at the TI,
(10:59):
I was like, yes, yes, this is rap music, this
is real rap music.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Migos step aside.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yes, it's all happening on Radio Disney. They even had
a band named De Tent Boys. Yes, yeah, this was
a single they were. I mean, this was run Ragged
on Radio Disney in the early two thousands, and I
was a.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
Radio Disney kid when I moved to Ghana. When I
was little, my dad would send me cassette tapes of
like just hours of Radio Disney because I missed it
so much.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
It's really sweet, I know, but also like scary that
the mouse had that much of a hold on me.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, the mouse will find you wherever we go. But
this is a rare I'm excited to talk about the
production of this movie because this seems like a very
rare Disney movie where it seems like they were relatively
hands off with this, and the director said it was
basically like creating an independent movie with Disney money, which
is cool. I'm excited to get into it because I
(11:59):
was surprised at because I reread. I got mostly through
the book to reread it before, and it's they've changed
so little because for once, they let the author write
the screenplay.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
They never do that.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
And also the main thing that they change.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
I actually am for it because the main thing that
they changed for people who either haven't read the book
or don't remember the book is that Stanley is a
pretty chubby kid in the book, and.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
Through digging he actually loses a lot of weight.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
But they didn't want to put Shila buff in a
fat suit, and they didn't want to subject a child
to a major like Christian Bale weight shift. So I
think that that is actually, like, I'm all for a
fat representation in film.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
I love that representation in film.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
I think that this was the better choice in this
instance because I don't like fat suits. I think that
they're dehumanizing, and I don't like torturing children.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So they still tortured the children a little bit, but
mostly with heat. Yes, But but yeah, no, I totally agree.
I forgot that that was sort of the most major change,
and I don't Yeah, it's I felt like rereading the
book that it was, you know, I don't think meant
to be a cruel outcome, but it's sort of lent
(13:18):
this morality to Stanley's weight loss and and sort of
presented it as a well, at least he's not chubby anymore,
in a way that I felt like was not good
representation if they had adapted it in that way. On
top of what you're saying, the thing that was changed
that I wish it stayed was there was more context
for stan Lee's arrest. I get why they have to
(13:42):
keep it focused on zero, but he was like really
severely bullied in school, and they show like how his
bullying very much factored into his arrest, and like fear
of standing up for himself stuff. But other than that,
it's basically all they're They're dropping damns, they're cussing.
Speaker 6 (14:03):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
The adults are a series of unfortunate events, level evil
like it's great. So okay, so you so you you
watched it at cable friend's house.
Speaker 6 (14:14):
Yes, that was a frequent rewatch because they would run
it on Disney Channel a lot. And I was a
big fan of Lewis Accer, the author. I was a
Wayside Stories girl from Wayside School.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Loved it.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Good Wayside School gets a Little Stranger my favorite of them.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh okay, yeah, I gotta reread.
Speaker 6 (14:35):
But I was a big fan of like that sort
of universe of like wacky but real. And I remember
distinctly Lewis Sacer had like three kids in the Wayside
School that had the same name, and I don't remember
their name, but he would describe one of them as
being tall and fat, and it's the first time it
occurred to me that somebody could be tall and fat.
But it was always like a very neutral descriptor. It
(14:56):
was just like, these are the way the kids look,
And I was like, whoa people can look all kinds
of ways that's wacky. So opened my mind up a
lot and a lot of love for this movie. I
have a lot of love for adaptations, specifically. I know
that you guys probably remember, but our listeners maybe don't that.
I used to be a co host of a podcast
(15:17):
called Popcorn Book Club where we talked about page to
screen adaptations, and I would constantly talk about Holes on
that podcast. We never covered it, but I was like, guys,
Holes is the perfect adaptation film. It is so true
to the original text, and when it is not true
to the text, that is.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
True to the spirit of it. It is amazing.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
And one of our co hosts had never seen it,
and I was just like, I don't know how you're
breathing air on this planet being an adult woman of
a certain age who has never seen Holes.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
It is like a It is weird. It does feel
like it's such a beloved millennial classic, but I wonder
I don't know if kids are still finding it. I
hope they are probably not. I mean the unfortunately, the
shil abuff of it all does make it a harder
sell because he's a fucking monster. I think he's like
(16:07):
fourteen when this was, you know, child stardom should be illegal.
But that's a conversation for another day. But okay, I
also was a huge fan of the book and the movie.
I forget when I think this was just like at
every school in the early two thousands, like every kid
(16:30):
read these books read wayside school. There's a kind of
I had to look it up to be like, what
was that Lewis Sakar, he wrote, it's a B side,
Dogs Don't Tell Jokes. I remember reading Dogs Don't Tell
Jokes because it is about a child's stand up comic
who pees his pants, and I was like, wow, aspirational
me someday. And I guess that Dogs Don't Tell Jokes
(16:54):
had an impact on me because he's like, I had
to check the plot. Gary Boon, who calls himself Goon,
is the self proclaimed clown of his seventh grade class.
He never stops joking despite the fact that nobody laughs
much and he has no real friends. So he joins
a talent contest as a stand up comedian, and he
roasts everybody, and he hurts a lot of feelings, and
(17:17):
then he learns that being a stand up comic parentheses
evil is not the way to.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Go well at least a roast comedian.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
It's true. Yes, he literally goes full roasting at the
store and then learns those people don't like that.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
I think we need to wallpaper men's bathrooms in comedy
clugs with the pages.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Of this book with dogs. Don't tell you don't be
like Gary. It did not help him make friends just
like you. So but yeah, big lewis a car fan.
I mean, like you're saying, krama, the wayside school books
were so silly and like fantastical, and the fact that
he wrote holes as well, I mean, the range incredible.
(18:00):
I loved the book, loved the movie. Of course, Being
ten when this came out, I had a crush. I
had a crush on zero zero was my big time crush.
Cleo Thomas. I had a picture of him in my room. Yeah,
loved the song. But then, I mean, it's a great
movie to come back to, not only because there are
(18:23):
more crushes for you as you age, like today Hill,
who I know we're going to be talking about quite
a bit. He can fix that. But but just like
what a beautiful like you're saying, like, what a beautiful
adaptation it is. How it weaves together like five storylines
in this really effortless way, and that it is an
(18:46):
anti carceral children's book that is four kids but adapted
in a way that doesn't talk down to them. And yeah,
it's an amazing movie. I'm so excited to talk about it.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
It's a real testament to the fact that people are like, oh,
kids can't understand that. Kids can't understand that, and no,
you just can't explain it, right, You're just not good
and explain there is a way for kids to understand
literally everything, Like, sorry, there are kids who are soldiers
in war in some parts of the world, Like they
can understand things. The way to explain it to them
(19:21):
is the issue. And I think that this is a
really good way to explain the school to prison pipeline,
issues with incarceration and just institutional racism.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Just all of this stuff is very.
Speaker 6 (19:35):
Clearly outlined in a way that is developmentally appropriate.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, and like puts a face in a name to
these issues. And I think the like maybe the only
unhoused character that I saw in movies as a kid
that is not played as a joke or as a
personal failing or you know how often we see on
like it's just it's so good, it's doing so much,
(20:03):
and then it has the audacity to be a really
good movie, I know. And what a cast. Anyways, Kaitlyn
wants her history with Holes.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Okay, I read the book in the late nineties, because
it was published in ninety eight. I probably read it
in ninety nine. I would have been a tween at
the time, and I loved it. And then the movie
came out a few years later and I saw it
in theaters. I would have been I think a junior
(20:31):
senior in high school at that point, so I was
old enough that my big crush was Dula Hill and
still to this day.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
You're Not Made of Stone, Yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, I thought it was such an incredible story. And
then we got the movie on DVD and I watched
it with my sister on repeat, and I chose this
movie for my not to be a bit but it
is my birthday episode. Oh yay, So this is like
(21:09):
my birthday pick. That's how much I love this movie.
I don't think it's without its flaws, but I think
the flaws are few and far between, especially considering it's
a movie from the early two thousands and that was
just a flawed time yeah, so, yeah, I deeply love
(21:29):
this movie and I'm so excited to talk about it.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
I will say embarrassingly, I was twelve when it came out,
so my crush was Shilah buff which has not aged Well.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
My Kurt wouldn't convict you. It made sense at the time.
He was on Even Stevens.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
Loved Evan Stevens. My dance teacher. My dance teacher choreographed
Even Steven's Influenza. I remember when she had to miss
class because she was doing Even Steven's Influenza, and I
was just like, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Wow, that show was cooking. I think about the song
about going to space a lot. We went to the
Moon in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
Nine, not nineteen seventy, the year before four.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Uh huh oh no, it's a millennial circle jerk episode. Well,
here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I was one of the Friends without Cable as well,
So I've never seen a single episode of Even Stevens,
and I think I probably was aged out of it anyway.
But yeah, I don't know what you guys are talking about.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I know, I don't think there's any need to return.
It was just the age of the musical episode Even
Stevens had a musical episode and it was iconic, memorable.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Yeah, it was called Influenza, as one of the main
characters had the flu and so she was like having
a fever dream and everybody was singing in the fever dream.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, okay, fine, but this is uh.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I think this is Shia Labuff's first movie.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
It's introducing in the credits. I was like, oh, like
I was. I was a little emotional. I was just like, wow,
that's where it all started.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yikes, and oh that it had gone another way. But
the kids, I mean, it's very famous adult cast and
then a bunch of kids outside of chilah Buff I
think mostly unknowns. I think Cleo Thomas had done some stuff.
I saw he was on Kids Say the Darndest Things,
so he was child starring out. But so Gourney Weaver,
(23:24):
John Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Winkler. I remember my
mom being like, that's the Fonds because we will watch
Happy Days on Nick at night and I was like,
why isn't he cool anymore?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
And earth A Kitar the Kid, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
One of her final film performances Delay Hill Patricia Arquette,
and they managed to make the movie for seventeen million dollars.
Don't know how that worked, but yeah, they brought a
bunch of kids to the desert and made one of
the greatest movies of all time.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yes, let's take a quick break and then we'll come
back for the cap.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
And we're back.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Here is the story of Holes. We open on a
place that we will learn is a juvenile detention facility
where teenage boys are out in the hot sun digging
holes in the dirt. One of them purposefully gets bitten
by a rattlesnake so that he can be sent home,
(24:35):
and that's going to open up a spot at this facility.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And you're all like, immediate. I hadn't seen this movie
in a couple of years, and I was like, oh,
from moment one, they're not fucking around.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
This is a dark, cold open.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
I would rather potentially die, literally die.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Than another hole, which was added for the mo It
does not happen in the book. They're just like something
something barf bag. But they started as a full on,
like active You're just like okay, okay, director of the Fugitive,
Let's Go. Let's Go.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Also one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I've never seen it. I just thought it was like,
what a this is? I think his first and only
children's movie.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I think so yeah, because he had been known for
action movies.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Collateral Damage came out like so weird.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
It does happen in the book that barf bag gets bitten,
but it happens off screen, Like you don't see that
scene play out. They just reference it after the fact.
But in any case. We cut to stan Lee Yonnat's
the fourth played by Shilah buff who is on his
way to this facility because he was wrongfully accused and
(25:50):
arrested for stealing a pair of shoes that seemed to
have fallen from the sky and land on his head.
And he goes on to say that he has bad
luck and he always seems to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time, which his family blames on
a one hundred and fifty year old family curse. We
meet his mom played by Chavon Fallen Hogan, and his
(26:14):
dad played by Henry Winkler, who is an inventor trying
to find the cure for foot odor. We also meet
his grandfather, all of whom Stanley has to leave behind
when a judge sentences him to eighteen months at the
detention facility called Camp Green Lake, where there used to
(26:37):
be a lake, but it dried up long ago and
now it's a barren wasteland as far as the eye
can see. At Camp Green Lake, Stanley meets mister Sir
played by John Voight, who tells Stanley that he's expected
to dig one hole in the dirt every single day.
(26:58):
It has to be five feet deep, five feet in diameter,
and this will build character quote unquote, I love.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
How instantly, Yeah, like how instantly it is clear to
kids and anyone how ridiculous this is. Or it's like
that line where it's like, yeah, you bring a boy
to camp and you make him dig a hole every
day and he turns into a good boy, and that's
our belief. You're like, ah's that is just describing prison.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, holes they make you so wholesome.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
They didn't even try. They didn't even try. It was
right there.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
They're like, no, dig a hole, be a good boy.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
You're like, okay, right. Mister Starr also tells Stanley to
beware of yellow spotted lizards, who are highly poisonous and lethal,
and if one bites you, you will die a slow
and painful death.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Really good two thousand and three, CGI on the Lizards.
You're like, there was a tennis ball there.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
You can almost steel the tennis.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Energy with a racket.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
So then we meet Stanley's counselor, doctor Pandanski played by
Tim Blake Nelson, who assigns him to d tent where
Stanley meets other incarcerated teens who he'll be digging holes
next to. They all have nicknames like x Ray, Zigzag, Squid, Armpit, Magnet,
(28:31):
and Zero Zero, who doctor Pandensky is especially cruel to
because he thinks Zero is unintelligent and worthless.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Doctor Pandanski is such a fascinating care again, just like
another adult pretending to be good who is actually fucking
awful and talks shit about the kids he's supposed to
be taken care of behind our backs. The first second
he gets I think again, I've only seen it in
series of unfortunate events, like adults who are as bad
(29:01):
as it seems.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
And also from jump we get that he is very
much about calling the kids by their government names, even
though they have names and they'd like to be called
And then like it's giving what your name is Toby,
what's your name? Not like that?
Speaker 5 (29:17):
And except for zero, he keeps.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
Calling zero zero, and it's like, there's nothing going on
up there, your little dumb dummy.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Right, And he like explicitly says that he feels comfortable
doing that because no one is looking out for zero
and so he doesn't matter, like it's just like it's
I don't know. I thought it's a good performance too,
because he's really putting on the hateful guidance counselor vibe
big time. And then you find out at the ante
(29:46):
never got.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
His degree, and you're like, fuck this guy, right, So
stan Lee settles in and starts to learn the ropes.
He reveals that the shoes he was accused of stealing
belonged to Livingston, a famous baseball player, who had donated
those shoes to be sold at a charity auction to
(30:07):
raise money for an unhoused shelter. And so that's why
it was like such a huge deal that Stanley is
presumed to have stolen them and why he's sent to.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
This and he, like the famous baseball player literally calls
a child a horrible person in court. So I was like,
easy man, easy, He's like twelve.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
So then we flash back to Stanlee with his mom, dad,
and grandpa, who talk about the family curse how Stanley's
great grandpa made a fortune in the stock market but
was robbed by a famous outlaw kissing Kate Barlow due
to the family curse and his bad luck. We'll find
(30:52):
more about the curse soon, but back to the present,
Stanley starts digging his first hole. He's told that if
he finds anything that the warden thinks is interesting, he
could get the rest of the day off. So he
starts digging and it's hot and difficult and grueling, and
(31:12):
then we flash back to stan Lee's no good, dirty, rotten,
pig stealing great great grandfather, Elia Yell Nats, who lives
in a small village in Latvia. He's in love with
a woman named Myra Menke, who he wants to marry,
but her father wants her to marry a different man
because that guy is offering him his biggest pig in
(31:35):
exchange for his daughter because women equal property. So Elia
goes to a fortune teller named Madame Zarni played by
the legend earth A Kit.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Who I only knew at the time as you're like
it's Easma from the other movie. And then later you
find out she is a legend.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
Yeah, like the President was scared of her at one point. Legend.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Oh my god, so good.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yes, And she tells Ellia to carry a baby pig
up a mountain and let it drink from the stream
while he sings to it over the course of I
don't know, a few weeks or something, and it will
make the pig grow and then he'll have a pig
to offer Myra's father. And then Madames Roney says, okay,
when you're done with that, Now you have to carry
(32:26):
me up the mountain so I can drink from the
stream and get strong. And if you fail to do that,
I will put a curse on your family for always
an eternity.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
That line read really stuck with me, always an eternity,
Like it's such a good read.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, And Ellia forgets to honor this promise before he
immigrates to the US, hence the yell NAT's family curse.
Back to Stanley, he finishes his first hole and then
it's either the next day or a few days later,
but Stanley finds a fossil in his hole and shows
(33:04):
it to Pendanski hoping that the warden will find it
interesting and that he'll get the rest of the day off.
But the warden is not interested in fossils. Now, x Ray,
who's kind of the leader of the boys who live
in Dtent, tells Stanley to give him anything else he
finds since x Ray has like seniority. Then we flash
(33:28):
back to one hundred or so years ago when there
was a lake in this location. We meet Sam played
by Julae Hill, who is an onion farmer and he
sells all kinds of medicinal onion based remedies. And then
we also meet a school teacher who makes spiced peaches,
(33:50):
Mss Catherine played by Patricia Arquette.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And you're like, these actors are hot. I wonder what
will happen.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, the two of them are vibing and they exchange,
you know, onions and peaches. Then we also meet this
rich prick named trout Walker, who has taken a liking
to Miss Catherine and will return to this storyline. But
in the meantime, back in the present, Stanley's peers finally
(34:22):
give him a nickname, Caveman, so he's like one of
them now. Then he learns that zero the kid who
mostly keeps to himself. He only seems to talk to
caveman slash Stanley, and we find out that he cannot read,
so Zero asks Stanley if he'll teach him to read,
(34:44):
but Stanley says that he's too tired at the end
of every day and he just wants to chill. The
next day, Stanley finds something peculiar while he's digging his hole.
It's this like small golden cylindrical tube that looks like
it might be a bullet or a shellcasing of some kind,
(35:05):
and it has the letters KB engraved on it. So
Stanley gives it to x Ray per his request, who
shows it to Pandanski, who calls the warden, and we
finally see the warden on screen, who turns out to
be a whoa whoa whoa woman?
Speaker 5 (35:23):
What women can be bad too?
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Lewis Nakara is not afraid to say it.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Oh her nail polish. That is such a good detail
at Oh that scene in the book like really stuck
with me where she puts on her evil lady nail
polish and then slaps John backhands John voy she's doing it.
I didn't never realize she's also wearing a sports braw
In that scene, You're like, this is nuts, Like she
(35:54):
just finished doing like yoga on zoom and then she
like almost kills John Voyd.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah, it's pretty awesome. That happens a little later. First, yes,
we meet her, it's so Corney Weaver. She gives x
Ray the rest of the day off for finding this
interesting item, and then she orders everyone to dig around
x Ray's hole, thinking that that's where the bullet thing
came from, but we all know that it came from
(36:20):
a different hole of Stanley's. Then we flash back to
Miss Catherine and Sam. He helps her fix up the schoolhouse.
If there's a leaky roof or a broken window. He says,
I can fix that, and they're falling in love. And meanwhile,
that rich fuck trout Walker wants to take Miss Catherine
(36:43):
out for a picnic, but she declines and he does
not handle rejection. Well. Yeah, and one night he sees
Miss Catherine and Sam kissing in the schoolhouse.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Because he sees her crying and says, I can fix that.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
It's really that would work.
Speaker 6 (37:00):
On the iphear I folded like a lawn chair, Like
I'm done, let's close the windows.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
We're having a party, one of the most popular letterbox reviews.
Will someone tell mister I can fix that that my
pussy's broken?
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah, oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
I also love that there is this It's like, not
it's a whatever, like one of a million themes in
this movie, but that even in the flashbacks, there is
this theme of literacy and gate keeping education because she
also teaches night classes to the same men who are
fucking creeping on her. But it's like the movie isn't
(37:45):
I don't know. The movie is saying like, these guys
are awful, but also they are you know, like at
a disadvantage as well.
Speaker 6 (37:53):
And she believes that despite the fact that they are awful,
they deserve the you know, privileges that literacy Ford's one
in society, right. And on top of that, she's reading
the kids like an Edgar Allan Poe poem and Sam
can the poem and I'm like, oh, Stallar, we love it,
(38:14):
love it. He's so fine.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
I think it is. I think it is an one
of those Edgar Allan Poe poems that is like about
fucking his cousin. But the spirit of it.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
It's the spirit of it it's fine.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Annabel Lee was redeemed by delay Hill also.
Speaker 6 (38:29):
Petition to start calling them Edgar Allan Poems. I just
feel like it's it's.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Cleaner, it's right there.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, it's that's your ear doing justin Timberlake in the
social note and then just stomp out of the room.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So, yes, this is a white woman and a black
man kissing in Jim Crow, Texas. So trout Walker sees this.
He alerts the town people, who start a riot. They
burn down the schoolhouse, they go after Sam. Miss Catherine
tells the sheriff, who has no intention of stopping any
(39:07):
of this.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
No, he just like hits on her.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
He harasses and prays on her.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
I've been called slurs in my life. I gotta say
Onion Picker was scarily slurry when he was like, kiss
the onion picker.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I feel it, Yeah, onion Picker with a hard R.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
That's a lot, yeah yeah yeah. And right after this,
the racist mob catches up to Sam. They kill his
beloved donkey Mary Lou, and they murder Sam. We cut
back to the present. The boys are still digging collectively
while the warden supervises and clearly expects them to find something,
(39:50):
but nothing else is found because, to quote Raiders of
the Lost Arc, they're digging in the wrong place. Wow,
so thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
It's a little Seinfeld edge to that.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
That's just how they say it in the movie. That
was unintentional, but the warden has them returned to digging
individual holes when no other items are found. Back to
the past, Miss Catherine pays another visit to the sheriff
and kills him for not preventing the racist mob murdering Sam.
(40:29):
And this is the start of her becoming the famous
outlaw kissing Kate Barlow. We cut back to the present.
Magnet steals mister Sirr's sunflower seeds from his truck and
Stanley takes the blame for it. And so this is
the scene, Jamie, that you were talking about where mister
Sir takes Stanley to see the warden, but rather than
(40:51):
getting in trouble, the warden smacks mister Surr's face while
she has wet rattlesnake, venom nail polish on.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Ooh ooh wah.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
It is a very like feminist You know, you could
make your arguments against it, but it's just such a
good idea that I will not be hearing criticisms of
the snake Venom nail.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
Pasha, and Mister responds by saying, all I do is
give you love and affection.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah, it's implied that he has a crush on her
because he's always like fixing his hair when he's about
to see her and stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's also it's another I mean John Voyd, another bad man, yes,
who gives a really great performance in this It's true.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah. So Stanley returns to his hole and he discovers
the Zero finished digging it for him, and so Stanlee
offers to teach Zero to read after all, and in exchange,
Zero will help Stanley dig his hole every day. So
they start lessons and Zero is like, by the way,
(41:58):
my real name is Hector's Zerny, And we're like, hmm,
where have we heard the name Zarny before. So then
Hector tells Stanley about his past, how he and his
mom moved around a lot, then they became unhoused and
one day his mom had to leave him somewhere and
(42:20):
she didn't come back, and Hector never found out what
happened to her. And he says, if I could, I
would hire a whole team of private investigators to find her.
We'll put a pin in that. The other boys meanwhile
resent that Stanley is getting help digging his hole, and
a fight breaks out and it culminates in Hector hitting
(42:42):
Pendanski in the head with a shovel and running off.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
That Zero is the best character.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Oh, he truly.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Beats the shit out of you. Oh he's so great.
There's a quote from Because there was a There was
a I think it was like two years ago. There
was a short oral history for the twentieth anniversary, and
Cleia Thomas says Zero is not the most Disney friendly character.
Like he was grabbing eight balls ready to fight. He
hit a guy with a shovel, he choked somebody out.
I keep thinking about how this character I'm playing might
(43:11):
be the biggest gangster in Disney history. It was crazy,
and I kind of forget how like Zero, I mean,
he stands up for himself. He's the coolest.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
It's awesome. So Zero aka Hector runs away from camp.
The warden, Mister Cyr and Pandanski discuss deleting Hector's 'errony's
files and pretending like he was never at Camp Green
Lake because he's a ward of the state. There's no
known family looking for him, so they're like, we can
(43:40):
just basically delete his existence from ever having been here.
So Stanley's thinking about Hector now being out in this
barren wasteland with no water, no food, no shelter from
the elements kind of thing, and he recalls his grandpa
telling him about his great grandpa who kissing Kate Barlow,
(44:01):
robbed and left stranded in the desert for sixteen days,
and how he apparently found refuge on God's thumb, whatever
that means. Then a new kid named Twitch arrives to
take Hector's spot at the camp and he helps Stanley
(44:23):
steal mister Sirr's truck, which Stanley drives off to find Hector.
He almost immediately drives it into a hole, but Stanley
keeps going. He runs off away from camp and he
finds an overturned boat in the dirt where Hector's hiding out.
Hector offers Stanley some Splosh, which is the one hundred
(44:47):
year old spiced peaches that Miss Catherine made and gave
to Sam. Because this is Sam's boat.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
It's all connected.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
So I think the worst part of this movie slash
book story in general is the words.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Really needed to do a second draft on that. But anyway,
I think it's.
Speaker 6 (45:12):
A fun word for kids, but like as an adult
and like it sounds too much like things.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't want to.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
Think about Hector's rony drinking things.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
I also is like, I feel like I have looked
this up on past years, like can peaches like last
like that?
Speaker 3 (45:33):
I think if they're preserved properly, right, maybe I.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Just assume it's a little magic.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
Also, to be fair, he gets immediately ill from that's true.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
He just started throwing up the passing for days. That's true.
That's true.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
So Stanley and Hector try to figure out what to
do next. In the distance, they see a mountain that's
sort of in the shape of a thumbs up, and
they think maybe that's what Stanley's great grandpa meant about
finding refuge on God's thumb. So they head there. They
climb the mountain. It's a long difficult journey. Hector gets
(46:10):
stick along the way from drinking this blush. So Stanley
carries Hector Zarny aka Madam Zarroni's great great great grandson
up the Mountain to drink from the water they find there,
which effectively lifts the yell NAT's family curse. They find
(46:31):
a bunch of onions and eat them because also this
was Sam's secret onion garden. Again it's all connected. And
then also at this exact moment back at Stanley's house,
Stanley's dad finally invents the cure to foot odor and
the secret ingredients peaches and onions.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
I don't yeah, again, there you have to magic it
a little bit to be like onions cure or did
it just make odor smell.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
They were boiled? I don't know. I believe.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
I believe that the fawn's cured foot oder.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
I'm not a chemist.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
I don't know what's in the onion that interacts with
the peach that makes.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
It smell real, because a caramelized onion has a very
sweet night true's and taste.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
It is beautiful that the legacy of their love cured foot.
Speaker 5 (47:24):
I wanted to cry a little bit.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
It's really nice.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Yeah. So, while Hector and Stanley rest and recover, Hector
reveals that it was him who stole Clyde Livingston's famous
baseball shoes and it's his fault that Stanley got arrested
and sent to Camp Green Lake, but Stanley is not upset.
He's just like this is destiny, and he suggests they
(47:48):
go back to camp and dig one last hole in
the spot where Stanley originally found that gold tube, which
he thinks is probably a tube of lips stick and
that the KB stands for Kate Barlow. Meanwhile, back at camp,
a lawyer that Stanley's family hired played by Roma Mafia
(48:10):
shows up to collect Stanley, but the warden kind of
shows her away and tells her to come back with
a signed court order. Obviously because Stanley's not there. He
ran away, so she has to make up an excuse.
And now the warden and mister sirr and Pandansky are
panicking because they assume Stanley is dead out in the desert.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, and he quote unquote matters because his family has
secured a lawyer, right.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Yeah. We flash back to kissing Kate Barlow being approached
by Trout Walker and his wife wanting to know where
she buried all the loot she stole.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
She somehow found Turn of the century like hair Bleach's
a she's got a new wig.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Well, she's out in the sun all the time, and
it's true.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
It looks good.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
It looks good.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, but Kate is like you and your family can
dig for the next one hundred years and you will
never find my treasure. And that's what Camp Green Like
is all about, because the warden is a descendant of
Trout Walker and she is using unpaid child prison labor
(49:19):
to dig holes to search for Kissing Kate Barlow's treasure.
Stanley and Hector returned to camp and they start expanding
the hole where Stanley found the lipstick tube and they
find a treasure chest. But just then the warden, Mister
Sir and Pandanski show up and catch them, but they
(49:39):
can't really do anything because they realize that the hole
is filled with a dozen of those highly lethal yellow
spotted lizards that are crawling all over but not attacking
Stanley and Hector because they've eaten all those onions, which
are a natural lizard repellent.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Hey, for a movie about holes, there's not a single
hole in the plot of the movie. There's true, everything
is explained, yea, and it all is like a cross
generational Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
A few hours later, Stanley's lawyer returns the warden makes
up a story about how Stanley broke into her cabin
and stole her trunk, but Hector is like, no, this
trunk belongs to Stanley. It's got his name on it,
and sure enough, the name Stanley Yellnatz is carved into
the trunk because this is the treasure that belonged to
(50:35):
his great grandfather. This means Stanley and Hector are free,
as are all the other boys, because Camp Green Lake
is shut down and the warden, Mister Sir, and Pandanski
are arrested. It also starts raining in this area for
the first time in one hundred years, in a scene
(50:57):
that felt a lot to me like a movie that
we have either just released or were covering soon, The
Shashank Redemption Where when and now? Okay, now I always
mix up Tim Robbins and Tim Robinson, but anyway, Tim Robbins.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Very different guys, so different.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
But their names are too similar. Anyway, Tim Robbins when
he spoiler alert, finds freedom and it's pouring rain and
he's like, ah, so it felt like that to me anyway.
Speaker 5 (51:27):
Wow, I was gonna watch that movie.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
So yeah, sorry for spoiling now. A thirty year old movie,
it reigns.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Then he goes.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Ah, okay, So we cut to Stanley and Hector at
the yell NAT's house. They open the trunk. It's full
of gold and jewels and stocks and bonds. Question Mark,
I don't know what those papers are.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
And for some reason, Stanley is the one that knows
about how money has appreciated over the last like century,
because his mom's like, Stanley, what do you think? I
was like, what is daily know about banking? He's you know,
he's in middle school, but he knows.
Speaker 5 (52:05):
He takes math class.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
I believe that He's like, it's worth at least a
million dollars. I was like, good, good math on your
feet man's and and I really it'll it like makes
me so much of the end of this movie makes
me tear up. But the fact that, like, even before
they know Zero is a Zeroni and connected to the
history of their family, they agree to give him half
(52:27):
of whatever is in there, and it's like mm hmmm, collective,
I know it's great and.
Speaker 5 (52:32):
Like, no, no fight the parents.
Speaker 6 (52:35):
Ye have windos to Hector, one for us, one for
mister Saroni, one for us, one for mister Sni And
then the grandfather embraces Hector and kisses him.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
And I'm just like, oh, it's really nice, so nice.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
And then Hector uses some of his money to hire
a team of private investigators to track down his mom,
which he does, and they reunite and embrace and that's
also very sweet and tearful. And then the movie ends
with all of the boys from d tent at Stanley's
nice new house with a pool. They gather around the
(53:11):
TV to watch a commercial where that baseball player Clyde
Livingston is the spokesman for Splosh, which is stan Lee's
dad's product for treating foot odor.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
The end, and You're like, sure he's also I didn't know.
I guess that that guy, the guy who plays Clyde
Livingston was Rick Fox. Yeah, but he played for like
the Celtics and the Lakers, and like was a pro athlete.
Didn't know, I don't know enough about sports.
Speaker 6 (53:41):
Why didn't then make him a basketball player?
Speaker 1 (53:44):
So because because like Mike had just come out, they're like,
there's two basketball shoes of it's played out in children's media.
Speaker 6 (53:51):
Fair.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
That's honestly my guess, but I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, anyway, so that's the movie. Let's take a quick
break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
And where back. I wanted to say just the one
thing about this movie, and I didn't finish rereading the book,
so I don't remember or I don't know like how
this is dealt with in the book. There is like
in a movie that is shockingly not Disneyfied in most ways.
The ending does feel a little Disneyfied to me, but
(54:33):
only in the one scene where you know, it's so
critical of justice and of the school to prison pipeline
and all of these things that you never see discussed
in media, much less children's media. But at the end
when you know, it's like, oh, well, it's just that
the state didn't know that this is how the prison
(54:53):
was being run, but now that they know, they're gonna
take care of it, and like that was the only
sort of disney fire plot point for me. It was like,
because that is sort of what you're taught of, Like, oh, well,
if you're if they're doing something bad, it's only because
surely nobody knows it's not inherent to the system that
it's a part.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Of I did fully reread the book a couple days ago. Yeah,
I mean me reading a book. Wow, good, thank you.
But I tend to agree. There is a moment in
the movie which it does feel very cathartic, when like, yeah,
(55:34):
the warden and mister sir and like the officials at
the camp are arrested and humiliated and all this stuff
that doesn't really happen. In the book, there is a
reference to how Camp Green Lake gets shut down and
will be converted into a Girl Scout Camp.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Which at one point was going to become a Disney
Plus series.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
I think it's still in development.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
I'm sorry, what isn't that bizarre? I was kind of like, yeah,
I'd watch it. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (56:03):
They could have just kept making Bunked. I don't understand
they canceled Bunked a show Camp. And also, this is
my listen. If you are a Disney executive, call me,
because I think that we I know that everything's a reboot,
even Fascism right now, but I think that we need
to reboot Bug Juice.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
And I was gonna say, a great camp show.
Speaker 6 (56:25):
I don't know why, because like it's unscripted, it's gonna
be super cheap to produce.
Speaker 5 (56:28):
It's you know, get those kid influencers started early. I guess.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
Bug Juice was so awesome. Kids shows were really gross,
like I because that was like Baby Survivor.
Speaker 3 (56:44):
I have never heard of this. I don't know what
you're talking about, but yeah.
Speaker 6 (56:48):
It was like a camp reality show. It was like
kids at Summer Camp, and it was like the trials
and tribulations of the drama of summer Camp.
Speaker 5 (56:56):
So I'm like, if you want to make a camp show, either.
Speaker 6 (56:59):
Bring back the script camp show that you literally just canceled,
or you know, you have to renegotiate everybody's contract blah
blah blah, or bring back Bug Juice a show that
needs to be brought back.
Speaker 5 (57:11):
I think about this all the.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Time because I don't and you're totally right, it like
it fits influencer culture absurdly. Well, yeah, huh.
Speaker 3 (57:19):
So the Disney plus TV adaptation that's I think still
in development. I don't know much about it, but basically
it's an adaptation of the book. So it's not necessarily
about like fun summer Camp. It's about like prison labor camp.
But it is like a quote unquote all female reboot,
(57:40):
which I don't know how that will go exactly.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
That's what makes me think it is not going to
be made because I feel like that time has come
and gone and what so has Disney plus making like
original content ruined it?
Speaker 6 (57:55):
Yeah, I think both All Lady Goes to My was
the start of the death knell, and then Katy perry
Space Journey is like.
Speaker 5 (58:07):
The final nail of the coffin.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Yeah, there was a wave of feminism that ended when
Katy Perry went to Space because it was just like
what feminism? What are you even? What are you saying?
Speaker 3 (58:18):
I hate it?
Speaker 1 (58:20):
Woman should space tourism anyways?
Speaker 3 (58:23):
Yes, And then I would say the other big adaptation
change from the book in general and especially at the end,
is that Stanley feels a lot more confident at the end,
and he likes himself now and now he has friends.
And this is part of a larger adaptation change that
(58:45):
we alluded to it at the beginning of the episode,
which I would like to talk more about, which is
the fat erasure of Stanley's character. So basically, in the book,
Stanley is fat. In the movie, he is thin. In
the book, it's mentioned that Stanley is teased and bullied
(59:07):
at school by his peers for being fat. Sometimes his
teachers will kind of subconsciously fat shame him. He doesn't
have much self confidence or friends. As a result, over
the course of the book, he does lose some weight
due to strenuous activity of digging holes every day. It
(59:27):
doesn't ever say how much weight he loses, but it
does say that by the end of the story he
has more confidence, he has friends, he likes himself. It
is not super clear in the book exactly how much
of his confidence boost, if any, correlates to his weight loss.
But even so, I do remember that readers of the
(59:51):
book they appreciated there being representation of a fat protagonist
who is likable and compelling, who is at the center
of this really you know, interesting and layered story, who
has an arc. And I remember a lot of the
criticism about this movie when it came out that, you know,
audiences were disappointed that that aspect of the character was
(01:00:13):
completely erased. They wanted to see on screen representation of
a fat protagonist, but instead the movie cast a thin
actor in Shila buff And I know that the choice
to cast a you know, a thin actor in this
role and to not have to have, you know, like
someone wear a fat suit or anything like that totally valid.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But Also, it's like they could have just cast a
fat actor.
Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Right, because the thing is like, if they wanted to
emit something, why did it have to be his fatness.
If anything, they could have omitted his weight loss.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Right, that was the Yeah, that would be ideal, right, Like,
at the end of the day, it.
Speaker 6 (01:00:50):
Is about the confidence. And the thing about being fat
is that, for the most part, being fat is not actually,
in my opinion, as a fat person, that bad.
Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
I'm hot, I am fine with the way that I look.
Speaker 6 (01:01:07):
The problem with being fat is society and the way
that society treats fat people. And the problem with Stanley
being fat is the fact that he's getting teased. He
has no confidence because adults and children alike are making
him feel bad about his body. And like the nineties
was also a peak heroin chic, the early two thousands
(01:01:28):
was like low rise.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Genes also experiencing another unfortunate reboot.
Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
Yeah, the rise of.
Speaker 6 (01:01:35):
Like skinny talk is terrifying. It's like anemia Tumbler all
over again.
Speaker 5 (01:01:41):
It really, it really.
Speaker 6 (01:01:43):
Is like very disconcerting to encounter, and like, I find
myself having thoughts that I haven't had in twenty years,
and I'm just like stop it.
Speaker 5 (01:01:52):
But I'm okay, I'm good. But every now and.
Speaker 6 (01:01:55):
Then I'm just like, like, I'll read the can of
a Lacroix and I'll feel bad about myself because looks
actually are really weird of fat Shamie, because they really
yeah with them, they say zero carbs, zero.
Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Fat, zero, zero guilt or something like that.
Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
It's innocent.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Oh my god, it does say equals innocent yea.
Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
And sometimes it gets to me.
Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Polar would never, polar would never.
Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
Yeah, a spin drift couldn't catch them.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
No, absolutely not. No, I Caitlyn, that's a great point.
Like it's because I did feel like, I guess what,
I I agree with you, Karama that you know, putting
child above in a fat suit would have aged the
movie terribly. Yeah, but I did feel like in the
portion of the book that I finished that there was
(01:02:48):
it was like one of the faults of the book
to me. I've I thought anyways that Lewis de Carr
was sort of putting some morality towards the weight loss
in a way that just felt kind of out of
step with a lot of what the book is doing.
Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Totally and right. If there was again anything to omit
from the adaptation, it could be the weight loss, or
at least the implication that his boost and confidence correlates
in some way to his weight loss.
Speaker 6 (01:03:18):
I do also think that, like we are looking at
this very much with twenty twenty five eyes, and I
think that having a kid that was fat on screen
be made fun of for being fat was something that
was like also going to be considered like damaging, like
putting this fat kid in the public eye, And I
think that it ultimately would have been damaging.
Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
For that kid.
Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
Sure, And I know that like Heavyweights was a movie
that came out in a similar era.
Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
I can't remember exactly what your Heavyweights.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Came out, Yeah, late nineties, I think because he isn't
Keenan Thompson in it, so it's like, yeah, Keenan era,
I think baby Keenan's in it.
Speaker 5 (01:03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:03:57):
But the thing about Keenan is it was always okay
for him to be fat because he was funny, do
you know what I mean? Whereas like with Holes, it's
more of a dramatic turn and you're sort of like
the hero of this drama. And I think that I
think that I would have loved if it were different.
But I also kind of understand why it was the
(01:04:18):
way that it was with.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
The time that it came out, and adding that to
I mean, I think I'm sure that I'm but I
the only young fat actors that I remember knowing of
as a kid were Keenan Thompson and Lori Beth Denberg
and that was it. And so if the you know,
directive is to cast Stanley yell Natz as a known actor,
(01:04:44):
that might have been hard also because of how of
how prejudiced Hollywood is in the first place, where the
most well known child actors are you know, finn Totally.
Speaker 6 (01:04:54):
This is before Nicki Blonski changed cinema.
Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
It was a few years away, in just three years.
Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
So the filmmakers spoke to this adaptation change in an
interview in two thousand and three. So it was Lewis
Sacker and director Andrew Davis were interviewed by Phase nine. Sure,
I don't know exactly what that is, some kind of
film publication, but anyway, precisely, they were asked how they
(01:05:28):
searched for the right kids, like the right child actors
for the characters. Lewis Sacker says, well, the character of
Stanley in the book is overweight, Shia is not, but
this wasn't integral to the story. The point was more
that he felt like an outsider, but he could display vulnerability,
and Shia conveys the right amount of emotion and vulnerability
(01:05:50):
and quirkiness, so the overweight thing wasn't important to that.
I say, did you read your own book? Lewis, Like,
what are you talking about?
Speaker 6 (01:06:00):
As a misguided take, I would say I can pretty
much bring any topic back to how much I dislike
Leah Michelle. But of course, for me Funny Girl the adaptation,
I thought that Beanie Feldstein was better casting because the
whole thing about Funny Girl is that Fanny Brice is
supposed to be not conventionally attractive. And while Leah Michelle,
(01:06:24):
because she is half Jewish, does have similar features to say,
like barbar streisand in the original the way that that
was written for twenty twenty forge or whatever year it was,
twenty twenty two, she's conventionally attractive.
Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
She's like a hot lady.
Speaker 6 (01:06:41):
Our beauty conventions have changed, but we still hate fat people.
And I think that Beanie Feldstein's casting was far more
in line with who Fanny's supposed to be as an outsider.
So I think that on the one hand, Lewis is
right in that what matters most is that he's an
outsider who gains confidence. But we don't get that from
(01:07:02):
Shia abuff In any way, Like they didn't write something
in that made it happen, Like he didn't have a list,
he didn't have some sort of like physical disability or
something that like that would have helped with the holes.
Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
But you know what I mean, Yeah, or even if
it's just like he has a lack of confidence for
a reason that has nothing to do with his appearance
or ability or anything like that, and it's just that
it wasn't replaced with anything. Yeah, Yeah, So that's just
that whole part of his character is erased. And maybe
Lewis Sachar is saying something like, well, you know, Stanley's
(01:07:36):
fatness does not define him as a character, which is true,
but it doesn't sound like that's what he's saying. He's
just sort of like, I need to make an excuse
for why we didn't cast a actor.
Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Yeah, it feels like a very like hollywoody thing, which
to at least to Lewis Skar, I'm sure that Lewis
Akar is not the one making the final casting decisions, no, right,
I know that he. I think he was a pretty
around the movie. I think that that is like a
better suited question for the director than which the writer.
Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Which the director answers a question, a follow up question,
which was didn't you consider a fat suit, and director
Andrew Davis says, yes, we did, but in the book
he loses weight as the story evolves and as he
digs the holes, et cetera. And we shot the movie
out of continuity, so that wouldn't have worked.
Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
That's the reason.
Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Yeah, youre right, And I think that was like I
remember that also being a reason that they gave for
not casting a fat actor to begin with, because it's like, well,
movies are shot out of chronological order. So if a
character is losing weight progressively, but the movie is shot
out of order, then how how do we manage that?
Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
It's all very two thousand and three. I mean, I
will say that, like not to give this movie a pass,
but that this feels very thoroughly in step with how
fatness was treated in movies at this time.
Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
For sure, shallow how oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Right, like this like the same couple of years God,
I still have managed to never see Shallow.
Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
How oh, I won't see that movie because I love
myself too much.
Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
That's one of those movies where it's like, I know
we'd have a lot to talk about, but I don't
want to subject to anyone to have it to watch it,
including myself.
Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Fair it's horrid. I have seen it, and.
Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
It's like been free on YouTube for a thousand years
because no one would watch it on purpose. But in
any case, yes, I wasn't aware that they had been
asked about it directly.
Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
And then the other thing is that there is a
fat character in the movie Armpit laid by Byron Cotton
ar MPI to the t well, yes, of course.
Speaker 5 (01:09:46):
Is that you're smelling dog?
Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
That's me okay, Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
That was a lyric. That was lyric.
Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
The main thing we know about him is that he
has body odor. He doesn't. He's implied to not have
very good hygiene. Every and teases him about this. And
also the movie goes out of its way to show
at least once to show him struggling with a physical
task of some kind.
Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
So basically the only fat character on screen is attached
to all these very harmful reductive tropes. Yeah, associated with fatness.
Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
So which sucks for a lot of reasons. I mean
the actor, because I don't think I don't a lot
of these kids didn't go on to perform at least
in movies very much. But Byron Cotton is so good,
he's so charming, and also like it also just doesn't
it's so clearly fat phobic because you got to think,
all these kids are stinky, They're not being taken care of,
(01:10:41):
and it's not their fault, Like they all share a
single shower stall like there, of course, hygiene is poor
and they only get like four.
Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Minute shower tokens or something.
Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Yeah, and add that to the average hygiene habits of
a young boy in the best circumstances, like, yeah, all
these kids are stinky.
Speaker 6 (01:11:01):
Yeah, and they're wearing the same work clothes three days
in a row.
Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
I did want to talk a little bit about the
production of this movie, because there is child Okay, one
of the hills that I love to die on day
in and day out is child labor laws, and there's
I think that this movie technically followed child labor laws,
but to me, say that child labor laws are not
(01:11:28):
restrictive enough because they I mean, obviously the kids have
to go to school all this stuff, But they were
literally in the middle of the desert in heat as
much as one hundred and fifteen degrees, shooting for ten weeks.
And I have a couple of quotes from that. It
was a business insider oral history where they didn't speak
to everybody, and you know there's certain like you know,
(01:11:50):
like I don't want to know what child a buff says.
He's not in it. But it's like Lewis Sakarr, the director,
and then a couple of the cast members I think
Tim Blake Nelson, and then a few of the boys,
including Miguel Castro who plays Magnet and my crush Cleo Thomas.
Speaker 5 (01:12:09):
Well I met once.
Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
Actually what is he nice?
Speaker 5 (01:12:13):
It was very nice. I was like, is he t zero?
He was really sweet.
Speaker 6 (01:12:19):
I was on a show on Hulu called Reboot, and
at the premiere of Reboot he was there and I
was like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Also, you're great in Reboot. I was like I think
I like gasped and like messaged you immediately, like how
could you not have told me? Actually?
Speaker 6 (01:12:37):
I actually had a really sweet interaction last night with
somebody at like an actor mixer thing for my agency,
and this like younger actor at my agency.
Speaker 5 (01:12:47):
She's like in her twenties. She's not like a child,
but she came up here. She's like, I really loved
you in reboot and you made me want to go
to UCB. And I was just like, I'm literally gonna
cry right now.
Speaker 6 (01:12:58):
Thank you so much. I feels good about my career
and that made me feel so much better.
Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Like moments like that find you when you need it.
Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
That's really yes.
Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
But yeah, Cleo was very nice.
Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
He introduces something like I know you're I know I'm
aware of.
Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
I know the classes, but I would lose it.
Speaker 5 (01:13:17):
I would still still crushworthy.
Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
I would say yeah, I followed it. I followed him
on Instagram today. I was like, he still got it.
Speaker 6 (01:13:24):
I was gonna say slides DMS and I remembered, like
a fully engaged with adults.
Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
He would get it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
This Cleo Thomas has been promoted to my Hall Pass.
But so this is a quote from Miguel Castro, who
also talks about how like the casting process and how
they really did. I mean, I think that being unwilling
to cast a fat actor of Stanley is the standout
bad thing that they did, because it seems like they
(01:13:51):
tried to really find young actors who like fit the role,
and also that the movie was not being aggressive whitewashed
in a way that I would not put past two
thousand and three. I do think ultimately centering a story
about the school to prison pipeline around a white character
as a little suss but we'll get there. But just
(01:14:12):
in terms of the production, Mila Castro said, he's also
very funny, but he said, I remember one day was
one hundred and nineteen degrees. I thought they were going
to cancel the filming, but we all agreed to knock
it out. I was hallucinating and I started seeing water
a swimming pool. The production team gave us thermometers to
check the temperature of our holes. If the holes hit
(01:14:33):
over one hundred and twenty five degrees, we had to
get out of there. That day, some of our thermometers
broke one thirty And it's like, you can't make kids
do that. You can't make kids, they just said. And
they had to do like a boot camp, basically re
enacting the movie holes so that they would be able
to do it on the production, so it ended up
(01:14:54):
being like three to four months of them sort of
just having to go methad, which is like, do that
if you want as an adult, Like I just you
can't make kids go method at a prison camp.
Speaker 5 (01:15:07):
Like that's we all agreed is bad.
Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 6 (01:15:14):
It's giving Mikey Madison saying that she and Sean Baker
decided together not to have an intimacy coordinator, and I'm like,
I don't think that that's your call as a no.
I think it's your call as a yes, but it
can't be your call as a no. That's like not
having a stunt coordinator. Like even Tom Cruise, as dedicated
as he is to doing these outrageous stunts, has a
(01:15:37):
stunt coordinator.
Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
Right right, Yeah, it feels like adults knowing that they
have power over children and being like, no, we got
to keep going. The show must go on, let's go,
let's go kids.
Speaker 6 (01:15:49):
Don't you want to make the movie? Don't you want
all of your friends to watch this cool movie?
Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
It's just I don't know, I don't understand like production risk,
Like even if you were heartless and you don't care
about putting a child in a one hundred and thirty
degree whole like that production insurance. I don't know. I
was just I was curious. I was like, I wonder
how they kept the whole school. The answer they didn't.
They didn't, so that is unfortunate. What I will say
(01:16:16):
that is positive about the production, just something that I
admire is that Andrew Davis, the director, who mostly had
done action movies up to this point, was really set
on keeping the story basically not dumbing the story down
for kids, and that Disney, after I think a few
initial like are you sure you want to include A,
(01:16:39):
B and C, he was like, no, I will not
make the movie if you keep bugging me, and really
pushed to have Lewis Karr write the screenplay and basically,
along with a producer, taught Lewis Decarr how to write
a screenplay so that they could preserve the integrity of
the story. And I don't know, just like I knew,
(01:17:00):
you know, Crame, you're a writer. Like it's just like that.
I don't know how they pulled it off, and I'm
so glad that they did well.
Speaker 6 (01:17:06):
I feel like he has a really strong understanding of
story to begin with, So I feel like it was
like he was at the water.
Speaker 5 (01:17:13):
They just had to show him how to drink, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Right, yeah, yeah, And that's what they were sort of like.
They were like, he's a great writer, he just needs
to understand the format. And I guess throughout production, like Lewis,
the Carr had a lot of input and if he
wanted something changed or adjusted like Andrew Davis, had no questions.
I was like, wow, no one respects writers. That's cool. Yeah,
that's right. That was my takeaway.
Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
He's also in the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Yeah, mister bold, Oh that's him.
Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Yeah, cute.
Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
Sweet.
Speaker 5 (01:17:45):
I wish they had shown him with like a bust
down wig.
Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Later because the onion juice it worked. The onion juice
cured his boldness.
Speaker 5 (01:17:55):
I just want to know if it works. It's like
a Sweet Todd situation.
Speaker 3 (01:17:59):
Mister No, I think Sam's onion remedies worked one hundred percent.
Speaker 6 (01:18:05):
You would have loved Arawan, Oh my god, Oh he
would have.
Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
He would have been making billions at the Ariwuan.
Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Yeah. I love cameos like that. And not to keep
going back to series of unfortunate events, but it is
my favorite. And that is a terribly adapted movie that
the author was very upset about. So it's just like
there's so many examples of you know, heavily sanitized, Like
all the dark themes in that movie are basically played
for comedy instead of because the you know, Nickel I
(01:18:35):
think it was Nickelodeon productions in that case were like,
it's too scary for kids, they won't be able to
handle it. And that's how you get Jim Carrey count
all off.
Speaker 6 (01:18:44):
I met the boy from that movie.
Speaker 5 (01:18:47):
I didn't know it was him. I just happened to
be sitting.
Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
All my childhood crushes.
Speaker 6 (01:18:51):
I just happened to be sitting next to him. We're
instagram like mutuals now. I happen to be sitting next
to him. Last summer when I went to New York
City and I decided to use my free will and
my adult money to go see Cats.
Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
The Jellicle Ball, and he was there.
Speaker 5 (01:19:06):
And he was there in the front row, right next
to me.
Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:19:10):
He had a friend who was in it. He had
never seen Cats before. I had seen Cats before.
Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
Of course.
Speaker 6 (01:19:17):
I will just say I think the Cat's the Jellical
Ball was actually genius and a really amazing production because
they used ballroom culture and I was like, oh, this
is this is actually the only way this show makes sense.
Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
That is actually a great adjustment.
Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Yeah. So it's like Paris is burning bust cats.
Speaker 5 (01:19:37):
Yes it's gay cats.
Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
I'm in that's so good.
Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Yeah. Liam Aiken, Yes he's sucking and like, I'm a yapper,
so I'll talk to anybody that's unfortunately sitting next to me.
Speaker 6 (01:19:48):
And he was such a trooper about it, and I
was like, Oh, your friend's in it. Who is your
friend playing? And he was like, oh, she's Skimbleshanks And
I was like the railway can.
Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
The best Cat's god best number.
Speaker 5 (01:20:02):
I was like, that's a good cat, you've.
Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
Good taste and friends.
Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
I can't believe you're hang out with Skimbleshanks. Oh my god.
Yet another like Horny Child's thing on my wall. I
had like achin for Liam, that's so funny. Wow, I'm
glad that he's And he did turn into my dream
adult in that he was friend row at the Jelicable
and like I never.
Speaker 6 (01:20:28):
It never it came up that he was an actor
because we were just talking and I was like, oh,
I'm an actor too, and blah, blah blah. And I
didn't know until I like looked him up after he
walked me into the subway because I was like, I
don't know where I'm going, And I looked him up
to see if his star meter.
Speaker 5 (01:20:41):
Was better than mine.
Speaker 6 (01:20:42):
It was, and I was like, oh, snap, this is
the guy from Stepmom, one of my favorite movies of
all time.
Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:20:49):
And then I was like, oh, I had a series
of unfortunate events a movie that I did not care.
Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
About, but Stepmom, good for him, Good for him.
Speaker 5 (01:20:56):
Have you guys done? Stepmom? Sorry, we should talk about
the movie.
Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
No, we haven't, but it's on our list.
Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
I think would be down. I've seen it because jennam
Alone is in it too, right, baby jenneral alone? Yeah,
but well, I guess back, I guess.
Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
I mean speaking of a movie that you know, like
doesn't sanitize the more serious themes, or at least not extensively. Yeah,
this movie, it addresses a number of social issues such
as race, class, incarceration in all of the storylines I
(01:21:34):
think that are intersecting. So there's these two main storylines
from the past, one from the present. In one of them,
it's Stanley's Great, Great grandfather Elia Yellnetz. He is seeking
out the help of Madame Zaroni. In the book, Madame
Zaroni is described as being a word that is used
(01:21:58):
as a slur to describe Romani people. She's played by
earth a kid.
Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
Yeah, she's like believe Egyptian. In the book too, they
explicitly say that she is an immigrant from Egypt.
Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
Right, and curious what your thoughts are. But I couldn't
help but feel that there are hints of like the
magical Negro trope at play here, because she's presented as
being this mystic type of person. She places a curse.
Speaker 6 (01:22:26):
I agree there's a little magical Negro happening, but I
don't mind it. And I don't know if I'm supposed
to say that out loud, but I don't because also
I feel like it's a lot of the time, like
when curses are happening, it's like, oh man, we got
cursed for no reason, and nobody at any point is like,
oh man, we got cursed for no reason. They're like, my,
(01:22:48):
no good, dirty rotten pigs stealing great great great grandfather.
It's like this was a deserved curse. Everybody's mad at
the great great grandfather for not doing what he promised
he would do. And it's like, you got the help
that you want, it you ended up not getting with
the girl, and now your butt hurt and you're gonna
go on a boat to America. You realize on the
boat to America, oh snap, I forgot to take the
(01:23:10):
old lady up the hill and you don't take a
boat back.
Speaker 5 (01:23:13):
I would have been on the next boat.
Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Back personally, right, I did. Yeah, that is I guess
I hadn't registered that that. At very least. The family
is not like fuck, Madame Zeroni. They're like, he made
a deal and he didn't keep his end of it.
Speaker 6 (01:23:28):
Yeah, at no point where they're like, oh, Madam Zaroni
was the worst. They're like, yeah, no, that's that's fair.
Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
It's like a European white guy neglecting to pay a
black woman for services rendered and he gets cursed about it,
and it is fully deserved.
Speaker 6 (01:23:46):
And I also think that, you know, the the curse
being broken because finally the services that were promised were
rendered in a way with this new generation, it's it's
very much speaking like the promise. I think that with
them being explicitly black, even though it's like somewhat ambiguous in.
Speaker 5 (01:24:06):
The book, like if if she's Egyptian or if she's Romani.
Speaker 6 (01:24:09):
It's very much about like, oh, the promise is that
America has made to black people and sort of like
how those have been broken and there I think that
there is going to be a curse on this country
until something happens to make it right. Whether it's reparations,
whether it's something else, I don't know, And like I
(01:24:29):
don't even think that I would be entitled to reparations
because my parents are immigrants. Like I'm not saying it
for personal gain, and I'm saying it for justice reasons,
but justice. Like the movie is very clear in teaching
kids like hey, if you promise something to somebody and
then you don't do it, that's a bad thing. And
then later we were all like, yeah, no, it makes
(01:24:49):
sense that they're cursed. And then later it's like, oh,
I'm going to make this right. And he didn't make
it right to do things better, Like he didn't make
it right because he's like, oh, this lift the curse.
It was completely selfless. His friend was hurt and he
wanted to make him better totally, and like when you
do the right thing for the right reason. Good things
(01:25:10):
happen to you in movieland unfortunately not always in real life.
Speaker 5 (01:25:13):
But I think that more people tried it, we'd find
out in real life.
Speaker 3 (01:25:19):
Right yeah, right, So yeah, that's that storyline. And then
it also intersects heavily with the Stanley Hector Zerny storyline
in the present. And then the third storyline is the
Miss Catherine aka kissing Kate Marlowe and Sam in I
(01:25:39):
think it's like turn of the century, like late eighteen hundreds,
early nineteen hundreds. Again, it's Jim Crow era Texas. She
is a white woman, he is a black man. They
fall in love. They kiss during an era when that
was illegal in Texas and in many other states in
the US. They are seen this racist mob forms. All
(01:26:03):
this violence is inflicted. They murder Sam. The sheriff does
nothing to stop them. In all likelihood, the sheriff was
a clan member. And then this leads to you know,
Catherine ak Kate becoming an outlaw getting revenge. She kills
the sheriff. It makes you wonder why she doesn't kill
trout Walker also, but I guess it's because the story
(01:26:27):
needs him to live long enough to produce offspring, so
that the warden can be a character since trout Walker's
her grandfather.
Speaker 6 (01:26:36):
Right. Also, I think that there's sometimes there's power in
letting someone suffer.
Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
Oh true, because he by the end of his life
he is miserable.
Speaker 5 (01:26:45):
Yeah, he's obsessed.
Speaker 6 (01:26:46):
He's a man completely possessed by the idea of finding
this treasure where he's torturing his granddaughter, right, so built
to dig these holes and she's you know the TikTok
sounds that has spawned a million video.
Speaker 5 (01:27:00):
I'm tired of this grandpa it is.
Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
I thought that, like that was an interesting Again, like
this movie is good at like providing context for the
villains without overly empathizing with them, because what she does
to deal with the uh trauma of the holes is
that she becomes like a prison warden and opens a
(01:27:28):
prison and outsources the labor to disenfranchised children. So it's
not like it's an excuse for anything that she's doing.
But I like little beats like that, I feel like
are sort of what elevates this movie a lot if
because I think that's like helpful for kids to have
context but not excuses for how you know, oppressors become
(01:27:49):
oppressors when it speaks.
Speaker 6 (01:27:50):
To the way that white women will pass on the
violence enacted upon them by white men to black people,
because you know, not everybody is black in the camp,
but they do make it a point to have if
you're a number of black kids, because that is unfortunately
who is getting these harsher punishments. And even if you
think about Hector and Stanley, Stanley is getting this punishment
(01:28:14):
because he stole from allegedly stole shoes from a homeless
shelter and they were like this famous guy's shoes, and
this crime was like more egregious in that way. Hector
got nabbed for stealing shoes from Paylass.
Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
Right, shoes that probably cost twenty dollars kind of thing,
not even.
Speaker 5 (01:28:31):
In three pay less shoes fifteen at most.
Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
Right right?
Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
I miss pay Less every day rip rip to a
real story.
Speaker 6 (01:28:41):
The payless where I used to buy my Easter shoes
is now an axe throwing place.
Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Oh my god. So it's like gentrification on gentrification. I
thought it was interesting that Pala's got shouted out by name.
I'm like, did they pay for that?
Speaker 5 (01:28:54):
I don't know, they shoes worth stealing? Paylas there is.
Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
I mean, I guess I'm curious what you both think
of this, Like Camp Greenlake is a diverse but I
would say mostly non white body of people, which I
think makes a lot of sense if you look at
prisons unfortunately, especially the school to prison and Pipeline. I
do feel like, while I do love Stanley Yelnatz, centering
(01:29:22):
this story on a white character does not to say
that this does not happen to white kids, but it
happens disproportionately less. And so while I think you can
make the argument that Zero is a dual protagonist by
the end of the movie, but he's not at the beginning,
and so I don't know. I don't know, it's a pick.
(01:29:46):
And then there's all of these kids that you get
a little bit of their story. I don't know. I
think you get a little more in the book, which
is kind of to be expected, but you get like
you don't really know why most of the kids have
been put there. It was a really They do add
that Magnet is there because he was trying to literally
free a dog from a breeder, which is great practice.
(01:30:10):
Shout out Magnet, and that there is I think it's
zig Zag maybe is there because he has mental health
issues that are not being treated, and which is you know,
another thing you see all the time is someone with
a mental health crisis being sent to prison instead of
being given help. And so like you are given. I
(01:30:30):
think kind of a sampler platter for lack of a
better descriptor. But I do wish that we got a
little more than one line for a lot of characters,
because I don't know. I mean, do we know why
Armpit is there? Do we know? I experalized there? Like
we get, some characters get the context. Authors don't.
Speaker 5 (01:30:51):
Yeah, I don't think we know.
Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
This doesn't provide any more context in that regard, but
I will share a quick paragraph from the book. Quote
Stanley was thankful that there were no racial problems. X Ray,
Armpit and Zero were black, he Squid and Zigzag were white.
Magnet was hispanic. On the lake, they were all the
(01:31:16):
same reddish brown color, the color of dirt. Unquote. So
that's pretty much the only thing the book has to
say about any racial or racialized dynamics.
Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
In that timeline, at least because.
Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
Yea, and I couldn't help think about another movie as
I was rewatching holes, which is the movie Nickel Boys
that I saw recently, so as far as a book
slash movie about young men or teen boys being incarcerated
and sent to a work camp. There is a version
(01:31:56):
of this story that is written and made by white people,
a la Holes. And then compare that to a version
of this story that was written by black people, a
la Nickel Boys, which is a novel from twenty nineteen
by Coulson Whitehead adapted to a twenty twenty four film
(01:32:16):
written and directed by Ramel Ross. Very different movies obviously,
Where Nickel Boys. I don't know if either of you
have seen it, but yeah, Nickel Boys is totally much heavier.
It does a lot more to shed light on the
horrors of the racism, exploitation, violence, abuse present in a
(01:32:40):
detention facility like this versus Holes, which acknowledges these things
to some degree, but it's center's whiteness. It's framed more
as this like almost a fun adventure, folk tale type
of story that is largely about a white boy, kind
(01:33:01):
of like his redemption arc of like, oh I have
to carry as a rony up a mountain kind of thing.
So I just think it's interesting to kind of note
the differences between two similar premises written by two very
different perspectives, and how they kind of manifest at different times.
Speaker 5 (01:33:19):
To sure for sure, Yeah, I think that sometimes the
messenger matters as much as the message.
Speaker 6 (01:33:26):
And I do think that in two thousand and three,
for a kids movie to send this message, I think
you need to see this happen to a white kid
who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,
because when black kids are in the wrong place at
the wrong time, people are like, well, what were they
doing there, Why weren't they there at the right time,
(01:33:47):
Why weren't they in a different place?
Speaker 5 (01:33:49):
And I think.
Speaker 6 (01:33:51):
That it's kind of similar for me to my favorite
movie about racism, Pleasantville. Yeah, it is a movie about
racism with not nary a single person.
Speaker 1 (01:34:05):
Yes, however, wild that they.
Speaker 5 (01:34:08):
Did that, but like wild that they did it and
did it well.
Speaker 3 (01:34:11):
I think one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
It's a great movie.
Speaker 6 (01:34:13):
It's a really good movie. And I think that there
are people who would not have gotten the message if
it were a straight and maybe wouldn't even have watched
the movie if it were straight up, Like, hey, this
is about segregation in the nineteen fifties, which is what
it is.
Speaker 5 (01:34:33):
It is a movie about segregation in the nineteen fifties,
but the colored people are literally in technicolor. Yeah, and
I love that, and.
Speaker 6 (01:34:43):
I love that that was an idea that somebody had,
And it's like, sometimes, what if this happened to white people?
Is the way to get the message to people that
are like, hey, wait a minute, And it's like the
last few lines of that poem, that's like, oh, and
then they came for me and there's nobody to stand
up for me, And it's like, what if this were
to happen to you?
Speaker 5 (01:35:02):
You need to think about if this happens to you.
Speaker 6 (01:35:04):
Not to say that all of the audiences are white,
but in filmmaking, for better or for worse, white is
seen as the default and you can put any experience
on top of it. And I do think also there
are things that are true about this story. I do
think that even with the expensive lawyer, if it were Hector,
(01:35:25):
or if it were another black kid, it would have
taken longer than literally a day after hiring a lawyer
to get.
Speaker 5 (01:35:31):
Him out of there.
Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
Definitely, no matter.
Speaker 6 (01:35:33):
How hard that lawyer was working, I feel like the
judge would be like, no, I'm not overturning this. I
don't care, he's already there. The holes are good for
character whatever, do you know what I mean? Because like,
while I was watching, when they said this into eighteen months,
I was like, that is six times as long as.
Speaker 5 (01:35:50):
Rock Turner got ah.
Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
Yep, Well, when you put it that way, it.
Speaker 6 (01:35:56):
Was an unreasonably long sentence, and I don't even know
how long those other kids.
Speaker 5 (01:36:00):
Are sentenced to.
Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
I was gonna say, I would be really curious what
the other sentences looked like, because it didn't seem like
that was a default sentence by any means.
Speaker 5 (01:36:10):
Right, and like x Ray had already been there for
six months.
Speaker 6 (01:36:12):
Also, x Ray's nickname is my favorite because it's because
he's got the big glasses, but also his name.
Speaker 5 (01:36:17):
Is Rex and like genius.
Speaker 1 (01:36:22):
Yeah, that is like peak kid brilliance. Yeah, I that's
that's a good point, especially where like you're saying, in
children's media often still, but like especially in the two thousands,
you know, you're taking the like default protagonist for for
(01:36:42):
a movie like this and making the worst possible thing
happen and demonstrating that it was through no fault of
his own. And then it's sort of I don't think
this is like intentionally done. I would guess more that
this is just a Lewis Karr self insert to begin. Yeah,
I'm not totally sure, but you know the director and
the writer if if you don't know, they're both white.
(01:37:03):
But yeah, that it's almost like by seeing that happen
to Shilah buff it creates this runway to understand that
this is happening to every single kid in this place,
and I think, like what you lose there? That I
don't want to come down too hard in this movie
because it's doing so much I have literally never seen
in kids movies. True, but that it doesn't bring up
(01:37:25):
the fact that the black kids at this camp would
have a far worse time, and that I guess the
closest you get to understanding that is through Zero. But Zero,
I mean has compounded issues. I think that the movie
sort of makes it out to be more that he's
unhoused an award of the state and therefore they don't
(01:37:47):
have to care about him and they don't really touch race,
which is bizarre because this movie is willing to discuss racism.
That's literally the whole Sam and Kate story. But I
think it's.
Speaker 6 (01:38:01):
Very much a Colorblind two thousand. It's like, Wow, racism used.
Speaker 5 (01:38:04):
To be so bad.
Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
Now any kid can go to jail.
Speaker 6 (01:38:10):
I will say, just because we talked about kissing Cape
Barlowe and Sam, I'm really glad that they didn't hang him.
I know that they said they were going to hang him,
which would have been I think more historically accurate, but
I was so glad that they did not show him
getting hanged, and that it.
Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
Was shown too, like, yeah, yeah, I think that that
was handled very gracefully.
Speaker 6 (01:38:28):
And I think that not just for the kids, for
me and my little heart, I couldn't have handled it.
Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:38:35):
And then the other thing I was gonna say was
we were just talking about like the kids at the
camp and at the beginning, at the very beginning of
the cold Open, when barf Bag sacrifices himself to the snake,
they are singing dig It at the beginning, and it
feels like the song sixteen Tons to me, like there
was a very similar vibe and it was sort of like,
(01:38:58):
you know, same deal as like working and you're never
going to get out of it, but they're also joking
around and like the background music is digg it. The
kids are not singing diggt in universe, and the kids
are joking around, and it really gives us a sense
that they are kids, and every point it shows them
being kids and it's not like this sort of hardened
(01:39:20):
criminal thing. Like the only kid that you really get
that sense from is the kid who's like watching TV
in the like mess hall or wherever, who gets into
a fight.
Speaker 5 (01:39:30):
Yeah, and even with that, he's like a slightly older kid.
Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
It's he's visibly a little bit older and God only
does how long he's been there too that part.
Speaker 6 (01:39:39):
But yeah, I think that there's a norm of adultifying,
particularly incarcerated kids and especially black kids, where it's like, oh,
they're not normal kids, they're criminals. And like some of
the kids did do things that are crimes. Like I
mean technically, you know, Magnet did a crime, although innocent.
Speaker 5 (01:39:58):
Let them go right, h M.
Speaker 3 (01:40:01):
The puppy, he.
Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
Literally saved a puppy from a horrific practice, like come.
Speaker 5 (01:40:06):
On, and like Twitch stole a car, but he's a
little boy.
Speaker 6 (01:40:10):
Yeah, he's like I just want to go zoom and
it's like, okay, well maybe we should take this kid
go cart.
Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
There's so many like ethical solution, I mean, which is
the story of incarceration. But it's just it's so and
I love I do. I this was the first time
I watching the movie that I really was like, I
guess paying closer attention to Pendance Key specifically. I think
it's like such a well written character where he is
(01:40:39):
being presented as the nice guy, but over the course
of the movie is so clear that he's not the
nice guy. He is the he like tortures zero because
he doesn't think that he will get in trouble for
not being kind to him, and he's right, and the
whole you know government name thing he like explicitly ties
your government to your like that's the name you will
(01:41:03):
contribute to society under. So that's your name, and saying
when he's when they're doing like group or whatever. And
that's where we find out about Magnet and his puppy
is that you know, he is repeating these I think
very like it's giving DNC to me, Like he is
(01:41:24):
he is saying, like, no, what you did was a crime.
It's against the law, and therefore it's bad. And it's
just like, you know, the place he works for doesn't
work if you challenge an institution, and so he while
he is like I think that, like mister sir calls
it like that, like touchy feely, fuzzy stuff, blah blah blah. Yeah,
(01:41:44):
but all Pendansky does is pretend to care. Like we
don't see him ever defend any of the kids. We
don't see him protect them, Like he folds the second
that someone with more power than him asks him to
do something.
Speaker 3 (01:42:00):
He's a coward.
Speaker 1 (01:42:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:42:02):
And also just his response when like everybody's like, don't
teach Hector to read, which is wild, that's that arc
I was like, whoa, hold on, hold on, why don't
we want Hector to read?
Speaker 5 (01:42:17):
Like I get why you don't want him to dig
the hole?
Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
But it's another great like it's so good. There's a
really good video essay that I was rewatching by I
believe Yaharazade or I hope I'm saying her name right,
Yaharazide called holes in the prison industrial complex and she
like ties that explicitly to like, the kids aren't doing
(01:42:41):
anything wrong. They're being told that they are going to
improve themselves, so why would you get in trouble for
literally reading? But again, it's like the institution is based
on barring Zero from the education he deserves because then
it's easier to exploit him. And like, just right darkest.
Speaker 6 (01:43:00):
About the theme of literacy is that they keep the
shovels in uh ad, that says live library.
Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
I thought it was a good touch.
Speaker 6 (01:43:09):
Yeah, I had to pause it, but I was like,
oh no, I didn't notice that before.
Speaker 5 (01:43:15):
That's very upset.
Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
Yeah, there, And also that the oppressors of this movie.
It is kind of a funny, like woman can do
it too, and you're like, it's true, but it's you know,
the people at the top of this operation are white,
and they're all sort of representing different kinds of oppression,
(01:43:37):
where like mister Zur and Panansky are equally bad, but
they are presenting a different approach to being pro incarceration.
Like I it's just it's so well written. And then
the snake nail Polish, I mean, hello.
Speaker 5 (01:43:55):
Love the snake nail Poli.
Speaker 6 (01:43:56):
I love the idea of like the women in this
story having these weapons like kissing.
Speaker 5 (01:44:02):
Kate Barlowe is.
Speaker 6 (01:44:02):
Known, Yes, she shoots people, but then she kisses them
and that's what she's known for. Is this red lipstick
mark that she leaves behind is her sort of like signature,
and then the warden has her nail polish that she
then uses to like put these men in line. And
this idea and like poison being traditionally a preferred method
(01:44:23):
of like violence for women.
Speaker 5 (01:44:26):
I thought that was really interesting. And you know, there
are a lot of women in here, but they make
it count. Wh Yeah, when they're hurting people, they make
it count.
Speaker 3 (01:44:36):
And I don't even mind that they're not the many
women in this movie.
Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
Well, I mean it's about especially because it's about like
a gendered incarcerated like it makes sense. I do think that,
you know, it is good. I guess we got Orange
just the new Black. You know, it's there was media
down the line about incarcerated women, which is equally important
to talk about.
Speaker 3 (01:44:58):
And maybe more with this Disney Plus reboot, which I
wrote down the.
Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
Joke I'm calling it it's not happening.
Speaker 3 (01:45:05):
Well, if it does, they should call it Girl is
the New Boy. And that's the amazing joke I wrote down.
Speaker 1 (01:45:13):
Really good.
Speaker 6 (01:45:13):
I hope that it gets green lit and that they
hire me, and then I want to write the episode
about when one of the girls gets her first period
in the middle of digging her hole, and everybody else
has to help her finish digging her hole because she
has cramps.
Speaker 5 (01:45:26):
And that's womanhood and that's solidarity.
Speaker 1 (01:45:29):
Hire me, that is Disney solidarity. Yeah, as long as
they bring back Sigourney Weaver, because that, I mean that
character would get out of jail. It lickety split, I guess.
The other just contrasting the yeah, because you really only
get like one woman in each timeline, because you have
Madam Zeroni in one timeline kissing Kate Barlowe in another timeline,
(01:45:52):
and Sigourney Weaver, I mean, Stanley Yale's mom is barely
in it.
Speaker 3 (01:45:57):
Like I do.
Speaker 1 (01:45:59):
Like that they go out of their way to show
again that like all of these kids we are led
to believe are from poor backgrounds to different degrees, but
like it, Stanley is from a family that's just scraping by.
They're almost getting evicted, and you still see that there
is like he is emotionally cared for and loved, which
(01:46:20):
I think often you know, like poor parents are made
out to be negligent. I think you can say, although
we don't get to know Zero's mom at all, I
did appreciate that again, like an unhoused character literally, the
two unhoused characters you get in children's media if you
were a kid at this time are Zero and Aladdin,
(01:46:42):
and they are They're both characters who when they take
we know why they're doing it, is like because they
need to survive, and the movies, their respective movies don't
pass judgment on them for doing that. And I appreciated that.
I wish we could have known her more, but that
the movie takes care to say that Zero's mom wasn't negligent.
(01:47:05):
It was all of these systemic issues that separated them
from each other. And again that's just like I wish
that that had almost been emphasized more by letting us
get to know her, because you know, like unhouse characters
are so rare outside of punchlines and getting the full
context for And also that like Zero took the shoes
(01:47:27):
because he was living at the shelter, and you know,
I don't know, I just I kind of forgot about
that portion of his character, and I really thought it
was handled quite well.
Speaker 6 (01:47:41):
Also, he probably wouldn't have taken the shoes if he
could have read so rightly, because he said that he
did not know that they were Sweetfeet's shoes he just
liked them and he took them. And I think that
the you know, the weight of taking those shoes would
have been different. Could he have read like the little
thing that said, oh sweet feet whatever.
Speaker 1 (01:48:01):
His name is, shoes because he just needed shoes. Yeah,
like you're saying like he got arrested for taking from
a paylist. Like the kid just needed shoes and he
wasn't being provided for. I just ah, I love Zero's character.
Speaker 6 (01:48:15):
And the shoes were donated to the shelter, so he
was living at the shelter, those shoes were in.
Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
His mind for him, right, Yeah, totally. I also think
it's interesting that there is acknowledgment that even though Stanley's
family is poor, they are still more socioeconomically privileged over
Zero and his family, because there's that moment that Zero's describing,
Oh yeah, my mom would sometimes have to like leave
(01:48:41):
me at a park, you know, I would go to
Laney Park, and Stanley's like, oh yeah, I used to
go there all the time parentheses for fun with my family,
and Zero says, yeah, I used to sleep, you know,
in the tube under the swinging bridge or something. And
you see the look on Stanley's face is like whoa
like his privilege is checked. And yeah, I just appreciate
(01:49:04):
that the movie acknowledges that class difference. And I also
think it's really effective in the Pananski character finding Zero
so worthless. Part of the reason he has it out
for him is that Zero can't read, and Pandanski treats
that as as though it's a personal failure of Zero's.
(01:49:24):
Oh he if he can't read, he must not be smart.
Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
But it's so clearly is because he can't. And it's
like Pandanski acts as if because Zero can't read, he
also cannot hear, like it is just like it is
so oh, he's like to me, to me on this
viewing the most evil character in the movie, because he's
a fucking coward, like he does think he's a good person.
(01:49:48):
I very least don't think mister sirr or Sigourney Weaver
are like I'm an amazing They're like, yeah, I'm a
piece of shit and I and I don't care if
children die. I think Pandanski goes home at the end
of the night is like I'm doing right by these boys,
and there I'm better and there's I mean, I feel
like every kid encountered a teacher like that who is
(01:50:11):
like cruel to and not no disrespect to the teachers,
Like but but I mean, I clearly remember the art
teacher at my elementary school who would pick on kids
and say it was like for their own good and
clearly had no issue with I'm like the art teacher.
Speaker 6 (01:50:29):
Come on, Teaching is a tough job, and I'm so
glad that there are people who are committed to doing
it and doing it well.
Speaker 5 (01:50:36):
Few are and.
Speaker 6 (01:50:36):
Fewer people because administrators at schools are making it so
much more difficult, and then the turnover is getting outrageous.
But there's always one teacher who is like, I just
want to be able to have beef with children, and.
Speaker 1 (01:50:52):
You're like what, And so often I feel like they're
in administrative positions. Now I'm just projecting my mom's entire career,
but like like it's yeah, I don't know, Pandanzky piece
of shit. And then I do like that they add
the bit at the end of like he doesn't even
have a degree, because what, like what teacher would agree
to work there that isn't fraudulent?
Speaker 3 (01:51:15):
Yeah, yeah, So a lot of that I found to
be very effective in the movie. There is a joke
that rubbed me the wrong way. At the very end
where whatever officials show up with Stanley's lawyer, I don't
know if it's like DA's or something, but it's like
(01:51:36):
people with some kind of authority, and one of them
recognizes mister Sirrh and mister Surr gets arrested because he's
in violation of his parole and there is a reveal
of his real name, mister Surr's real name, which is
marian Sevillo, and the boys are like, marian, I didn't
know that was a man's name, and he's like, it
(01:51:58):
isn't and it's meant to like escalate him and be
one more layer of humiliation for him because he has
a quote unquote woman's name, And it just felt like
a cheap joke that was below the movie in general,
I think.
Speaker 1 (01:52:13):
But yeah, yeah, I didn't love it.
Speaker 5 (01:52:16):
And it's like it's genuinely not funny.
Speaker 1 (01:52:19):
No, no, yes, not for nothing.
Speaker 6 (01:52:21):
I'll admit when a joke is like, oh this is problematic,
but also I giggle a little despite myself, But like
the Merry joke is not even there's nothing funny about it.
It's not even like a silly sounding name. It's a
very normal sounding name that is just oh, girls have it.
Speaker 1 (01:52:37):
Yeah, it's just a yeah as a Jamie. He's fine, fine, right,
it's actually it's great having a gender fluid name. It's fun. Yeah,
that was not great, but I think, you know, a
comparatively small.
Speaker 3 (01:52:53):
Totally yeah, one of the few blemishes on an otherwise
perfect movie.
Speaker 1 (01:52:57):
Yeah, I think that's everything I had.
Speaker 6 (01:53:02):
I wanted to say something about the music. Obviously we've
talked about dig it. There is a lullaby. We didn't
really talk about the lullaby very much. That when Elia
was taking the pig up the mountain, he had to
sing to the pig, and it was like if only,
if only at the woodpecker's size, the bark on the
trees were as soft as the sguise.
Speaker 5 (01:53:23):
There's something about wolves. I don't remember the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (01:53:27):
Yeah, and you know he's supposed to sing it when
he takes Madame Seroni up, which, as we all know,
drop the ball on that.
Speaker 5 (01:53:37):
Should it turned around taken the next boat. I stand
by that.
Speaker 6 (01:53:40):
And then I think that it's really sweet that Stanley
does sing this song when they get to God's Thumb
and when Hector is drinking the water and it makes
him strong, and that's kind of like the last piece
of sort of breaking the curse.
Speaker 5 (01:53:58):
And the other thing is.
Speaker 6 (01:54:00):
They did a like studio song version of that song
in the end credits, if you stay till the very
end of the credits there they do that song as
the last one, and then there's a scene of Zero
saying like Madam Zeroni's line that if you forget to
come for Madame Zeroni, your family will be cursed forever
(01:54:23):
and all it.
Speaker 4 (01:54:25):
Yeah, however, the kid's voice, so he does a line
reading of that, and it's very cute, but the song
actually kind of slaps and it's giving, like very early
two thousand's, late nineties.
Speaker 6 (01:54:37):
Like soft rock, sort of like a Matchbox twenty Moby.
Speaker 2 (01:54:41):
There's a Moby.
Speaker 1 (01:54:42):
Song in it. I did not know that that's of
the time there is bravely a Moby's song.
Speaker 6 (01:54:49):
But so I looked at I rewound the video and
I looked at who because I always like reading the
little music things and I wasn't paying attention, and I
saw that it was by somebody called like fiction Plane
or something like that, and hold, then I wrote it down.
I don't know why I'm pretending that I can't read.
Uh yeah, fiction Plane. They sang the song if Only,
(01:55:12):
and the lead singer of fiction Plane is a man
named Joe Sumner, who is Sting's son.
Speaker 1 (01:55:21):
No way, yeah wow. And Sting was in the Disney
Expanded Universe because of Emperor's New Groove. I wonder if
he pulled some strings there, if he pulled some stings
Sting some stings there, if anyone ever, I think it's
it's It is occasionally re uploaded to YouTube. There is like,
(01:55:44):
I don't know why I find it so compelling. Well,
it's an interesting documentary about production. But Sting was originally
like The Emperor's New Grave Groove. The production of that
movie is fascinating.
Speaker 5 (01:55:54):
But it was.
Speaker 1 (01:55:55):
Originally a much more serious story and then turned into
David's Bade comedy. But Sting wrote this really like he
thought he was doing Elton john and The Lion King.
So he wrote all of these serious stories, and his
wife was making a documentary, assuming like, oh, we're gonna
you're gonna be like Elton. You're Elton john Ning, so
(01:56:16):
I should document this, and you just see the production
completely fall apart. There's so many shots of Sting being
bummed out in his mansion because he's like, they deleted
in another one of my songs, or I think he's British.
Speaker 5 (01:56:28):
Yes, yeah, he's British.
Speaker 1 (01:56:31):
But but it's so interesting. It's specific watching Sting slowly
realize all of his music is going to be deleted.
And it's actually a David Spade comedy. If you ever
wanted to see Sting become really depressed in the space
of eighty minutes, it's an interesting documentary.
Speaker 6 (01:56:48):
Why would I want them to do that? Did Joe
Sumner's father?
Speaker 1 (01:56:53):
My theory is that Disney was like, we we got
a tossing a bone, we got a tossing a bone,
we did a so Dirty on Emperor's New Groove, another
Earth a Kit joint. Yeah, it's all connected, it really is.
Speaker 6 (01:57:07):
But yeah, seeing that and like the song was actually
really interesting because I found it to be very moving
and it was just sort of like, what if the
bark on the trees was as soft a disguise? What
if things were easy? What if life was different? And
I was just like, yeah, what if what if? Joe?
Speaker 5 (01:57:24):
And just the the Sting reveal was very surprising to.
Speaker 1 (01:57:29):
Me, just when you didn't think Sting was going to
get his way into the holes expanded universe. There he is.
Speaker 5 (01:57:35):
And then I like did some digging.
Speaker 6 (01:57:41):
I did some digging on Joe Sumner and I saw
that he later invented an app in like twenty ten
or twenty eleven that enabled people who go to concerts
to upload their videos to this app, and all the
people that went to the concert would upload their yes
that they took and it would basically create a concert
(01:58:03):
movie with the different angles that people oh did and the.
Speaker 5 (01:58:07):
Apps until like twenty sixteen and bring it back.
Speaker 2 (01:58:10):
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
Yeah, that would do so much better now too, right,
I think like, bring it back?
Speaker 5 (01:58:16):
Yeah, Joe, if you're listening, bring it back.
Speaker 1 (01:58:19):
Joe biggest fans, We're big fans. I'm sorry to make
fun of when your dad was upset about and for
his new groove. I would have been upset too, But yeah,
I just wanted to.
Speaker 6 (01:58:30):
Bring that little factory because I thought that was fascinating,
very interesting and unexpected.
Speaker 1 (01:58:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:58:36):
Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about?
Speaker 5 (01:58:40):
No, I'm good, I got it.
Speaker 1 (01:58:41):
I don't think so. Yeah, I'm going to reread Wayside School.
That's my I.
Speaker 3 (01:58:46):
Love those books so much. I haven't read them in
like thirty years.
Speaker 1 (01:58:50):
So they're so silly.
Speaker 3 (01:58:53):
Well, as we discussed, the movie does pass the Bechdel test,
albeit briefly. It passes. It passes a pass as far
as our nipple scale, though, where we rate the movie
based on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining
it through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh boy, I don't know.
(01:59:18):
I feel like, are sure it applies.
Speaker 1 (01:59:20):
Our scale is kind of tricky to apply here. I mean,
I think in terms of like intersectionality, this movie does
well in that it brings up issues I've never seen
brought up in uh children's movie about like justice and
oppression and school to prison pipeline, and this movie is
doing so much.
Speaker 3 (01:59:42):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:59:43):
You feel like the nipple scale is like difficult to
apply here.
Speaker 6 (01:59:45):
It is.
Speaker 5 (01:59:47):
Yeah, I give it.
Speaker 1 (01:59:51):
I would say I give it five wholes.
Speaker 3 (01:59:54):
File Okay, so not the nipple scale today is the
whole scale zero to five holes.
Speaker 1 (02:00:01):
This is the movie holes. So I'm giving it five holes.
Speaker 3 (02:00:03):
Yeah, say I'm giving it five holes the end.
Speaker 6 (02:00:07):
If I had to give it on a scale of
zero to five holes, holes, yes, five holes, six holes.
Even I know I'm an extra hole because they did
one last holes like one.
Speaker 1 (02:00:19):
Last job, and the bonus hole could forget.
Speaker 6 (02:00:23):
If I genuinely had to do it on a nipple scale,
I think I would actually give it, like surprisingly, like
three and a half nipples, like a lot of nipples
for a woman free.
Speaker 7 (02:00:33):
Movie one woman per decade, just because like when we
talk about intersectionality, yes we're talking about women and representation
of women, but the things that matter at the end
of the day are deconstructing these systems and it's talking
about how these systems are flawed and bringing attention to
(02:00:53):
these systems that do affect women.
Speaker 6 (02:00:55):
And even though they're showing it in the context of
it affecting teenage boys, unless you're Disney US, it still
is something that is I think, and that positive for
intersectional feminism. So like I because there aren't that many women,
I can't give it five nipples, And because you know,
(02:01:16):
at the end of the day, it's like this camp
was the problem, not like the whole system. The state's
not the problem. The camp is the problem. Right, But
like three and a half nipples still pretty solid showing
there for a movie again, like half a.
Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
Woman in it, truly, I mean, and yeah, I hope
that I wish that this movie led to more media
like or just kids media that addressed issues like this,
but it is still, twenty plus years later, pretty singular
for the issues that because I mean, like if if
(02:01:54):
a story like this kid, because I loved Nickel Boys,
but it's very much not a movie for children.
Speaker 3 (02:01:59):
And well, if you count Paddington Too, that's I mean,
I mean Paddington and Paddington Too are again indictments of
the prison industrial complex of like anti immigrant hate and racism.
So it's true that Paddington movies do it.
Speaker 1 (02:02:18):
So that's two there. But yeah, no, I mean, I
I I don't know. It's it's a very special movie.
I agree like it kind of broke the nipple scale
in my head. But I think your your rationalization makes
a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (02:02:31):
Grama totally thank.
Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
You for engaging with the show in a way that
we were not willing to.
Speaker 5 (02:02:36):
That's what I'm here for.
Speaker 6 (02:02:37):
I ask the hard questions, how many nipples does this
movie really deserve?
Speaker 3 (02:02:41):
Thanks for thanks for poking holes in our system by.
Speaker 6 (02:02:49):
I will also say Utopia tries not like this particular
set of issues, but Utopia does.
Speaker 1 (02:02:56):
Try to be like haters.
Speaker 3 (02:02:59):
Yeah, I would. It tries and it fails.
Speaker 5 (02:03:01):
Yeah, I didn't say it succeeded, but he tried. Yeah,
there's some deep.
Speaker 6 (02:03:05):
Laws there where it's like, okay, but yeah, some people
are predators.
Speaker 5 (02:03:11):
No, but like they tried to fix racism with.
Speaker 1 (02:03:16):
Animals, they're like, we didn't quite. Disney was like, we
didn't quite do it with holes. Let's let's try the
animal copaganda movie.
Speaker 6 (02:03:24):
There.
Speaker 1 (02:03:24):
I do appreciate ultimately, and I feel like I'm talking
a lot of shit. I'm trying. I am trying to
get work. But anyways, that Disney was very hands off
with this movie, because I think if Disney had been
hands on with this movie, we would have gotten, you know,
whatever this movie's version of Jim Carrey's count Oloff was.
(02:03:45):
I think that it is like critical to the story
working that you are scared for these kids and that
you understand where they're coming from, and that their antagonists
are you know, elevated, like the mister Sir is goofy
in some ways, but not so goofy that he ceases
to be scary.
Speaker 3 (02:04:02):
And yeah, totally, I think that.
Speaker 6 (02:04:05):
It's really a testament to the fact that like, you know,
we talk a lot of shit generally, we not the
three of us, but we society talk a lot of
shit on these major corporations. And it's proof that they
are capable of making these thoughtful movies and they can
do it if they.
Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
Want to, right, So it's like, so why aren't they
doing it?
Speaker 6 (02:04:27):
And it is also sometimes commercially successful when they do it,
and I think that it's a good reminder, like, hey,
remember when you did this thing and you did it
the way the creatives asked you to and it was
wildly successful and it had a lot of a listers
in it, and people are still talking about it twenty
years later as a like shining example of the way
to do things.
Speaker 5 (02:04:47):
What if you rebooted that, What if you rebooted that spirit?
Speaker 1 (02:04:51):
They're like, well, no, let's do cgi dogs for Lady
in the trimp. Let's do that One's.
Speaker 5 (02:04:57):
That word that's a joke, right, that's that's a joke.
Speaker 1 (02:04:59):
Oh no, that's exit that. It came out five years ago. Unfortunately,
it's very scary. It's a scary watch. It's scarier than
mister sir.
Speaker 5 (02:05:06):
I did think a.
Speaker 6 (02:05:07):
Lady in the Tramp earlier because The Boy Dog is
another example of a house representation in children's media.
Speaker 1 (02:05:14):
Forget I believe, I believe Lady in the I think
Lady is Tessa Thompson.
Speaker 3 (02:05:20):
Sure, I never saw it.
Speaker 1 (02:05:22):
I think I was the only person that's yeah, it's
Tessa Thompson and Justin Thurreau.
Speaker 3 (02:05:28):
And you're like, yeah, I was too busy gearing up
for the live action Pinocchio Disney reboot.
Speaker 1 (02:05:37):
So shout out to the Pinocchio Wars on the Matreon.
When speaking of which, Okay, let's wrap it. I'm hungry,
let's wrap up the show.
Speaker 6 (02:05:44):
I just wanna say one last thing. Disney has been
good to me personally, and I do you think follow
the checks and I I'm just gonna say another thing
and I forgot, So it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (02:05:56):
Disney is good to me and that it made and
or my favorite show.
Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
I will say there, Disney is still making cool, weird
stuff like I mean, you mentioned Bunked as a great example.
I just finished work. I hope it gets renewed for
all manner of reasons. But like a super silly kids
show called Stugo. So if you have a kid, and
I think I would say like the Seven or eight range.
(02:06:21):
That's a very silly, fun show that's on the Disney
Channel right now. It's like speaking to your point, Grama.
They can do it, so why not do it more?
Because people like it. This movie did make its money
back and then some. It made believe seventy one million
dollars off of a seventeen million dollar budget. But as
is the way with many movies that have a lot
(02:06:45):
of like author involvement and Disney being hands off, it
does seem like the price for that was that everyone
took a pay cut, because you cannot have a stacked
cast like this for seventeen million dollars without a serious
pay cut and throwing kids into one hundred and thirty
degree holes. So while it is amazing that this is successful,
(02:07:07):
I do feel like there is always some sort of
exchange of like, oh, you want to make your perfect art,
here's four dollars, bitch, you know. Like, but but I'm
glad that this cast. I mean, I just feel like
it's a perfectly cast movie. It's so good, it's.
Speaker 6 (02:07:20):
Very well done. I hope they do more holes in
the world.
Speaker 1 (02:07:25):
Yeah, yeah, Karama, thank you so much for coming back.
You've covered such an interesting wide variety of movies on
the show.
Speaker 6 (02:07:33):
I'm saying on the record, bring me back for Stepmom
if you ever get around.
Speaker 3 (02:07:37):
Yes, absolutely yes, And then so it'll be it's two
Disney movies, two Jordan Peele movies.
Speaker 1 (02:07:43):
Oh yeah, and then now and step in the future
starting a new chapter.
Speaker 6 (02:07:48):
I'm gonna be like Tarantino. He said he was gonna
like do eight movies and then never come back.
Speaker 1 (02:07:52):
Which you can't wait for that part, right, He's really
dragging out the last one.
Speaker 5 (02:07:59):
I ever come back.
Speaker 3 (02:08:01):
No, you can come back after that, please do if
you want. Anyway, where can people check out your stuff?
Follow you on social media, etcetera?
Speaker 6 (02:08:11):
Yeah, at Karama Drama, on all the platforms that you
might use. I started talking about libraries recently on my
TikTok because I'm a big, big slat for libraries, love them.
Speaker 5 (02:08:24):
I have for library cards.
Speaker 1 (02:08:26):
Wow, hell yeah.
Speaker 6 (02:08:27):
You can have a lot of library cards and get
a lot of different things with them.
Speaker 5 (02:08:31):
I highly encourage you to go get do it for
Hector Zeroni.
Speaker 1 (02:08:35):
The Hector Zerni Memorial Library.
Speaker 6 (02:08:37):
Go get a library card. Where can you guys be
found using your.
Speaker 5 (02:08:41):
Library cards or not?
Speaker 6 (02:08:43):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (02:08:43):
You could? You can find us on mostly just Instagram
these days. At Bechdel Cast, you could follow our Patreon
aka maatreon at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast. We
have shouted out The Pinocchio Wars, one of our best series,
but we've had it since twenty seventeen. So for five
dollars a month, you get two bonus episodes every single
(02:09:04):
month and access to our back catalog which goes back
almost ten years, so there's a lot of spicy content.
That's actually where you will be able to listen to
us discuss the prison industrial conflicts for a second time
if you so choose, because we are covering Shawshank Redemption
over on the Matreon this month, which is Holes for
grown ups.
Speaker 3 (02:09:25):
Yes, I basically decided that for my birthday month, I
wanted to do Holes, Shawshank Redemption and Oh Brother, Where
Art Though? Which is a movie about three men escaping
from prison, and one of them is Tim Blake Nelson
who's also in Holes, So it's all connected, just the
way the plot of Holes is.
Speaker 5 (02:09:44):
And both movies feature down in the river to pray.
Speaker 4 (02:09:47):
Right Yes wow, yeah, it thinks that they changed it
to valley because there's no water.
Speaker 3 (02:09:55):
Yes, so that is what's happening over on the Matreon.
As it is my birthday this month, it would be
a nice little gift to me and to the podcast
in general if you subscribe to the Matreon if you
haven't already listeners and.
Speaker 1 (02:10:11):
Uh, with that, let's go to the yell NAT's pool
and watch a shoe commercial with our best friend, a
basketball player playing a baseball player.
Speaker 3 (02:10:22):
Okay, bye, bye bye. 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 Volskrosenski.
Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
(02:10:45):
a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about
the podcast, please visit link tree slash Bechdel Cast
On the Bechdel Cast. 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, Zephyn Beast.
Start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hello Bechdel Cast listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello Jamie and Caitlyn.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Here a little plug at the top.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's all coming together, It's all happening. I am going
to be going on a book tour for the paperback
release of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about
Hot Dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Ever heard of it?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
It is coming out in soft cover this may. If
you're hearing this, it is out right now. If you
are the kind of person that doesn't want to spend
twenty eight dollars out of book, fair enough, we have
a more affordable option. And if you haven't purchased the
book and you know, maybe you're able to now, you know,
it's also a great gift. I've sound so desperate. The
(00:55):
thing is, it's a soft cover book, and people love those, and.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I love a flaccid book.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do
have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also
a brand new ForWord that I wrote, and also the
acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists,
so I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a
(01:21):
thrilling edition there as well. But there is new stuff
in the book and it costs less, and we love that.
I will be going on tour throughout the country to
promote the new book, and if you're a Bechdel head
and you're in the area, this is a really great
chance to come and hang out. It's all I'm at bookstores.
(01:42):
I did kind of bigger shows the first time around,
but this time we're just chilling. So you kitling with
your permission. I'm just going to rattle off some dates.
What if I was like, no, no, click, I'm going
to go pee.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
No please, by all means tell us okay.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, almost my birthday. So I
know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence.
I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles,
hosted by friend of the cast Julia Clair May fourteenth.
I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. On
May fifteenth. I will be at the Cambridge Public Library
(02:24):
in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be
in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own
Tory Bedford. On the nineteenth of May, I will be
in Portland, Maine at Longfellow Books, hosted by friend of
the cast Mayo Williams. I am very very excited. On
(02:45):
the twentieth, I will be going down to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
my home state. Know they're going to be begging, They're like,
where are they? I will be at the Midtown Scholar
Bookstore and Cafe in conversation with Joe Piazza. Then on
May twenty first, I will be at the Fountain Bookstore
(03:05):
in Richmond, Virginia. And on May twenty second, I will
be at Coppersfield Books in Pedaluma, California. And finally, on
May thirty first, I will be at Marin Country Mart,
which is also with Coppersfield's book in Larkspur, California. So
if you live in those areas, please come out. I
(03:27):
would love to see you. I'd love to chat. Please
recommend your favorite hot dog. Let's talk Beck tol cast,
Let's do whatever. And there will be dates announced later
in the summer. So if you would like a show
or a signing to happen in your town, please reach
out and I will send it to my publisher and
(03:48):
be like, see, I should go there. Anyways, that's a
great it's begging works sometimes and we'll link this full
thing and that isscription. But see you soon. I'm making
a little outfit and that's the Jamie Loftus promise.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I can't wait to see.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So if you click the link in the description, it
will take you to the full page where you can
register to go to these events. They are all free events,
so come and hang out and provided that I get
my shit together in time, there will also be speakers
from local unions at all of these signings, So come out,
make some friends, come hang out, and uh, let's eat
(04:30):
some hot dogs.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Beautiful. We'll throw the link to be able to access
registration for the events on our link tree as well
link tree slash Bechdel Cast, so there's no excuse not
to come.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit.
Come buy the book, yay, enjoy the episode the Bechdel Cast.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Dig It All on, dig It dig It Out, dig.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It I Wow, I rewatched music video and it seared
into my brain.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Oh wait, I didn't know about the music video.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Oh, Caitlin show, you didn't know about ship?
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Pause the show it just started.
Speaker 5 (05:12):
But it's so good.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They're having such a nice time. The boys are having fun.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Okay, I believe it.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's the most important thing about the music video. And
also the song is great and oh my gosh, two
thousand and three, what a time School of rock an
holes be serious? Wait, sorry, I you singing that song
just really put me in a great mood. And I
forgot what I was gonna say. Oh well, oh, I
was gonna say, we need to bring back movies where
(05:41):
there's a song during the credits that summarizes the movie
you just watched. Yes, you need that. We need to
bring it back. Maybe it is back in kids' movies.
And I'm just no longer a child. I hope it
never stopped. I find it difficult to believe that there
is a credit. This is like a Will Smith grade
(06:02):
credits song.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
True Wild Wild West, Men in Black.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, the list goes on. I think I'm not actually sure.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Might be just those two.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
It might, but they're impactful, impactful, welcome, to the Bechdel Cast,
Do I think one of the one of our our
longest holdouts for a beloved movie.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Hold out whole out, whole.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Again?
Speaker 3 (06:30):
We have our holes out on this episode.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
During this children Yes, we have our holes out during
the Children's Prison Industrial Complex movie episode. My name's Jamie.
Locked is my holes not in a way? It's away?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
So are mine talking about that?
Speaker 6 (06:47):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:47):
The hole in my damn face I is going to
be flapping.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Yeah, And it's like that line from Titanic when the.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Wave you out shut that out? Yeah? All right, well
things have already is already erupting. What's your name?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
My name is Caitlyn Durnteme awesome. And this is the
Bechdel Cast, a podcast where we examine movies through an
intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test simply as a
jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it though?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Well, I'll tell you. The Bechtel Test is a media
metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the
Bechdel Wallace Test. Created as a test in response to
the fact that queer women were never in movies at all,
it has since been sort of more generalized into what
(07:43):
we use. Our version of the test requires that two
characters of a marginalized gender with names talk to each
other about something other than a man for two lines
of dialogue. This is an interesting case. This is an
interesting case. We're spiritually this know this movie passes the
Bechtel test to.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Me, sure, but it is. But there is.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think there's two women and one is dead. They
don't exist on the same timelines. So it's a challenge.
It's a challenge. Patricia Arquette and Sigourney Weaver are separated
by generations, true and political differences.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yes, all of the above. Yeah, well, we'll talk about
that further, but we'll also talk about so many other
things because this is a rich text.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yes, because it is a perfect movie.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
It's so good. And joining us for this discussion is
writer actor. She's in an upcoming horror comedy movie called
Bad Karaoke. You know her from our past episodes on
Us Get Out and Cheetah Girls. It's Carama Donquay.
Speaker 6 (08:52):
Welcome, Thank you for having me again. I would like
to just issue a correction right off the bat. Five
women in this movie.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
That's true because there there's a lawyer Stanley's mother. Yes,
what else we got?
Speaker 6 (09:08):
There's there's the former student of kissing Kate Barlowe, whose
name is said. And I think it passes because they
talk about how she used to be a student.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Right, yeah, okay, we're going to talk about the treasure.
Speaker 6 (09:24):
So legally it passes, not just to you, Jamie, not
just spiritually.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Okay, that is that is a relief.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
But it was it was tight.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
It was very close, and they made us wait to
the very end. Then.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
But I think maybe the lawyer and the warden also talk.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I think they're talking about Stanley.
Speaker 5 (09:45):
Yeah, they're talking about the boys at all times.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
We're talking about the crime as a.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
Boy of man is a.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Man, no women and children. This is getting complicated. Thank
you Karma for solving the podcast right at the top.
And now we you just talk about the movie itself
because this is a rich text. Thank you for coming
onto the Wholes episode. Can you tell us about your
history with this movie, the book, the Holes Expanded universe.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
I'm gonna start with something that sounds like it's not related.
I promise it is related. So recently, I was at
a family friend's house and one of her neighbors came
over and she was like, why do I know you?
And my friend Jackie was like, oh, well, Karama used
to come over all the time when we were little,
and she didn't have cable at her house, so she
would come over here. And so I had like a
(10:36):
cable friend, as many kids who didn't have cable had.
And I watched this at my cable friend's house when
I was growing up, and I would see the Diggot
music video on Disney Channel all the time. I still
knew all the words. I don't know if I can
say them on the podcast. I don't want to get
you guys in trouble for singing too much of it.
But when he started spelling like a MP at the TI,
(10:59):
I was like, yes, yes, this is rap music, this
is real rap music.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Migos step aside.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yes, it's all happening on Radio Disney. They even had
a band named De Tent Boys. Yes, yeah, this was
a single they were. I mean, this was run Ragged
on Radio Disney in the early two thousands, and I
was a.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
Radio Disney kid when I moved to Ghana. When I
was little, my dad would send me cassette tapes of
like just hours of Radio Disney because I missed it
so much.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
It's really sweet, I know, but also like scary that
the mouse had that much of a hold on me.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, the mouse will find you wherever we go. But
this is a rare I'm excited to talk about the
production of this movie because this seems like a very
rare Disney movie where it seems like they were relatively
hands off with this, and the director said it was
basically like creating an independent movie with Disney money, which
is cool. I'm excited to get into it because I
(11:59):
was surprised at because I reread. I got mostly through
the book to reread it before, and it's they've changed
so little because for once, they let the author write
the screenplay.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
They never do that.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
And also the main thing that they change.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
I actually am for it because the main thing that
they changed for people who either haven't read the book
or don't remember the book is that Stanley is a
pretty chubby kid in the book, and.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
Through digging he actually loses a lot of weight.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
But they didn't want to put Shila buff in a
fat suit, and they didn't want to subject a child
to a major like Christian Bale weight shift. So I
think that that is actually, like, I'm all for a
fat representation in film.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
I love that representation in film.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
I think that this was the better choice in this
instance because I don't like fat suits. I think that
they're dehumanizing, and I don't like torturing children.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
So they still tortured the children a little bit, but
mostly with heat. Yes, But but yeah, no, I totally agree.
I forgot that that was sort of the most major change,
and I don't Yeah, it's I felt like rereading the
book that it was, you know, I don't think meant
to be a cruel outcome, but it's sort of lent
(13:18):
this morality to Stanley's weight loss and and sort of
presented it as a well, at least he's not chubby anymore,
in a way that I felt like was not good
representation if they had adapted it in that way. On
top of what you're saying, the thing that was changed
that I wish it stayed was there was more context
for stan Lee's arrest. I get why they have to
(13:42):
keep it focused on zero, but he was like really
severely bullied in school, and they show like how his
bullying very much factored into his arrest, and like fear
of standing up for himself stuff. But other than that,
it's basically all they're They're dropping damns, they're cussing.
Speaker 6 (14:03):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
The adults are a series of unfortunate events, level evil
like it's great. So okay, so you so you you
watched it at cable friend's house.
Speaker 6 (14:14):
Yes, that was a frequent rewatch because they would run
it on Disney Channel a lot. And I was a
big fan of Lewis Accer, the author. I was a
Wayside Stories girl from Wayside School.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Loved it.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Good Wayside School gets a Little Stranger my favorite of them.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh okay, yeah, I gotta reread.
Speaker 6 (14:35):
But I was a big fan of like that sort
of universe of like wacky but real. And I remember
distinctly Lewis Sacer had like three kids in the Wayside
School that had the same name, and I don't remember
their name, but he would describe one of them as
being tall and fat, and it's the first time it
occurred to me that somebody could be tall and fat.
But it was always like a very neutral descriptor. It
(14:56):
was just like, these are the way the kids look,
And I was like, whoa people can look all kinds
of ways that's wacky. So opened my mind up a
lot and a lot of love for this movie. I
have a lot of love for adaptations, specifically. I know
that you guys probably remember, but our listeners maybe don't that.
I used to be a co host of a podcast
(15:17):
called Popcorn Book Club where we talked about page to
screen adaptations, and I would constantly talk about Holes on
that podcast. We never covered it, but I was like, guys,
Holes is the perfect adaptation film. It is so true
to the original text, and when it is not true
to the text, that is.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
True to the spirit of it. It is amazing.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
And one of our co hosts had never seen it,
and I was just like, I don't know how you're
breathing air on this planet being an adult woman of
a certain age who has never seen Holes.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
It is like a It is weird. It does feel
like it's such a beloved millennial classic, but I wonder
I don't know if kids are still finding it. I
hope they are probably not. I mean the unfortunately, the
shil abuff of it all does make it a harder
sell because he's a fucking monster. I think he's like
(16:07):
fourteen when this was, you know, child stardom should be illegal.
But that's a conversation for another day. But okay, I
also was a huge fan of the book and the movie.
I forget when I think this was just like at
every school in the early two thousands, like every kid
(16:30):
read these books read wayside school. There's a kind of
I had to look it up to be like, what
was that Lewis Sakar, he wrote, it's a B side,
Dogs Don't Tell Jokes. I remember reading Dogs Don't Tell
Jokes because it is about a child's stand up comic
who pees his pants, and I was like, wow, aspirational
me someday. And I guess that Dogs Don't Tell Jokes
(16:54):
had an impact on me because he's like, I had
to check the plot. Gary Boon, who calls himself Goon,
is the self proclaimed clown of his seventh grade class.
He never stops joking despite the fact that nobody laughs
much and he has no real friends. So he joins
a talent contest as a stand up comedian, and he
roasts everybody, and he hurts a lot of feelings, and
(17:17):
then he learns that being a stand up comic parentheses
evil is not the way to.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Go well at least a roast comedian.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
It's true. Yes, he literally goes full roasting at the
store and then learns those people don't like that.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
I think we need to wallpaper men's bathrooms in comedy
clugs with the pages.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Of this book with dogs. Don't tell you don't be
like Gary. It did not help him make friends just
like you. So but yeah, big lewis a car fan.
I mean, like you're saying, krama, the wayside school books
were so silly and like fantastical, and the fact that
he wrote holes as well, I mean, the range incredible.
(18:00):
I loved the book, loved the movie. Of course, Being
ten when this came out, I had a crush. I
had a crush on zero zero was my big time crush.
Cleo Thomas. I had a picture of him in my room. Yeah,
loved the song. But then, I mean, it's a great
movie to come back to, not only because there are
(18:23):
more crushes for you as you age, like today Hill,
who I know we're going to be talking about quite
a bit. He can fix that. But but just like
what a beautiful like you're saying, like, what a beautiful
adaptation it is. How it weaves together like five storylines
in this really effortless way, and that it is an
(18:46):
anti carceral children's book that is four kids but adapted
in a way that doesn't talk down to them. And yeah,
it's an amazing movie. I'm so excited to talk about it.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
It's a real testament to the fact that people are like, oh,
kids can't understand that. Kids can't understand that, and no,
you just can't explain it, right, You're just not good
and explain there is a way for kids to understand
literally everything, Like, sorry, there are kids who are soldiers
in war in some parts of the world, Like they
can understand things. The way to explain it to them
(19:21):
is the issue. And I think that this is a
really good way to explain the school to prison pipeline,
issues with incarceration and just institutional racism.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Just all of this stuff is very.
Speaker 6 (19:35):
Clearly outlined in a way that is developmentally appropriate.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Totally.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, and like puts a face in a name to
these issues. And I think the like maybe the only
unhoused character that I saw in movies as a kid
that is not played as a joke or as a
personal failing or you know how often we see on
like it's just it's so good, it's doing so much,
(20:03):
and then it has the audacity to be a really
good movie, I know. And what a cast. Anyways, Kaitlyn
wants her history with Holes.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Okay, I read the book in the late nineties, because
it was published in ninety eight. I probably read it
in ninety nine. I would have been a tween at
the time, and I loved it. And then the movie
came out a few years later and I saw it
in theaters. I would have been I think a junior
(20:31):
senior in high school at that point, so I was
old enough that my big crush was Dula Hill and
still to this day.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
You're Not Made of Stone, Yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah, I thought it was such an incredible story. And
then we got the movie on DVD and I watched
it with my sister on repeat, and I chose this
movie for my not to be a bit but it
is my birthday episode. Oh yay, So this is like
(21:09):
my birthday pick. That's how much I love this movie.
I don't think it's without its flaws, but I think
the flaws are few and far between, especially considering it's
a movie from the early two thousands and that was
just a flawed time yeah, so, yeah, I deeply love
(21:29):
this movie and I'm so excited to talk about it.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
I will say embarrassingly, I was twelve when it came out,
so my crush was Shilah buff which has not aged Well.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
My Kurt wouldn't convict you. It made sense at the time.
He was on Even Stevens.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
Loved Evan Stevens. My dance teacher. My dance teacher choreographed
Even Steven's Influenza. I remember when she had to miss
class because she was doing Even Steven's Influenza, and I
was just like, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Wow, that show was cooking. I think about the song
about going to space a lot. We went to the
Moon in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
Nine, not nineteen seventy, the year before four.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Uh huh oh no, it's a millennial circle jerk episode. Well,
here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I was one of the Friends without Cable as well,
So I've never seen a single episode of Even Stevens,
and I think I probably was aged out of it anyway.
But yeah, I don't know what you guys are talking about.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I know, I don't think there's any need to return.
It was just the age of the musical episode Even
Stevens had a musical episode and it was iconic, memorable.
Speaker 6 (22:42):
Yeah, it was called Influenza, as one of the main
characters had the flu and so she was like having
a fever dream and everybody was singing in the fever dream.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Yeah, okay, fine, but this is uh.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I think this is Shia Labuff's first movie.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
It's introducing in the credits. I was like, oh, like
I was. I was a little emotional. I was just like, wow,
that's where it all started.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yikes, and oh that it had gone another way. But
the kids, I mean, it's very famous adult cast and
then a bunch of kids outside of chilah Buff I
think mostly unknowns. I think Cleo Thomas had done some stuff.
I saw he was on Kids Say the Darndest Things,
so he was child starring out. But so Gourney Weaver,
(23:24):
John Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Winkler. I remember my
mom being like, that's the Fonds because we will watch
Happy Days on Nick at night and I was like,
why isn't he cool anymore?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
And earth A Kitar the Kid, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
One of her final film performances Delay Hill Patricia Arquette,
and they managed to make the movie for seventeen million dollars.
Don't know how that worked, but yeah, they brought a
bunch of kids to the desert and made one of
the greatest movies of all time.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yes, let's take a quick break and then we'll come
back for the cap.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
And we're back.
Speaker 6 (24:12):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Here is the story of Holes. We open on a
place that we will learn is a juvenile detention facility
where teenage boys are out in the hot sun digging
holes in the dirt. One of them purposefully gets bitten
by a rattlesnake so that he can be sent home,
(24:35):
and that's going to open up a spot at this facility.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
And you're all like, immediate. I hadn't seen this movie
in a couple of years, and I was like, oh,
from moment one, they're not fucking around.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
This is a dark, cold open.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
I would rather potentially die, literally die.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Than another hole, which was added for the mo It
does not happen in the book. They're just like something
something barf bag. But they started as a full on,
like active You're just like okay, okay, director of the Fugitive,
Let's Go. Let's Go.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Also one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
I've never seen it. I just thought it was like,
what a this is? I think his first and only
children's movie.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I think so yeah, because he had been known for
action movies.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Collateral Damage came out like so weird.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
It does happen in the book that barf bag gets bitten,
but it happens off screen, Like you don't see that
scene play out. They just reference it after the fact.
But in any case. We cut to stan Lee Yonnat's
the fourth played by Shilah buff who is on his
way to this facility because he was wrongfully accused and
(25:50):
arrested for stealing a pair of shoes that seemed to
have fallen from the sky and land on his head.
And he goes on to say that he has bad
luck and he always seems to be in the wrong
place at the wrong time, which his family blames on
a one hundred and fifty year old family curse. We
meet his mom played by Chavon Fallen Hogan, and his
(26:14):
dad played by Henry Winkler, who is an inventor trying
to find the cure for foot odor. We also meet
his grandfather, all of whom Stanley has to leave behind
when a judge sentences him to eighteen months at the
detention facility called Camp Green Lake, where there used to
(26:37):
be a lake, but it dried up long ago and
now it's a barren wasteland as far as the eye
can see. At Camp Green Lake, Stanley meets mister Sir
played by John Voight, who tells Stanley that he's expected
to dig one hole in the dirt every single day.
(26:58):
It has to be five feet deep, five feet in diameter,
and this will build character quote unquote, I love.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
How instantly, Yeah, like how instantly it is clear to
kids and anyone how ridiculous this is. Or it's like
that line where it's like, yeah, you bring a boy
to camp and you make him dig a hole every
day and he turns into a good boy, and that's
our belief. You're like, ah's that is just describing prison.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, holes they make you so wholesome.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
They didn't even try. They didn't even try. It was
right there.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
They're like, no, dig a hole, be a good boy.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
You're like, okay, right. Mister Starr also tells Stanley to
beware of yellow spotted lizards, who are highly poisonous and lethal,
and if one bites you, you will die a slow
and painful death.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Really good two thousand and three, CGI on the Lizards.
You're like, there was a tennis ball there.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
You can almost steel the tennis.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Energy with a racket.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
So then we meet Stanley's counselor, doctor Pandanski played by
Tim Blake Nelson, who assigns him to d tent where
Stanley meets other incarcerated teens who he'll be digging holes
next to. They all have nicknames like x Ray, Zigzag, Squid, Armpit, Magnet,
(28:31):
and Zero Zero, who doctor Pandensky is especially cruel to
because he thinks Zero is unintelligent and worthless.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Doctor Pandanski is such a fascinating care again, just like
another adult pretending to be good who is actually fucking
awful and talks shit about the kids he's supposed to
be taken care of behind our backs. The first second
he gets I think again, I've only seen it in
series of unfortunate events, like adults who are as bad
(29:01):
as it seems.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
And also from jump we get that he is very
much about calling the kids by their government names, even
though they have names and they'd like to be called
And then like it's giving what your name is Toby,
what's your name? Not like that?
Speaker 5 (29:17):
And except for zero, he keeps.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
Calling zero zero, and it's like, there's nothing going on
up there, your little dumb dummy.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Right, And he like explicitly says that he feels comfortable
doing that because no one is looking out for zero
and so he doesn't matter, like it's just like it's
I don't know. I thought it's a good performance too,
because he's really putting on the hateful guidance counselor vibe
big time. And then you find out at the ante
(29:46):
never got.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
His degree, and you're like, fuck this guy, right, So
stan Lee settles in and starts to learn the ropes.
He reveals that the shoes he was accused of stealing
belonged to Livingston, a famous baseball player, who had donated
those shoes to be sold at a charity auction to
(30:07):
raise money for an unhoused shelter. And so that's why
it was like such a huge deal that Stanley is
presumed to have stolen them and why he's sent to.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
This and he, like the famous baseball player literally calls
a child a horrible person in court. So I was like,
easy man, easy, He's like twelve.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
So then we flash back to Stanlee with his mom, dad,
and grandpa, who talk about the family curse how Stanley's
great grandpa made a fortune in the stock market but
was robbed by a famous outlaw kissing Kate Barlow due
to the family curse and his bad luck. We'll find
(30:52):
more about the curse soon, but back to the present,
Stanley starts digging his first hole. He's told that if
he finds anything that the warden thinks is interesting, he
could get the rest of the day off. So he
starts digging and it's hot and difficult and grueling, and
(31:12):
then we flash back to stan Lee's no good, dirty, rotten,
pig stealing great great grandfather, Elia Yell Nats, who lives
in a small village in Latvia. He's in love with
a woman named Myra Menke, who he wants to marry,
but her father wants her to marry a different man
because that guy is offering him his biggest pig in
(31:35):
exchange for his daughter because women equal property. So Elia
goes to a fortune teller named Madame Zarni played by
the legend earth A Kit.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Who I only knew at the time as you're like
it's Easma from the other movie. And then later you
find out she is a legend.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
Yeah, like the President was scared of her at one point. Legend.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Oh my god, so good.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Yes, And she tells Ellia to carry a baby pig
up a mountain and let it drink from the stream
while he sings to it over the course of I
don't know, a few weeks or something, and it will
make the pig grow and then he'll have a pig
to offer Myra's father. And then Madames Roney says, okay,
when you're done with that, Now you have to carry
(32:26):
me up the mountain so I can drink from the
stream and get strong. And if you fail to do that,
I will put a curse on your family for always
an eternity.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
That line read really stuck with me, always an eternity,
Like it's such a good read.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, And Ellia forgets to honor this promise before he
immigrates to the US, hence the yell NAT's family curse.
Back to Stanley, he finishes his first hole and then
it's either the next day or a few days later,
but Stanley finds a fossil in his hole and shows
(33:04):
it to Pendanski hoping that the warden will find it
interesting and that he'll get the rest of the day off.
But the warden is not interested in fossils. Now, x Ray,
who's kind of the leader of the boys who live
in Dtent, tells Stanley to give him anything else he
finds since x Ray has like seniority. Then we flash
(33:28):
back to one hundred or so years ago when there
was a lake in this location. We meet Sam played
by Julae Hill, who is an onion farmer and he
sells all kinds of medicinal onion based remedies. And then
we also meet a school teacher who makes spiced peaches,
(33:50):
Mss Catherine played by Patricia Arquette.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And you're like, these actors are hot. I wonder what
will happen.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, the two of them are vibing and they exchange,
you know, onions and peaches. Then we also meet this
rich prick named trout Walker, who has taken a liking
to Miss Catherine and will return to this storyline. But
in the meantime, back in the present, Stanley's peers finally
(34:22):
give him a nickname, Caveman, so he's like one of
them now. Then he learns that zero the kid who
mostly keeps to himself. He only seems to talk to
caveman slash Stanley, and we find out that he cannot read,
so Zero asks Stanley if he'll teach him to read,
(34:44):
but Stanley says that he's too tired at the end
of every day and he just wants to chill. The
next day, Stanley finds something peculiar while he's digging his hole.
It's this like small golden cylindrical tube that looks like
it might be a bullet or a shellcasing of some kind,
(35:05):
and it has the letters KB engraved on it. So
Stanley gives it to x Ray per his request, who
shows it to Pandanski, who calls the warden, and we
finally see the warden on screen, who turns out to
be a whoa whoa whoa woman?
Speaker 5 (35:23):
What women can be bad too?
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Lewis Nakara is not afraid to say it.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Oh her nail polish. That is such a good detail
at Oh that scene in the book like really stuck
with me where she puts on her evil lady nail
polish and then slaps John backhands John voy she's doing it.
I didn't never realize she's also wearing a sports braw
In that scene, You're like, this is nuts, Like she
(35:54):
just finished doing like yoga on zoom and then she
like almost kills John Voyd.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Yeah, it's pretty awesome. That happens a little later. First, yes,
we meet her, it's so Corney Weaver. She gives x
Ray the rest of the day off for finding this
interesting item, and then she orders everyone to dig around
x Ray's hole, thinking that that's where the bullet thing
came from, but we all know that it came from
(36:20):
a different hole of Stanley's. Then we flash back to
Miss Catherine and Sam. He helps her fix up the schoolhouse.
If there's a leaky roof or a broken window. He says,
I can fix that, and they're falling in love. And meanwhile,
that rich fuck trout Walker wants to take Miss Catherine
(36:43):
out for a picnic, but she declines and he does
not handle rejection. Well. Yeah, and one night he sees
Miss Catherine and Sam kissing in the schoolhouse.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Because he sees her crying and says, I can fix that.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
It's really that would work.
Speaker 6 (37:00):
On the iphear I folded like a lawn chair, Like
I'm done, let's close the windows.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
We're having a party, one of the most popular letterbox reviews.
Will someone tell mister I can fix that that my
pussy's broken?
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah, oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
I also love that there is this It's like, not
it's a whatever, like one of a million themes in
this movie, but that even in the flashbacks, there is
this theme of literacy and gate keeping education because she
also teaches night classes to the same men who are
fucking creeping on her. But it's like the movie isn't
(37:45):
I don't know. The movie is saying like, these guys
are awful, but also they are you know, like at
a disadvantage as well.
Speaker 6 (37:53):
And she believes that despite the fact that they are awful,
they deserve the you know, privileges that literacy Ford's one
in society, right. And on top of that, she's reading
the kids like an Edgar Allan Poe poem and Sam
can the poem and I'm like, oh, Stallar, we love it,
(38:14):
love it. He's so fine.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
I think it is. I think it is an one
of those Edgar Allan Poe poems that is like about
fucking his cousin. But the spirit of it.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
It's the spirit of it it's fine.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Annabel Lee was redeemed by delay Hill also.
Speaker 6 (38:29):
Petition to start calling them Edgar Allan Poems. I just
feel like it's it's.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Cleaner, it's right there.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, it's that's your ear doing justin Timberlake in the
social note and then just stomp out of the room.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
So, yes, this is a white woman and a black
man kissing in Jim Crow, Texas. So trout Walker sees this.
He alerts the town people, who start a riot. They
burn down the schoolhouse, they go after Sam. Miss Catherine
tells the sheriff, who has no intention of stopping any
(39:07):
of this.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
No, he just like hits on her.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
He harasses and prays on her.
Speaker 6 (39:14):
I've been called slurs in my life. I gotta say
Onion Picker was scarily slurry when he was like, kiss
the onion picker.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I feel it, Yeah, onion Picker with a hard R.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
That's a lot, yeah yeah yeah. And right after this,
the racist mob catches up to Sam. They kill his
beloved donkey Mary Lou, and they murder Sam. We cut
back to the present. The boys are still digging collectively
while the warden supervises and clearly expects them to find something,
(39:50):
but nothing else is found because, to quote Raiders of
the Lost Arc, they're digging in the wrong place. Wow,
so thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
It's a little Seinfeld edge to that.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
That's just how they say it in the movie. That
was unintentional, but the warden has them returned to digging
individual holes when no other items are found. Back to
the past, Miss Catherine pays another visit to the sheriff
and kills him for not preventing the racist mob murdering Sam.
(40:29):
And this is the start of her becoming the famous
outlaw kissing Kate Barlow. We cut back to the present.
Magnet steals mister Sirr's sunflower seeds from his truck and
Stanley takes the blame for it. And so this is
the scene, Jamie, that you were talking about where mister
Sir takes Stanley to see the warden, but rather than
(40:51):
getting in trouble, the warden smacks mister Surr's face while
she has wet rattlesnake, venom nail polish on.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Ooh ooh wah.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
It is a very like feminist You know, you could
make your arguments against it, but it's just such a
good idea that I will not be hearing criticisms of
the snake Venom nail.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
Pasha, and Mister responds by saying, all I do is
give you love and affection.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yeah, it's implied that he has a crush on her
because he's always like fixing his hair when he's about
to see her and stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
It's also it's another I mean John Voyd, another bad man, yes,
who gives a really great performance in this It's true.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah. So Stanley returns to his hole and he discovers
the Zero finished digging it for him, and so Stanlee
offers to teach Zero to read after all, and in exchange,
Zero will help Stanley dig his hole every day. So
they start lessons and Zero is like, by the way,
(41:58):
my real name is Hector's Zerny, And we're like, hmm,
where have we heard the name Zarny before. So then
Hector tells Stanley about his past, how he and his
mom moved around a lot, then they became unhoused and
one day his mom had to leave him somewhere and
(42:20):
she didn't come back, and Hector never found out what
happened to her. And he says, if I could, I
would hire a whole team of private investigators to find her.
We'll put a pin in that. The other boys meanwhile
resent that Stanley is getting help digging his hole, and
a fight breaks out and it culminates in Hector hitting
(42:42):
Pendanski in the head with a shovel and running off.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
That Zero is the best character.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Oh, he truly.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Beats the shit out of you. Oh he's so great.
There's a quote from Because there was a There was
a I think it was like two years ago. There
was a short oral history for the twentieth anniversary, and
Cleia Thomas says Zero is not the most Disney friendly character.
Like he was grabbing eight balls ready to fight. He
hit a guy with a shovel, he choked somebody out.
I keep thinking about how this character I'm playing might
(43:11):
be the biggest gangster in Disney history. It was crazy,
and I kind of forget how like Zero, I mean,
he stands up for himself. He's the coolest.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
It's awesome. So Zero aka Hector runs away from camp.
The warden, Mister Cyr and Pandanski discuss deleting Hector's 'errony's
files and pretending like he was never at Camp Green
Lake because he's a ward of the state. There's no
known family looking for him, so they're like, we can
(43:40):
just basically delete his existence from ever having been here.
So Stanley's thinking about Hector now being out in this
barren wasteland with no water, no food, no shelter from
the elements kind of thing, and he recalls his grandpa
telling him about his great grandpa who kissing Kate Barlow,
(44:01):
robbed and left stranded in the desert for sixteen days,
and how he apparently found refuge on God's thumb, whatever
that means. Then a new kid named Twitch arrives to
take Hector's spot at the camp and he helps Stanley
(44:23):
steal mister Sirr's truck, which Stanley drives off to find Hector.
He almost immediately drives it into a hole, but Stanley
keeps going. He runs off away from camp and he
finds an overturned boat in the dirt where Hector's hiding out.
Hector offers Stanley some Splosh, which is the one hundred
(44:47):
year old spiced peaches that Miss Catherine made and gave
to Sam. Because this is Sam's boat.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
It's all connected.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
So I think the worst part of this movie slash
book story in general is the words.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Really needed to do a second draft on that. But anyway,
I think it's.
Speaker 6 (45:12):
A fun word for kids, but like as an adult
and like it sounds too much like things.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't want to.
Speaker 5 (45:19):
Think about Hector's rony drinking things.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
I also is like, I feel like I have looked
this up on past years, like can peaches like last
like that?
Speaker 3 (45:33):
I think if they're preserved properly, right, maybe I.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Just assume it's a little magic.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
Also, to be fair, he gets immediately ill from that's true.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
He just started throwing up the passing for days. That's true.
That's true.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
So Stanley and Hector try to figure out what to
do next. In the distance, they see a mountain that's
sort of in the shape of a thumbs up, and
they think maybe that's what Stanley's great grandpa meant about
finding refuge on God's thumb. So they head there. They
climb the mountain. It's a long difficult journey. Hector gets
(46:10):
stick along the way from drinking this blush. So Stanley
carries Hector Zarny aka Madam Zarroni's great great great grandson
up the Mountain to drink from the water they find there,
which effectively lifts the yell NAT's family curse. They find
(46:31):
a bunch of onions and eat them because also this
was Sam's secret onion garden. Again it's all connected. And
then also at this exact moment back at Stanley's house,
Stanley's dad finally invents the cure to foot odor and
the secret ingredients peaches and onions.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
I don't yeah, again, there you have to magic it
a little bit to be like onions cure or did
it just make odor smell.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
They were boiled? I don't know. I believe.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
I believe that the fawn's cured foot oder.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
I'm not a chemist.
Speaker 6 (47:10):
I don't know what's in the onion that interacts with
the peach that makes.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
It smell real, because a caramelized onion has a very
sweet night true's and taste.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
It is beautiful that the legacy of their love cured foot.
Speaker 5 (47:24):
I wanted to cry a little bit.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
It's really nice.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Yeah. So, while Hector and Stanley rest and recover, Hector
reveals that it was him who stole Clyde Livingston's famous
baseball shoes and it's his fault that Stanley got arrested
and sent to Camp Green Lake, but Stanley is not upset.
He's just like this is destiny, and he suggests they
(47:48):
go back to camp and dig one last hole in
the spot where Stanley originally found that gold tube, which
he thinks is probably a tube of lips stick and
that the KB stands for Kate Barlow. Meanwhile, back at camp,
a lawyer that Stanley's family hired played by Roma Mafia
(48:10):
shows up to collect Stanley, but the warden kind of
shows her away and tells her to come back with
a signed court order. Obviously because Stanley's not there. He
ran away, so she has to make up an excuse.
And now the warden and mister sirr and Pandansky are
panicking because they assume Stanley is dead out in the desert.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, and he quote unquote matters because his family has
secured a lawyer, right.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
Yeah. We flash back to kissing Kate Barlow being approached
by Trout Walker and his wife wanting to know where
she buried all the loot she stole.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
She somehow found Turn of the century like hair Bleach's
a she's got a new wig.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Well, she's out in the sun all the time, and
it's true.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
It looks good.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
It looks good.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, but Kate is like you and your family can
dig for the next one hundred years and you will
never find my treasure. And that's what Camp Green Like
is all about, because the warden is a descendant of
Trout Walker and she is using unpaid child prison labor
(49:19):
to dig holes to search for Kissing Kate Barlow's treasure.
Stanley and Hector returned to camp and they start expanding
the hole where Stanley found the lipstick tube and they
find a treasure chest. But just then the warden, Mister
Sir and Pandanski show up and catch them, but they
(49:39):
can't really do anything because they realize that the hole
is filled with a dozen of those highly lethal yellow
spotted lizards that are crawling all over but not attacking
Stanley and Hector because they've eaten all those onions, which
are a natural lizard repellent.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Hey, for a movie about holes, there's not a single
hole in the plot of the movie. There's true, everything
is explained, yea, and it all is like a cross
generational Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
A few hours later, Stanley's lawyer returns the warden makes
up a story about how Stanley broke into her cabin
and stole her trunk, but Hector is like, no, this
trunk belongs to Stanley. It's got his name on it,
and sure enough, the name Stanley Yellnatz is carved into
the trunk because this is the treasure that belonged to
(50:35):
his great grandfather. This means Stanley and Hector are free,
as are all the other boys, because Camp Green Lake
is shut down and the warden, Mister Sir, and Pandanski
are arrested. It also starts raining in this area for
the first time in one hundred years, in a scene
(50:57):
that felt a lot to me like a movie that
we have either just released or were covering soon, The
Shashank Redemption Where when and now? Okay, now I always
mix up Tim Robbins and Tim Robinson, but anyway, Tim Robbins.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
Very different guys, so different.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
But their names are too similar. Anyway, Tim Robbins when
he spoiler alert, finds freedom and it's pouring rain and
he's like, ah, so it felt like that to me anyway.
Speaker 5 (51:27):
Wow, I was gonna watch that movie.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
So yeah, sorry for spoiling now. A thirty year old movie,
it reigns.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
Then he goes.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Ah, okay, So we cut to Stanley and Hector at
the yell NAT's house. They open the trunk. It's full
of gold and jewels and stocks and bonds. Question Mark,
I don't know what those papers are.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
And for some reason, Stanley is the one that knows
about how money has appreciated over the last like century,
because his mom's like, Stanley, what do you think? I
was like, what is daily know about banking? He's you know,
he's in middle school, but he knows.
Speaker 5 (52:05):
He takes math class.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
I believe that He's like, it's worth at least a
million dollars. I was like, good, good math on your
feet man's and and I really it'll it like makes
me so much of the end of this movie makes
me tear up. But the fact that, like, even before
they know Zero is a Zeroni and connected to the
history of their family, they agree to give him half
(52:27):
of whatever is in there, and it's like mm hmmm, collective,
I know it's great and.
Speaker 5 (52:32):
Like, no, no fight the parents.
Speaker 6 (52:35):
Ye have windos to Hector, one for us, one for
mister Saroni, one for us, one for mister Sni And
then the grandfather embraces Hector and kisses him.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
And I'm just like, oh, it's really nice, so nice.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
And then Hector uses some of his money to hire
a team of private investigators to track down his mom,
which he does, and they reunite and embrace and that's
also very sweet and tearful. And then the movie ends
with all of the boys from d tent at Stanley's
nice new house with a pool. They gather around the
(53:11):
TV to watch a commercial where that baseball player Clyde
Livingston is the spokesman for Splosh, which is stan Lee's
dad's product for treating foot odor.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
The end, and You're like, sure he's also I didn't know.
I guess that that guy, the guy who plays Clyde
Livingston was Rick Fox. Yeah, but he played for like
the Celtics and the Lakers, and like was a pro athlete.
Didn't know, I don't know enough about sports.
Speaker 6 (53:41):
Why didn't then make him a basketball player?
Speaker 1 (53:44):
So because because like Mike had just come out, they're like,
there's two basketball shoes of it's played out in children's media.
Speaker 6 (53:51):
Fair.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
That's honestly my guess, but I have no idea.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, anyway, so that's the movie. Let's take a quick
break and we'll come back to discuss.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
And where back. I wanted to say just the one
thing about this movie, and I didn't finish rereading the book,
so I don't remember or I don't know like how
this is dealt with in the book. There is like
in a movie that is shockingly not Disneyfied in most ways.
The ending does feel a little Disneyfied to me, but
(54:33):
only in the one scene where you know, it's so
critical of justice and of the school to prison pipeline
and all of these things that you never see discussed
in media, much less children's media. But at the end
when you know, it's like, oh, well, it's just that
the state didn't know that this is how the prison
(54:53):
was being run, but now that they know, they're gonna
take care of it, and like that was the only
sort of disney fire plot point for me. It was like,
because that is sort of what you're taught of, Like, oh, well,
if you're if they're doing something bad, it's only because
surely nobody knows it's not inherent to the system that
it's a part.
Speaker 3 (55:13):
Of I did fully reread the book a couple days ago. Yeah,
I mean me reading a book. Wow, good, thank you.
But I tend to agree. There is a moment in
the movie which it does feel very cathartic, when like, yeah,
(55:34):
the warden and mister sir and like the officials at
the camp are arrested and humiliated and all this stuff
that doesn't really happen. In the book, there is a
reference to how Camp Green Lake gets shut down and
will be converted into a Girl Scout Camp.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
Which at one point was going to become a Disney
Plus series.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
I think it's still in development.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
I'm sorry, what isn't that bizarre? I was kind of like, yeah,
I'd watch it. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (56:03):
They could have just kept making Bunked. I don't understand
they canceled Bunked a show Camp. And also, this is
my listen. If you are a Disney executive, call me,
because I think that we I know that everything's a reboot,
even Fascism right now, but I think that we need
to reboot Bug Juice.
Speaker 2 (56:22):
And I was gonna say, a great camp show.
Speaker 6 (56:25):
I don't know why, because like it's unscripted, it's gonna
be super cheap to produce.
Speaker 5 (56:28):
It's you know, get those kid influencers started early. I guess.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
Bug Juice was so awesome. Kids shows were really gross,
like I because that was like Baby Survivor.
Speaker 3 (56:44):
I have never heard of this. I don't know what
you're talking about, but yeah.
Speaker 6 (56:48):
It was like a camp reality show. It was like
kids at Summer Camp, and it was like the trials
and tribulations of the drama of summer Camp.
Speaker 5 (56:56):
So I'm like, if you want to make a camp show, either.
Speaker 6 (56:59):
Bring back the script camp show that you literally just canceled,
or you know, you have to renegotiate everybody's contract blah
blah blah, or bring back Bug Juice a show that
needs to be brought back.
Speaker 5 (57:11):
I think about this all the.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Time because I don't and you're totally right, it like
it fits influencer culture absurdly. Well, yeah, huh.
Speaker 3 (57:19):
So the Disney plus TV adaptation that's I think still
in development. I don't know much about it, but basically
it's an adaptation of the book. So it's not necessarily
about like fun summer Camp. It's about like prison labor camp.
But it is like a quote unquote all female reboot,
(57:40):
which I don't know how that will go exactly.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
That's what makes me think it is not going to
be made because I feel like that time has come
and gone and what so has Disney plus making like
original content ruined it?
Speaker 6 (57:55):
Yeah, I think both All Lady Goes to My was
the start of the death knell, and then Katy perry
Space Journey is like.
Speaker 5 (58:07):
The final nail of the coffin.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Yeah, there was a wave of feminism that ended when
Katy Perry went to Space because it was just like
what feminism? What are you even? What are you saying?
Speaker 3 (58:18):
I hate it?
Speaker 1 (58:20):
Woman should space tourism anyways?
Speaker 3 (58:23):
Yes, And then I would say the other big adaptation
change from the book in general and especially at the end,
is that Stanley feels a lot more confident at the end,
and he likes himself now and now he has friends.
And this is part of a larger adaptation change that
(58:45):
we alluded to it at the beginning of the episode,
which I would like to talk more about, which is
the fat erasure of Stanley's character. So basically, in the book,
Stanley is fat. In the movie, he is thin. In
the book, it's mentioned that Stanley is teased and bullied
(59:07):
at school by his peers for being fat. Sometimes his
teachers will kind of subconsciously fat shame him. He doesn't
have much self confidence or friends. As a result, over
the course of the book, he does lose some weight
due to strenuous activity of digging holes every day. It
(59:27):
doesn't ever say how much weight he loses, but it
does say that by the end of the story he
has more confidence, he has friends, he likes himself. It
is not super clear in the book exactly how much
of his confidence boost, if any, correlates to his weight loss.
But even so, I do remember that readers of the
(59:51):
book they appreciated there being representation of a fat protagonist
who is likable and compelling, who is at the center
of this really you know, interesting and layered story, who
has an arc. And I remember a lot of the
criticism about this movie when it came out that, you know,
audiences were disappointed that that aspect of the character was
(01:00:13):
completely erased. They wanted to see on screen representation of
a fat protagonist, but instead the movie cast a thin
actor in Shila buff And I know that the choice
to cast a you know, a thin actor in this
role and to not have to have, you know, like
someone wear a fat suit or anything like that totally valid.
Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
But Also, it's like they could have just cast a
fat actor.
Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Right, because the thing is like, if they wanted to
emit something, why did it have to be his fatness.
If anything, they could have omitted his weight loss.
Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Right, that was the Yeah, that would be ideal, right, Like,
at the end of the day, it.
Speaker 6 (01:00:50):
Is about the confidence. And the thing about being fat
is that, for the most part, being fat is not actually,
in my opinion, as a fat person, that bad.
Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
I'm hot, I am fine with the way that I look.
Speaker 6 (01:01:07):
The problem with being fat is society and the way
that society treats fat people. And the problem with Stanley
being fat is the fact that he's getting teased. He
has no confidence because adults and children alike are making
him feel bad about his body. And like the nineties
was also a peak heroin chic, the early two thousands
(01:01:28):
was like low rise.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Genes also experiencing another unfortunate reboot.
Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
Yeah, the rise of.
Speaker 6 (01:01:35):
Like skinny talk is terrifying. It's like anemia Tumbler all
over again.
Speaker 5 (01:01:41):
It really, it really.
Speaker 6 (01:01:43):
Is like very disconcerting to encounter, and like, I find
myself having thoughts that I haven't had in twenty years,
and I'm just like stop it.
Speaker 5 (01:01:52):
But I'm okay, I'm good. But every now and.
Speaker 6 (01:01:55):
Then I'm just like, like, I'll read the can of
a Lacroix and I'll feel bad about myself because looks
actually are really weird of fat Shamie, because they really
yeah with them, they say zero carbs, zero.
Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Fat, zero, zero guilt or something like that.
Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
It's innocent.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Oh my god, it does say equals innocent yea.
Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
And sometimes it gets to me.
Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Polar would never, polar would never.
Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
Yeah, a spin drift couldn't catch them.
Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
No, absolutely not. No, I Caitlyn, that's a great point.
Like it's because I did feel like, I guess what,
I I agree with you, Karama that you know, putting
child above in a fat suit would have aged the
movie terribly. Yeah, but I did feel like in the
portion of the book that I finished that there was
(01:02:48):
it was like one of the faults of the book
to me. I've I thought anyways that Lewis de Carr
was sort of putting some morality towards the weight loss
in a way that just felt kind of out of
step with a lot of what the book is doing.
Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Totally and right. If there was again anything to omit
from the adaptation, it could be the weight loss, or
at least the implication that his boost and confidence correlates
in some way to his weight loss.
Speaker 6 (01:03:18):
I do also think that, like we are looking at
this very much with twenty twenty five eyes, and I
think that having a kid that was fat on screen
be made fun of for being fat was something that
was like also going to be considered like damaging, like
putting this fat kid in the public eye, And I
think that it ultimately would have been damaging.
Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
For that kid.
Speaker 6 (01:03:40):
Sure, And I know that like Heavyweights was a movie
that came out in a similar era.
Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
I can't remember exactly what your Heavyweights.
Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Came out, Yeah, late nineties, I think because he isn't
Keenan Thompson in it, so it's like, yeah, Keenan era,
I think baby Keenan's in it.
Speaker 5 (01:03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:03:57):
But the thing about Keenan is it was always okay
for him to be fat because he was funny, do
you know what I mean? Whereas like with Holes, it's
more of a dramatic turn and you're sort of like
the hero of this drama. And I think that I
think that I would have loved if it were different.
But I also kind of understand why it was the
(01:04:18):
way that it was with.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
The time that it came out, and adding that to
I mean, I think I'm sure that I'm but I
the only young fat actors that I remember knowing of
as a kid were Keenan Thompson and Lori Beth Denberg
and that was it. And so if the you know,
directive is to cast Stanley yell Natz as a known actor,
(01:04:44):
that might have been hard also because of how of
how prejudiced Hollywood is in the first place, where the
most well known child actors are you know, finn Totally.
Speaker 6 (01:04:54):
This is before Nicki Blonski changed cinema.
Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
It was a few years away, in just three years.
Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
So the filmmakers spoke to this adaptation change in an
interview in two thousand and three. So it was Lewis
Sacker and director Andrew Davis were interviewed by Phase nine. Sure,
I don't know exactly what that is, some kind of
film publication, but anyway, precisely, they were asked how they
(01:05:28):
searched for the right kids, like the right child actors
for the characters. Lewis Sacker says, well, the character of
Stanley in the book is overweight, Shia is not, but
this wasn't integral to the story. The point was more
that he felt like an outsider, but he could display vulnerability,
and Shia conveys the right amount of emotion and vulnerability
(01:05:50):
and quirkiness, so the overweight thing wasn't important to that.
I say, did you read your own book? Lewis, Like,
what are you talking about?
Speaker 6 (01:06:00):
As a misguided take, I would say I can pretty
much bring any topic back to how much I dislike
Leah Michelle. But of course, for me Funny Girl the adaptation,
I thought that Beanie Feldstein was better casting because the
whole thing about Funny Girl is that Fanny Brice is
supposed to be not conventionally attractive. And while Leah Michelle,
(01:06:24):
because she is half Jewish, does have similar features to say,
like barbar streisand in the original the way that that
was written for twenty twenty forge or whatever year it was,
twenty twenty two, she's conventionally attractive.
Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
She's like a hot lady.
Speaker 6 (01:06:41):
Our beauty conventions have changed, but we still hate fat people.
And I think that Beanie Feldstein's casting was far more
in line with who Fanny's supposed to be as an outsider.
So I think that on the one hand, Lewis is
right in that what matters most is that he's an
outsider who gains confidence. But we don't get that from
(01:07:02):
Shia abuff In any way, Like they didn't write something
in that made it happen, Like he didn't have a list,
he didn't have some sort of like physical disability or
something that like that would have helped with the holes.
Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
But you know what I mean, Yeah, or even if
it's just like he has a lack of confidence for
a reason that has nothing to do with his appearance
or ability or anything like that, and it's just that
it wasn't replaced with anything. Yeah, Yeah, So that's just
that whole part of his character is erased. And maybe
Lewis Sachar is saying something like, well, you know, Stanley's
(01:07:36):
fatness does not define him as a character, which is true,
but it doesn't sound like that's what he's saying. He's
just sort of like, I need to make an excuse
for why we didn't cast a actor.
Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Yeah, it feels like a very like hollywoody thing, which
to at least to Lewis Skar, I'm sure that Lewis
Akar is not the one making the final casting decisions, no, right,
I know that he. I think he was a pretty
around the movie. I think that that is like a
better suited question for the director than which the writer.
Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Which the director answers a question, a follow up question,
which was didn't you consider a fat suit, and director
Andrew Davis says, yes, we did, but in the book
he loses weight as the story evolves and as he
digs the holes, et cetera. And we shot the movie
out of continuity, so that wouldn't have worked.
Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
That's the reason.
Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Yeah, youre right, And I think that was like I
remember that also being a reason that they gave for
not casting a fat actor to begin with, because it's like, well,
movies are shot out of chronological order. So if a
character is losing weight progressively, but the movie is shot
out of order, then how how do we manage that?
Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
It's all very two thousand and three. I mean, I
will say that, like not to give this movie a pass,
but that this feels very thoroughly in step with how
fatness was treated in movies at this time.
Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
For sure, shallow how oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Right, like this like the same couple of years God,
I still have managed to never see Shallow.
Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
How oh, I won't see that movie because I love
myself too much.
Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
That's one of those movies where it's like, I know
we'd have a lot to talk about, but I don't
want to subject to anyone to have it to watch it,
including myself.
Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Fair it's horrid. I have seen it, and.
Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
It's like been free on YouTube for a thousand years
because no one would watch it on purpose. But in
any case, yes, I wasn't aware that they had been
asked about it directly.
Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
And then the other thing is that there is a
fat character in the movie Armpit laid by Byron Cotton
ar MPI to the t well, yes, of course.
Speaker 5 (01:09:46):
Is that you're smelling dog?
Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
That's me okay, Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
That was a lyric. That was lyric.
Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
The main thing we know about him is that he
has body odor. He doesn't. He's implied to not have
very good hygiene. Every and teases him about this. And
also the movie goes out of its way to show
at least once to show him struggling with a physical
task of some kind.
Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
So basically the only fat character on screen is attached
to all these very harmful reductive tropes. Yeah, associated with fatness.
Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
So which sucks for a lot of reasons. I mean
the actor, because I don't think I don't a lot
of these kids didn't go on to perform at least
in movies very much. But Byron Cotton is so good,
he's so charming, and also like it also just doesn't
it's so clearly fat phobic because you got to think,
all these kids are stinky, They're not being taken care of,
(01:10:41):
and it's not their fault, Like they all share a
single shower stall like there, of course, hygiene is poor
and they only get like four.
Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Minute shower tokens or something.
Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Yeah, and add that to the average hygiene habits of
a young boy in the best circumstances, like, yeah, all
these kids are stinky.
Speaker 6 (01:11:01):
Yeah, and they're wearing the same work clothes three days
in a row.
Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
I did want to talk a little bit about the
production of this movie, because there is child Okay, one
of the hills that I love to die on day
in and day out is child labor laws, and there's
I think that this movie technically followed child labor laws,
but to me, say that child labor laws are not
(01:11:28):
restrictive enough because they I mean, obviously the kids have
to go to school all this stuff, But they were
literally in the middle of the desert in heat as
much as one hundred and fifteen degrees, shooting for ten weeks.
And I have a couple of quotes from that. It
was a business insider oral history where they didn't speak
to everybody, and you know there's certain like you know,
(01:11:50):
like I don't want to know what child a buff says.
He's not in it. But it's like Lewis Sakarr, the director,
and then a couple of the cast members I think
Tim Blake Nelson, and then a few of the boys,
including Miguel Castro who plays Magnet and my crush Cleo Thomas.
Speaker 5 (01:12:09):
Well I met once.
Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
Actually what is he nice?
Speaker 5 (01:12:13):
It was very nice. I was like, is he t zero?
He was really sweet.
Speaker 6 (01:12:19):
I was on a show on Hulu called Reboot, and
at the premiere of Reboot he was there and I
was like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Also, you're great in Reboot. I was like I think
I like gasped and like messaged you immediately, like how
could you not have told me? Actually?
Speaker 6 (01:12:37):
I actually had a really sweet interaction last night with
somebody at like an actor mixer thing for my agency,
and this like younger actor at my agency.
Speaker 5 (01:12:47):
She's like in her twenties. She's not like a child,
but she came up here. She's like, I really loved
you in reboot and you made me want to go
to UCB. And I was just like, I'm literally gonna
cry right now.
Speaker 6 (01:12:58):
Thank you so much. I feels good about my career
and that made me feel so much better.
Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Like moments like that find you when you need it.
Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
That's really yes.
Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
But yeah, Cleo was very nice.
Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
He introduces something like I know you're I know I'm
aware of.
Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
I know the classes, but I would lose it.
Speaker 5 (01:13:17):
I would still still crushworthy.
Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
I would say yeah, I followed it. I followed him
on Instagram today. I was like, he still got it.
Speaker 6 (01:13:24):
I was gonna say slides DMS and I remembered, like
a fully engaged with adults.
Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
He would get it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
This Cleo Thomas has been promoted to my Hall Pass.
But so this is a quote from Miguel Castro, who
also talks about how like the casting process and how
they really did. I mean, I think that being unwilling
to cast a fat actor of Stanley is the standout
bad thing that they did, because it seems like they
(01:13:51):
tried to really find young actors who like fit the role,
and also that the movie was not being aggressive whitewashed
in a way that I would not put past two
thousand and three. I do think ultimately centering a story
about the school to prison pipeline around a white character
as a little suss but we'll get there. But just
(01:14:12):
in terms of the production, Mila Castro said, he's also
very funny, but he said, I remember one day was
one hundred and nineteen degrees. I thought they were going
to cancel the filming, but we all agreed to knock
it out. I was hallucinating and I started seeing water
a swimming pool. The production team gave us thermometers to
check the temperature of our holes. If the holes hit
(01:14:33):
over one hundred and twenty five degrees, we had to
get out of there. That day, some of our thermometers
broke one thirty And it's like, you can't make kids
do that. You can't make kids, they just said. And
they had to do like a boot camp, basically re
enacting the movie holes so that they would be able
to do it on the production, so it ended up
(01:14:54):
being like three to four months of them sort of
just having to go methad, which is like, do that
if you want as an adult, Like I just you
can't make kids go method at a prison camp.
Speaker 5 (01:15:07):
Like that's we all agreed is bad.
Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 6 (01:15:14):
It's giving Mikey Madison saying that she and Sean Baker
decided together not to have an intimacy coordinator, and I'm like,
I don't think that that's your call as a no.
I think it's your call as a yes, but it
can't be your call as a no. That's like not
having a stunt coordinator. Like even Tom Cruise, as dedicated
as he is to doing these outrageous stunts, has a
(01:15:37):
stunt coordinator.
Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
Right right, Yeah, it feels like adults knowing that they
have power over children and being like, no, we got
to keep going. The show must go on, let's go,
let's go kids.
Speaker 6 (01:15:49):
Don't you want to make the movie? Don't you want
all of your friends to watch this cool movie?
Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
It's just I don't know, I don't understand like production risk,
Like even if you were heartless and you don't care
about putting a child in a one hundred and thirty
degree whole like that production insurance. I don't know. I
was just I was curious. I was like, I wonder
how they kept the whole school. The answer they didn't.
They didn't, so that is unfortunate. What I will say
(01:16:16):
that is positive about the production, just something that I
admire is that Andrew Davis, the director, who mostly had
done action movies up to this point, was really set
on keeping the story basically not dumbing the story down
for kids, and that Disney, after I think a few
initial like are you sure you want to include A,
(01:16:39):
B and C, he was like, no, I will not
make the movie if you keep bugging me, and really
pushed to have Lewis Karr write the screenplay and basically,
along with a producer, taught Lewis Decarr how to write
a screenplay so that they could preserve the integrity of
the story. And I don't know, just like I knew,
(01:17:00):
you know, Crame, you're a writer. Like it's just like that.
I don't know how they pulled it off, and I'm
so glad that they did well.
Speaker 6 (01:17:06):
I feel like he has a really strong understanding of
story to begin with, So I feel like it was
like he was at the water.
Speaker 5 (01:17:13):
They just had to show him how to drink, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Right, yeah, yeah, And that's what they were sort of like.
They were like, he's a great writer, he just needs
to understand the format. And I guess throughout production, like Lewis,
the Carr had a lot of input and if he
wanted something changed or adjusted like Andrew Davis, had no questions.
I was like, wow, no one respects writers. That's cool. Yeah,
that's right. That was my takeaway.
Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
He's also in the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Yeah, mister bold, Oh that's him.
Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Yeah, cute.
Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
Sweet.
Speaker 5 (01:17:45):
I wish they had shown him with like a bust
down wig.
Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Later because the onion juice it worked. The onion juice
cured his boldness.
Speaker 5 (01:17:55):
I just want to know if it works. It's like
a Sweet Todd situation.
Speaker 3 (01:17:59):
Mister No, I think Sam's onion remedies worked one hundred percent.
Speaker 6 (01:18:05):
You would have loved Arawan, Oh my god, Oh he
would have.
Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
He would have been making billions at the Ariwuan.
Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Yeah. I love cameos like that. And not to keep
going back to series of unfortunate events, but it is
my favorite. And that is a terribly adapted movie that
the author was very upset about. So it's just like
there's so many examples of you know, heavily sanitized, Like
all the dark themes in that movie are basically played
for comedy instead of because the you know, Nickel I
(01:18:35):
think it was Nickelodeon productions in that case were like,
it's too scary for kids, they won't be able to
handle it. And that's how you get Jim Carrey count
all off.
Speaker 6 (01:18:44):
I met the boy from that movie.
Speaker 5 (01:18:47):
I didn't know it was him. I just happened to
be sitting.
Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
All my childhood crushes.
Speaker 6 (01:18:51):
I just happened to be sitting next to him. We're
instagram like mutuals now. I happen to be sitting next
to him. Last summer when I went to New York
City and I decided to use my free will and
my adult money to go see Cats.
Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
The Jellicle Ball, and he was there.
Speaker 5 (01:19:06):
And he was there in the front row, right next
to me.
Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:19:10):
He had a friend who was in it. He had
never seen Cats before. I had seen Cats before.
Speaker 3 (01:19:16):
Of course.
Speaker 6 (01:19:17):
I will just say I think the Cat's the Jellical
Ball was actually genius and a really amazing production because
they used ballroom culture and I was like, oh, this
is this is actually the only way this show makes sense.
Speaker 1 (01:19:30):
That is actually a great adjustment.
Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Yeah. So it's like Paris is burning bust cats.
Speaker 5 (01:19:37):
Yes it's gay cats.
Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
I'm in that's so good.
Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Yeah. Liam Aiken, Yes he's sucking and like, I'm a yapper,
so I'll talk to anybody that's unfortunately sitting next to me.
Speaker 6 (01:19:48):
And he was such a trooper about it, and I
was like, Oh, your friend's in it. Who is your
friend playing? And he was like, oh, she's Skimbleshanks And
I was like the railway can.
Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
The best Cat's god best number.
Speaker 5 (01:20:02):
I was like, that's a good cat, you've.
Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
Good taste and friends.
Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
I can't believe you're hang out with Skimbleshanks. Oh my god.
Yet another like Horny Child's thing on my wall. I
had like achin for Liam, that's so funny. Wow, I'm
glad that he's And he did turn into my dream
adult in that he was friend row at the Jelicable
and like I never.
Speaker 6 (01:20:28):
It never it came up that he was an actor
because we were just talking and I was like, oh,
I'm an actor too, and blah, blah blah. And I
didn't know until I like looked him up after he
walked me into the subway because I was like, I
don't know where I'm going, And I looked him up
to see if his star meter.
Speaker 5 (01:20:41):
Was better than mine.
Speaker 6 (01:20:42):
It was, and I was like, oh, snap, this is
the guy from Stepmom, one of my favorite movies of
all time.
Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:20:49):
And then I was like, oh, I had a series
of unfortunate events a movie that I did not care.
Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
About, but Stepmom, good for him, Good for him.
Speaker 5 (01:20:56):
Have you guys done? Stepmom? Sorry, we should talk about
the movie.
Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
No, we haven't, but it's on our list.
Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
I think would be down. I've seen it because jennam
Alone is in it too, right, baby jenneral alone? Yeah,
but well, I guess back, I guess.
Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
I mean speaking of a movie that you know, like
doesn't sanitize the more serious themes, or at least not extensively. Yeah,
this movie, it addresses a number of social issues such
as race, class, incarceration in all of the storylines I
(01:21:34):
think that are intersecting. So there's these two main storylines
from the past, one from the present. In one of them,
it's Stanley's Great, Great grandfather Elia Yellnetz. He is seeking
out the help of Madame Zaroni. In the book, Madame
Zaroni is described as being a word that is used
(01:21:58):
as a slur to describe Romani people. She's played by
earth a kid.
Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
Yeah, she's like believe Egyptian. In the book too, they
explicitly say that she is an immigrant from Egypt.
Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
Right, and curious what your thoughts are. But I couldn't
help but feel that there are hints of like the
magical Negro trope at play here, because she's presented as
being this mystic type of person. She places a curse.
Speaker 6 (01:22:26):
I agree there's a little magical Negro happening, but I
don't mind it. And I don't know if I'm supposed
to say that out loud, but I don't because also
I feel like it's a lot of the time, like
when curses are happening, it's like, oh man, we got
cursed for no reason, and nobody at any point is like,
oh man, we got cursed for no reason. They're like, my,
(01:22:48):
no good, dirty rotten pigs stealing great great great grandfather.
It's like this was a deserved curse. Everybody's mad at
the great great grandfather for not doing what he promised
he would do. And it's like, you got the help
that you want, it you ended up not getting with
the girl, and now your butt hurt and you're gonna
go on a boat to America. You realize on the
boat to America, oh snap, I forgot to take the
(01:23:10):
old lady up the hill and you don't take a
boat back.
Speaker 5 (01:23:13):
I would have been on the next boat.
Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Back personally, right, I did. Yeah, that is I guess
I hadn't registered that that. At very least. The family
is not like fuck, Madame Zeroni. They're like, he made
a deal and he didn't keep his end of it.
Speaker 6 (01:23:28):
Yeah, at no point where they're like, oh, Madam Zaroni
was the worst. They're like, yeah, no, that's that's fair.
Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
It's like a European white guy neglecting to pay a
black woman for services rendered and he gets cursed about it,
and it is fully deserved.
Speaker 6 (01:23:46):
And I also think that, you know, the the curse
being broken because finally the services that were promised were
rendered in a way with this new generation, it's it's
very much speaking like the promise. I think that with
them being explicitly black, even though it's like somewhat ambiguous in.
Speaker 5 (01:24:06):
The book, like if if she's Egyptian or if she's Romani.
Speaker 6 (01:24:09):
It's very much about like, oh, the promise is that
America has made to black people and sort of like
how those have been broken and there I think that
there is going to be a curse on this country
until something happens to make it right. Whether it's reparations,
whether it's something else, I don't know, And like I
(01:24:29):
don't even think that I would be entitled to reparations
because my parents are immigrants. Like I'm not saying it
for personal gain, and I'm saying it for justice reasons,
but justice. Like the movie is very clear in teaching
kids like hey, if you promise something to somebody and
then you don't do it, that's a bad thing. And
then later we were all like, yeah, no, it makes
(01:24:49):
sense that they're cursed. And then later it's like, oh,
I'm going to make this right. And he didn't make
it right to do things better, Like he didn't make
it right because he's like, oh, this lift the curse.
It was completely selfless. His friend was hurt and he
wanted to make him better totally, and like when you
do the right thing for the right reason. Good things
(01:25:10):
happen to you in movieland unfortunately not always in real life.
Speaker 5 (01:25:13):
But I think that more people tried it, we'd find
out in real life.
Speaker 3 (01:25:19):
Right yeah, right, So yeah, that's that storyline. And then
it also intersects heavily with the Stanley Hector Zerny storyline
in the present. And then the third storyline is the
Miss Catherine aka kissing Kate Marlowe and Sam in I
(01:25:39):
think it's like turn of the century, like late eighteen hundreds,
early nineteen hundreds. Again, it's Jim Crow era Texas. She
is a white woman, he is a black man. They
fall in love. They kiss during an era when that
was illegal in Texas and in many other states in
the US. They are seen this racist mob forms. All
(01:26:03):
this violence is inflicted. They murder Sam. The sheriff does
nothing to stop them. In all likelihood, the sheriff was
a clan member. And then this leads to you know,
Catherine ak Kate becoming an outlaw getting revenge. She kills
the sheriff. It makes you wonder why she doesn't kill
trout Walker also, but I guess it's because the story
(01:26:27):
needs him to live long enough to produce offspring, so
that the warden can be a character since trout Walker's
her grandfather.
Speaker 6 (01:26:36):
Right. Also, I think that there's sometimes there's power in
letting someone suffer.
Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
Oh true, because he by the end of his life
he is miserable.
Speaker 5 (01:26:45):
Yeah, he's obsessed.
Speaker 6 (01:26:46):
He's a man completely possessed by the idea of finding
this treasure where he's torturing his granddaughter, right, so built
to dig these holes and she's you know the TikTok
sounds that has spawned a million video.
Speaker 5 (01:27:00):
I'm tired of this grandpa it is.
Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
I thought that, like that was an interesting Again, like
this movie is good at like providing context for the
villains without overly empathizing with them, because what she does
to deal with the uh trauma of the holes is
that she becomes like a prison warden and opens a
(01:27:28):
prison and outsources the labor to disenfranchised children. So it's
not like it's an excuse for anything that she's doing.
But I like little beats like that, I feel like
are sort of what elevates this movie a lot if
because I think that's like helpful for kids to have
context but not excuses for how you know, oppressors become
(01:27:49):
oppressors when it speaks.
Speaker 6 (01:27:50):
To the way that white women will pass on the
violence enacted upon them by white men to black people,
because you know, not everybody is black in the camp,
but they do make it a point to have if
you're a number of black kids, because that is unfortunately
who is getting these harsher punishments. And even if you
think about Hector and Stanley, Stanley is getting this punishment
(01:28:14):
because he stole from allegedly stole shoes from a homeless
shelter and they were like this famous guy's shoes, and
this crime was like more egregious in that way. Hector
got nabbed for stealing shoes from Paylass.
Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
Right, shoes that probably cost twenty dollars kind of thing,
not even.
Speaker 5 (01:28:31):
In three pay less shoes fifteen at most.
Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
Right right?
Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
I miss pay Less every day rip rip to a
real story.
Speaker 6 (01:28:41):
The payless where I used to buy my Easter shoes
is now an axe throwing place.
Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Oh my god. So it's like gentrification on gentrification. I
thought it was interesting that Pala's got shouted out by name.
I'm like, did they pay for that?
Speaker 5 (01:28:54):
I don't know, they shoes worth stealing? Paylas there is.
Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
I mean, I guess I'm curious what you both think
of this, Like Camp Greenlake is a diverse but I
would say mostly non white body of people, which I
think makes a lot of sense if you look at
prisons unfortunately, especially the school to prison and Pipeline. I
do feel like, while I do love Stanley Yelnatz, centering
(01:29:22):
this story on a white character does not to say
that this does not happen to white kids, but it
happens disproportionately less. And so while I think you can
make the argument that Zero is a dual protagonist by
the end of the movie, but he's not at the beginning,
and so I don't know. I don't know, it's a pick.
(01:29:46):
And then there's all of these kids that you get
a little bit of their story. I don't know. I
think you get a little more in the book, which
is kind of to be expected, but you get like
you don't really know why most of the kids have
been put there. It was a really They do add
that Magnet is there because he was trying to literally
free a dog from a breeder, which is great practice.
(01:30:10):
Shout out Magnet, and that there is I think it's
zig Zag maybe is there because he has mental health
issues that are not being treated, and which is you know,
another thing you see all the time is someone with
a mental health crisis being sent to prison instead of
being given help. And so like you are given. I
(01:30:30):
think kind of a sampler platter for lack of a
better descriptor. But I do wish that we got a
little more than one line for a lot of characters,
because I don't know. I mean, do we know why
Armpit is there? Do we know? I experalized there? Like
we get, some characters get the context. Authors don't.
Speaker 5 (01:30:51):
Yeah, I don't think we know.
Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
This doesn't provide any more context in that regard, but
I will share a quick paragraph from the book. Quote
Stanley was thankful that there were no racial problems. X Ray,
Armpit and Zero were black, he Squid and Zigzag were white.
Magnet was hispanic. On the lake, they were all the
(01:31:16):
same reddish brown color, the color of dirt. Unquote. So
that's pretty much the only thing the book has to
say about any racial or racialized dynamics.
Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
In that timeline, at least because.
Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
Yea, and I couldn't help think about another movie as
I was rewatching holes, which is the movie Nickel Boys
that I saw recently, so as far as a book
slash movie about young men or teen boys being incarcerated
and sent to a work camp. There is a version
(01:31:56):
of this story that is written and made by white people,
a la Holes. And then compare that to a version
of this story that was written by black people, a
la Nickel Boys, which is a novel from twenty nineteen
by Coulson Whitehead adapted to a twenty twenty four film
(01:32:16):
written and directed by Ramel Ross. Very different movies obviously,
Where Nickel Boys. I don't know if either of you
have seen it, but yeah, Nickel Boys is totally much heavier.
It does a lot more to shed light on the
horrors of the racism, exploitation, violence, abuse present in a
(01:32:40):
detention facility like this versus Holes, which acknowledges these things
to some degree, but it's center's whiteness. It's framed more
as this like almost a fun adventure, folk tale type
of story that is largely about a white boy, kind
(01:33:01):
of like his redemption arc of like, oh I have
to carry as a rony up a mountain kind of thing.
So I just think it's interesting to kind of note
the differences between two similar premises written by two very
different perspectives, and how they kind of manifest at different times.
Speaker 5 (01:33:19):
To sure for sure, Yeah, I think that sometimes the
messenger matters as much as the message.
Speaker 6 (01:33:26):
And I do think that in two thousand and three,
for a kids movie to send this message, I think
you need to see this happen to a white kid
who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,
because when black kids are in the wrong place at
the wrong time, people are like, well, what were they
doing there, Why weren't they there at the right time,
(01:33:47):
Why weren't they in a different place?
Speaker 5 (01:33:49):
And I think.
Speaker 6 (01:33:51):
That it's kind of similar for me to my favorite
movie about racism, Pleasantville. Yeah, it is a movie about
racism with not nary a single person.
Speaker 1 (01:34:05):
Yes, however, wild that they.
Speaker 5 (01:34:08):
Did that, but like wild that they did it and
did it well.
Speaker 3 (01:34:11):
I think one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
It's a great movie.
Speaker 6 (01:34:13):
It's a really good movie. And I think that there
are people who would not have gotten the message if
it were a straight and maybe wouldn't even have watched
the movie if it were straight up, Like, hey, this
is about segregation in the nineteen fifties, which is what
it is.
Speaker 5 (01:34:33):
It is a movie about segregation in the nineteen fifties,
but the colored people are literally in technicolor. Yeah, and
I love that, and.
Speaker 6 (01:34:43):
I love that that was an idea that somebody had,
And it's like, sometimes, what if this happened to white people?
Is the way to get the message to people that
are like, hey, wait a minute, And it's like the
last few lines of that poem, that's like, oh, and
then they came for me and there's nobody to stand
up for me, And it's like, what if this were
to happen to you?
Speaker 5 (01:35:02):
You need to think about if this happens to you.
Speaker 6 (01:35:04):
Not to say that all of the audiences are white,
but in filmmaking, for better or for worse, white is
seen as the default and you can put any experience
on top of it. And I do think also there
are things that are true about this story. I do
think that even with the expensive lawyer, if it were Hector,
(01:35:25):
or if it were another black kid, it would have
taken longer than literally a day after hiring a lawyer
to get.
Speaker 5 (01:35:31):
Him out of there.
Speaker 3 (01:35:32):
Definitely, no matter.
Speaker 6 (01:35:33):
How hard that lawyer was working, I feel like the
judge would be like, no, I'm not overturning this. I
don't care, he's already there. The holes are good for
character whatever, do you know what I mean? Because like,
while I was watching, when they said this into eighteen months,
I was like, that is six times as long as.
Speaker 5 (01:35:50):
Rock Turner got ah.
Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
Yep, Well, when you put it that way, it.
Speaker 6 (01:35:56):
Was an unreasonably long sentence, and I don't even know
how long those other kids.
Speaker 5 (01:36:00):
Are sentenced to.
Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
I was gonna say, I would be really curious what
the other sentences looked like, because it didn't seem like
that was a default sentence by any means.
Speaker 5 (01:36:10):
Right, and like x Ray had already been there for
six months.
Speaker 6 (01:36:12):
Also, x Ray's nickname is my favorite because it's because
he's got the big glasses, but also his name.
Speaker 5 (01:36:17):
Is Rex and like genius.
Speaker 1 (01:36:22):
Yeah, that is like peak kid brilliance. Yeah, I that's
that's a good point, especially where like you're saying, in
children's media often still, but like especially in the two thousands,
you know, you're taking the like default protagonist for for
(01:36:42):
a movie like this and making the worst possible thing
happen and demonstrating that it was through no fault of
his own. And then it's sort of I don't think
this is like intentionally done. I would guess more that
this is just a Lewis Karr self insert to begin. Yeah,
I'm not totally sure, but you know the director and
the writer if if you don't know, they're both white.
(01:37:03):
But yeah, that it's almost like by seeing that happen
to Shilah buff it creates this runway to understand that
this is happening to every single kid in this place,
and I think, like what you lose there? That I
don't want to come down too hard in this movie
because it's doing so much I have literally never seen
in kids movies. True, but that it doesn't bring up
(01:37:25):
the fact that the black kids at this camp would
have a far worse time, and that I guess the
closest you get to understanding that is through Zero. But Zero,
I mean has compounded issues. I think that the movie
sort of makes it out to be more that he's
unhoused an award of the state and therefore they don't
(01:37:47):
have to care about him and they don't really touch race,
which is bizarre because this movie is willing to discuss racism.
That's literally the whole Sam and Kate story. But I
think it's.
Speaker 6 (01:38:01):
Very much a Colorblind two thousand. It's like, Wow, racism used.
Speaker 5 (01:38:04):
To be so bad.
Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
Now any kid can go to jail.
Speaker 6 (01:38:10):
I will say, just because we talked about kissing Cape
Barlowe and Sam, I'm really glad that they didn't hang him.
I know that they said they were going to hang him,
which would have been I think more historically accurate, but
I was so glad that they did not show him
getting hanged, and that it.
Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
Was shown too, like, yeah, yeah, I think that that
was handled very gracefully.
Speaker 6 (01:38:28):
And I think that not just for the kids, for
me and my little heart, I couldn't have handled it.
Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:38:35):
And then the other thing I was gonna say was
we were just talking about like the kids at the
camp and at the beginning, at the very beginning of
the cold Open, when barf Bag sacrifices himself to the snake,
they are singing dig It at the beginning, and it
feels like the song sixteen Tons to me, like there
was a very similar vibe and it was sort of like,
(01:38:58):
you know, same deal as like working and you're never
going to get out of it, but they're also joking
around and like the background music is digg it. The
kids are not singing diggt in universe, and the kids
are joking around, and it really gives us a sense
that they are kids, and every point it shows them
being kids and it's not like this sort of hardened
(01:39:20):
criminal thing. Like the only kid that you really get
that sense from is the kid who's like watching TV
in the like mess hall or wherever, who gets into
a fight.
Speaker 5 (01:39:30):
Yeah, and even with that, he's like a slightly older kid.
Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
It's he's visibly a little bit older and God only
does how long he's been there too that part.
Speaker 6 (01:39:39):
But yeah, I think that there's a norm of adultifying,
particularly incarcerated kids and especially black kids, where it's like, oh,
they're not normal kids, they're criminals. And like some of
the kids did do things that are crimes. Like I
mean technically, you know, Magnet did a crime, although innocent.
Speaker 5 (01:39:58):
Let them go right, h M.
Speaker 3 (01:40:01):
The puppy, he.
Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
Literally saved a puppy from a horrific practice, like come.
Speaker 5 (01:40:06):
On, and like Twitch stole a car, but he's a
little boy.
Speaker 6 (01:40:10):
Yeah, he's like I just want to go zoom and
it's like, okay, well maybe we should take this kid
go cart.
Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
There's so many like ethical solution, I mean, which is
the story of incarceration. But it's just it's so and
I love I do. I this was the first time
I watching the movie that I really was like, I
guess paying closer attention to Pendance Key specifically. I think
it's like such a well written character where he is
(01:40:39):
being presented as the nice guy, but over the course
of the movie is so clear that he's not the
nice guy. He is the he like tortures zero because
he doesn't think that he will get in trouble for
not being kind to him, and he's right, and the
whole you know government name thing he like explicitly ties
your government to your like that's the name you will
(01:41:03):
contribute to society under. So that's your name, and saying
when he's when they're doing like group or whatever. And
that's where we find out about Magnet and his puppy
is that you know, he is repeating these I think
very like it's giving DNC to me, Like he is
(01:41:24):
he is saying, like, no, what you did was a crime.
It's against the law, and therefore it's bad. And it's
just like, you know, the place he works for doesn't
work if you challenge an institution, and so he while
he is like I think that, like mister sir calls
it like that, like touchy feely, fuzzy stuff, blah blah blah. Yeah,
(01:41:44):
but all Pendansky does is pretend to care. Like we
don't see him ever defend any of the kids. We
don't see him protect them, Like he folds the second
that someone with more power than him asks him to
do something.
Speaker 3 (01:42:00):
He's a coward.
Speaker 1 (01:42:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:42:02):
And also just his response when like everybody's like, don't
teach Hector to read, which is wild, that's that arc
I was like, whoa, hold on, hold on, why don't
we want Hector to read?
Speaker 5 (01:42:17):
Like I get why you don't want him to dig
the hole?
Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
But it's another great like it's so good. There's a
really good video essay that I was rewatching by I
believe Yaharazade or I hope I'm saying her name right,
Yaharazide called holes in the prison industrial complex and she
like ties that explicitly to like, the kids aren't doing
(01:42:41):
anything wrong. They're being told that they are going to
improve themselves, so why would you get in trouble for
literally reading? But again, it's like the institution is based
on barring Zero from the education he deserves because then
it's easier to exploit him. And like, just right darkest.
Speaker 6 (01:43:00):
About the theme of literacy is that they keep the
shovels in uh ad, that says live library.
Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
I thought it was a good touch.
Speaker 6 (01:43:09):
Yeah, I had to pause it, but I was like,
oh no, I didn't notice that before.
Speaker 5 (01:43:15):
That's very upset.
Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
Yeah, there, And also that the oppressors of this movie.
It is kind of a funny, like woman can do
it too, and you're like, it's true, but it's you know,
the people at the top of this operation are white,
and they're all sort of representing different kinds of oppression,
(01:43:37):
where like mister Zur and Panansky are equally bad, but
they are presenting a different approach to being pro incarceration.
Like I it's just it's so well written. And then
the snake nail Polish, I mean, hello.
Speaker 5 (01:43:55):
Love the snake nail Poli.
Speaker 6 (01:43:56):
I love the idea of like the women in this
story having these weapons like kissing.
Speaker 5 (01:44:02):
Kate Barlowe is.
Speaker 6 (01:44:02):
Known, Yes, she shoots people, but then she kisses them
and that's what she's known for. Is this red lipstick
mark that she leaves behind is her sort of like signature,
and then the warden has her nail polish that she
then uses to like put these men in line. And
this idea and like poison being traditionally a preferred method
(01:44:23):
of like violence for women.
Speaker 5 (01:44:26):
I thought that was really interesting. And you know, there
are a lot of women in here, but they make
it count. Wh Yeah, when they're hurting people, they make
it count.
Speaker 3 (01:44:36):
And I don't even mind that they're not the many
women in this movie.
Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
Well, I mean it's about especially because it's about like
a gendered incarcerated like it makes sense. I do think that,
you know, it is good. I guess we got Orange
just the new Black. You know, it's there was media
down the line about incarcerated women, which is equally important
to talk about.
Speaker 3 (01:44:58):
And maybe more with this Disney Plus reboot, which I
wrote down the.
Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
Joke I'm calling it it's not happening.
Speaker 3 (01:45:05):
Well, if it does, they should call it Girl is
the New Boy. And that's the amazing joke I wrote down.
Speaker 1 (01:45:13):
Really good.
Speaker 6 (01:45:13):
I hope that it gets green lit and that they
hire me, and then I want to write the episode
about when one of the girls gets her first period
in the middle of digging her hole, and everybody else
has to help her finish digging her hole because she
has cramps.
Speaker 5 (01:45:26):
And that's womanhood and that's solidarity.
Speaker 1 (01:45:29):
Hire me, that is Disney solidarity. Yeah, as long as
they bring back Sigourney Weaver, because that, I mean that
character would get out of jail. It lickety split, I guess.
The other just contrasting the yeah, because you really only
get like one woman in each timeline, because you have
Madam Zeroni in one timeline kissing Kate Barlowe in another timeline,
(01:45:52):
and Sigourney Weaver, I mean, Stanley Yale's mom is barely
in it.
Speaker 3 (01:45:57):
Like I do.
Speaker 1 (01:45:59):
Like that they go out of their way to show
again that like all of these kids we are led
to believe are from poor backgrounds to different degrees, but
like it, Stanley is from a family that's just scraping by.
They're almost getting evicted, and you still see that there
is like he is emotionally cared for and loved, which
(01:46:20):
I think often you know, like poor parents are made
out to be negligent. I think you can say, although
we don't get to know Zero's mom at all, I
did appreciate that again, like an unhoused character literally, the
two unhoused characters you get in children's media if you
were a kid at this time are Zero and Aladdin,
(01:46:42):
and they are They're both characters who when they take
we know why they're doing it, is like because they
need to survive, and the movies, their respective movies don't
pass judgment on them for doing that. And I appreciated that.
I wish we could have known her more, but that
the movie takes care to say that Zero's mom wasn't negligent.
(01:47:05):
It was all of these systemic issues that separated them
from each other. And again that's just like I wish
that that had almost been emphasized more by letting us
get to know her, because you know, like unhouse characters
are so rare outside of punchlines and getting the full
context for And also that like Zero took the shoes
(01:47:27):
because he was living at the shelter, and you know,
I don't know, I just I kind of forgot about
that portion of his character, and I really thought it
was handled quite well.
Speaker 6 (01:47:41):
Also, he probably wouldn't have taken the shoes if he
could have read so rightly, because he said that he
did not know that they were Sweetfeet's shoes he just
liked them and he took them. And I think that
the you know, the weight of taking those shoes would
have been different. Could he have read like the little
thing that said, oh sweet feet whatever.
Speaker 1 (01:48:01):
His name is, shoes because he just needed shoes. Yeah,
like you're saying like he got arrested for taking from
a paylist. Like the kid just needed shoes and he
wasn't being provided for. I just ah, I love Zero's character.
Speaker 6 (01:48:15):
And the shoes were donated to the shelter, so he
was living at the shelter, those shoes were in.
Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
His mind for him, right, Yeah, totally. I also think
it's interesting that there is acknowledgment that even though Stanley's
family is poor, they are still more socioeconomically privileged over
Zero and his family, because there's that moment that Zero's describing,
Oh yeah, my mom would sometimes have to like leave
(01:48:41):
me at a park, you know, I would go to
Laney Park, and Stanley's like, oh yeah, I used to
go there all the time parentheses for fun with my family,
and Zero says, yeah, I used to sleep, you know,
in the tube under the swinging bridge or something. And
you see the look on Stanley's face is like whoa
like his privilege is checked. And yeah, I just appreciate
(01:49:04):
that the movie acknowledges that class difference. And I also
think it's really effective in the Pananski character finding Zero
so worthless. Part of the reason he has it out
for him is that Zero can't read, and Pandanski treats
that as as though it's a personal failure of Zero's.
(01:49:24):
Oh he if he can't read, he must not be smart.
Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
But it's so clearly is because he can't. And it's
like Pandanski acts as if because Zero can't read, he
also cannot hear, like it is just like it is
so oh, he's like to me, to me on this
viewing the most evil character in the movie, because he's
a fucking coward, like he does think he's a good person.
(01:49:48):
I very least don't think mister sirr or Sigourney Weaver
are like I'm an amazing They're like, yeah, I'm a
piece of shit and I and I don't care if
children die. I think Pandanski goes home at the end
of the night is like I'm doing right by these boys,
and there I'm better and there's I mean, I feel
like every kid encountered a teacher like that who is
(01:50:11):
like cruel to and not no disrespect to the teachers,
Like but but I mean, I clearly remember the art
teacher at my elementary school who would pick on kids
and say it was like for their own good and
clearly had no issue with I'm like the art teacher.
Speaker 6 (01:50:29):
Come on, Teaching is a tough job, and I'm so
glad that there are people who are committed to doing
it and doing it well.
Speaker 5 (01:50:36):
Few are and.
Speaker 6 (01:50:36):
Fewer people because administrators at schools are making it so
much more difficult, and then the turnover is getting outrageous.
But there's always one teacher who is like, I just
want to be able to have beef with children, and.
Speaker 1 (01:50:52):
You're like what, And so often I feel like they're
in administrative positions. Now I'm just projecting my mom's entire career,
but like like it's yeah, I don't know, Pandanzky piece
of shit. And then I do like that they add
the bit at the end of like he doesn't even
have a degree, because what, like what teacher would agree
to work there that isn't fraudulent?
Speaker 3 (01:51:15):
Yeah, yeah, So a lot of that I found to
be very effective in the movie. There is a joke
that rubbed me the wrong way. At the very end
where whatever officials show up with Stanley's lawyer, I don't
know if it's like DA's or something, but it's like
(01:51:36):
people with some kind of authority, and one of them
recognizes mister Sirrh and mister Surr gets arrested because he's
in violation of his parole and there is a reveal
of his real name, mister Surr's real name, which is
marian Sevillo, and the boys are like, marian, I didn't
know that was a man's name, and he's like, it
(01:51:58):
isn't and it's meant to like escalate him and be
one more layer of humiliation for him because he has
a quote unquote woman's name, And it just felt like
a cheap joke that was below the movie in general,
I think.
Speaker 1 (01:52:13):
But yeah, yeah, I didn't love it.
Speaker 5 (01:52:16):
And it's like it's genuinely not funny.
Speaker 1 (01:52:19):
No, no, yes, not for nothing.
Speaker 6 (01:52:21):
I'll admit when a joke is like, oh this is problematic,
but also I giggle a little despite myself, But like
the Merry joke is not even there's nothing funny about it.
It's not even like a silly sounding name. It's a
very normal sounding name that is just oh, girls have it.
Speaker 1 (01:52:37):
Yeah, it's just a yeah as a Jamie. He's fine, fine, right,
it's actually it's great having a gender fluid name. It's fun. Yeah,
that was not great, but I think, you know, a
comparatively small.
Speaker 3 (01:52:53):
Totally yeah, one of the few blemishes on an otherwise
perfect movie.
Speaker 1 (01:52:57):
Yeah, I think that's everything I had.
Speaker 6 (01:53:02):
I wanted to say something about the music. Obviously we've
talked about dig it. There is a lullaby. We didn't
really talk about the lullaby very much. That when Elia
was taking the pig up the mountain, he had to
sing to the pig, and it was like if only,
if only at the woodpecker's size, the bark on the
trees were as soft as the sguise.
Speaker 5 (01:53:23):
There's something about wolves. I don't remember the rest of it.
Speaker 3 (01:53:27):
Yeah, and you know he's supposed to sing it when
he takes Madame Seroni up, which, as we all know,
drop the ball on that.
Speaker 5 (01:53:37):
Should it turned around taken the next boat. I stand
by that.
Speaker 6 (01:53:40):
And then I think that it's really sweet that Stanley
does sing this song when they get to God's Thumb
and when Hector is drinking the water and it makes
him strong, and that's kind of like the last piece
of sort of breaking the curse.
Speaker 5 (01:53:58):
And the other thing is.
Speaker 6 (01:54:00):
They did a like studio song version of that song
in the end credits, if you stay till the very
end of the credits there they do that song as
the last one, and then there's a scene of Zero
saying like Madam Zeroni's line that if you forget to
come for Madame Zeroni, your family will be cursed forever
(01:54:23):
and all it.
Speaker 4 (01:54:25):
Yeah, however, the kid's voice, so he does a line
reading of that, and it's very cute, but the song
actually kind of slaps and it's giving, like very early
two thousand's, late nineties.
Speaker 6 (01:54:37):
Like soft rock, sort of like a Matchbox twenty Moby.
Speaker 2 (01:54:41):
There's a Moby.
Speaker 1 (01:54:42):
Song in it. I did not know that that's of
the time there is bravely a Moby's song.
Speaker 6 (01:54:49):
But so I looked at I rewound the video and
I looked at who because I always like reading the
little music things and I wasn't paying attention, and I
saw that it was by somebody called like fiction Plane
or something like that, and hold, then I wrote it down.
I don't know why I'm pretending that I can't read.
Uh yeah, fiction Plane. They sang the song if Only,
(01:55:12):
and the lead singer of fiction Plane is a man
named Joe Sumner, who is Sting's son.
Speaker 1 (01:55:21):
No way, yeah wow. And Sting was in the Disney
Expanded Universe because of Emperor's New Groove. I wonder if
he pulled some strings there, if he pulled some stings
Sting some stings there, if anyone ever, I think it's
it's It is occasionally re uploaded to YouTube. There is like,
(01:55:44):
I don't know why I find it so compelling. Well,
it's an interesting documentary about production. But Sting was originally
like The Emperor's New Grave Groove. The production of that
movie is fascinating.
Speaker 5 (01:55:54):
But it was.
Speaker 1 (01:55:55):
Originally a much more serious story and then turned into
David's Bade comedy. But Sting wrote this really like he
thought he was doing Elton john and The Lion King.
So he wrote all of these serious stories, and his
wife was making a documentary, assuming like, oh, we're gonna
you're gonna be like Elton. You're Elton john Ning, so
(01:56:16):
I should document this, and you just see the production
completely fall apart. There's so many shots of Sting being
bummed out in his mansion because he's like, they deleted
in another one of my songs, or I think he's British.
Speaker 5 (01:56:28):
Yes, yeah, he's British.
Speaker 1 (01:56:31):
But but it's so interesting. It's specific watching Sting slowly
realize all of his music is going to be deleted.
And it's actually a David Spade comedy. If you ever
wanted to see Sting become really depressed in the space
of eighty minutes, it's an interesting documentary.
Speaker 6 (01:56:48):
Why would I want them to do that? Did Joe
Sumner's father?
Speaker 1 (01:56:53):
My theory is that Disney was like, we we got
a tossing a bone, we got a tossing a bone,
we did a so Dirty on Emperor's New Groove, another
Earth a Kit joint. Yeah, it's all connected, it really is.
Speaker 6 (01:57:07):
But yeah, seeing that and like the song was actually
really interesting because I found it to be very moving
and it was just sort of like, what if the
bark on the trees was as soft a disguise? What
if things were easy? What if life was different? And
I was just like, yeah, what if what if? Joe?
Speaker 5 (01:57:24):
And just the the Sting reveal was very surprising to.
Speaker 1 (01:57:29):
Me, just when you didn't think Sting was going to
get his way into the holes expanded universe. There he is.
Speaker 5 (01:57:35):
And then I like did some digging.
Speaker 6 (01:57:41):
I did some digging on Joe Sumner and I saw
that he later invented an app in like twenty ten
or twenty eleven that enabled people who go to concerts
to upload their videos to this app, and all the
people that went to the concert would upload their yes
that they took and it would basically create a concert
(01:58:03):
movie with the different angles that people oh did and the.
Speaker 5 (01:58:07):
Apps until like twenty sixteen and bring it back.
Speaker 2 (01:58:10):
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (01:58:11):
Yeah, that would do so much better now too, right,
I think like, bring it back?
Speaker 5 (01:58:16):
Yeah, Joe, if you're listening, bring it back.
Speaker 1 (01:58:19):
Joe biggest fans, We're big fans. I'm sorry to make
fun of when your dad was upset about and for
his new groove. I would have been upset too, But yeah,
I just wanted to.
Speaker 6 (01:58:30):
Bring that little factory because I thought that was fascinating,
very interesting and unexpected.
Speaker 1 (01:58:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:58:36):
Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about?
Speaker 5 (01:58:40):
No, I'm good, I got it.
Speaker 1 (01:58:41):
I don't think so. Yeah, I'm going to reread Wayside School.
That's my I.
Speaker 3 (01:58:46):
Love those books so much. I haven't read them in
like thirty years.
Speaker 1 (01:58:50):
So they're so silly.
Speaker 3 (01:58:53):
Well, as we discussed, the movie does pass the Bechdel test,
albeit briefly. It passes. It passes a pass as far
as our nipple scale, though, where we rate the movie
based on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining
it through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh boy, I don't know.
(01:59:18):
I feel like, are sure it applies.
Speaker 1 (01:59:20):
Our scale is kind of tricky to apply here. I mean,
I think in terms of like intersectionality, this movie does
well in that it brings up issues I've never seen
brought up in uh children's movie about like justice and
oppression and school to prison pipeline, and this movie is
doing so much.
Speaker 3 (01:59:42):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:59:43):
You feel like the nipple scale is like difficult to
apply here.
Speaker 6 (01:59:45):
It is.
Speaker 5 (01:59:47):
Yeah, I give it.
Speaker 1 (01:59:51):
I would say I give it five wholes.
Speaker 3 (01:59:54):
File Okay, so not the nipple scale today is the
whole scale zero to five holes.
Speaker 1 (02:00:01):
This is the movie holes. So I'm giving it five holes.
Speaker 3 (02:00:03):
Yeah, say I'm giving it five holes the end.
Speaker 6 (02:00:07):
If I had to give it on a scale of
zero to five holes, holes, yes, five holes, six holes.
Even I know I'm an extra hole because they did
one last holes like one.
Speaker 1 (02:00:19):
Last job, and the bonus hole could forget.
Speaker 6 (02:00:23):
If I genuinely had to do it on a nipple scale,
I think I would actually give it, like surprisingly, like
three and a half nipples, like a lot of nipples
for a woman free.
Speaker 7 (02:00:33):
Movie one woman per decade, just because like when we
talk about intersectionality, yes we're talking about women and representation
of women, but the things that matter at the end
of the day are deconstructing these systems and it's talking
about how these systems are flawed and bringing attention to
(02:00:53):
these systems that do affect women.
Speaker 6 (02:00:55):
And even though they're showing it in the context of
it affecting teenage boys, unless you're Disney US, it still
is something that is I think, and that positive for
intersectional feminism. So like I because there aren't that many women,
I can't give it five nipples, And because you know,
(02:01:16):
at the end of the day, it's like this camp
was the problem, not like the whole system. The state's
not the problem. The camp is the problem. Right, But
like three and a half nipples still pretty solid showing
there for a movie again, like half a.
Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
Woman in it, truly, I mean, and yeah, I hope
that I wish that this movie led to more media
like or just kids media that addressed issues like this,
but it is still, twenty plus years later, pretty singular
for the issues that because I mean, like if if
(02:01:54):
a story like this kid, because I loved Nickel Boys,
but it's very much not a movie for children.
Speaker 3 (02:01:59):
And well, if you count Paddington Too, that's I mean,
I mean Paddington and Paddington Too are again indictments of
the prison industrial complex of like anti immigrant hate and racism.
So it's true that Paddington movies do it.
Speaker 1 (02:02:18):
So that's two there. But yeah, no, I mean, I
I I don't know. It's it's a very special movie.
I agree like it kind of broke the nipple scale
in my head. But I think your your rationalization makes
a lot of sense.
Speaker 3 (02:02:31):
Grama totally thank.
Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
You for engaging with the show in a way that
we were not willing to.
Speaker 5 (02:02:36):
That's what I'm here for.
Speaker 6 (02:02:37):
I ask the hard questions, how many nipples does this
movie really deserve?
Speaker 3 (02:02:41):
Thanks for thanks for poking holes in our system by.
Speaker 6 (02:02:49):
I will also say Utopia tries not like this particular
set of issues, but Utopia does.
Speaker 1 (02:02:56):
Try to be like haters.
Speaker 3 (02:02:59):
Yeah, I would. It tries and it fails.
Speaker 5 (02:03:01):
Yeah, I didn't say it succeeded, but he tried. Yeah,
there's some deep.
Speaker 6 (02:03:05):
Laws there where it's like, okay, but yeah, some people
are predators.
Speaker 5 (02:03:11):
No, but like they tried to fix racism with.
Speaker 1 (02:03:16):
Animals, they're like, we didn't quite. Disney was like, we
didn't quite do it with holes. Let's let's try the
animal copaganda movie.
Speaker 6 (02:03:24):
There.
Speaker 1 (02:03:24):
I do appreciate ultimately, and I feel like I'm talking
a lot of shit. I'm trying. I am trying to
get work. But anyways, that Disney was very hands off
with this movie, because I think if Disney had been
hands on with this movie, we would have gotten, you know,
whatever this movie's version of Jim Carrey's count Oloff was.
(02:03:45):
I think that it is like critical to the story
working that you are scared for these kids and that
you understand where they're coming from, and that their antagonists
are you know, elevated, like the mister Sir is goofy
in some ways, but not so goofy that he ceases
to be scary.
Speaker 3 (02:04:02):
And yeah, totally, I think that.
Speaker 6 (02:04:05):
It's really a testament to the fact that like, you know,
we talk a lot of shit generally, we not the
three of us, but we society talk a lot of
shit on these major corporations. And it's proof that they
are capable of making these thoughtful movies and they can
do it if they.
Speaker 1 (02:04:24):
Want to, right, So it's like, so why aren't they
doing it?
Speaker 6 (02:04:27):
And it is also sometimes commercially successful when they do it,
and I think that it's a good reminder, like, hey,
remember when you did this thing and you did it
the way the creatives asked you to and it was
wildly successful and it had a lot of a listers
in it, and people are still talking about it twenty
years later as a like shining example of the way
to do things.
Speaker 5 (02:04:47):
What if you rebooted that, What if you rebooted that spirit?
Speaker 1 (02:04:51):
They're like, well, no, let's do cgi dogs for Lady
in the trimp. Let's do that One's.
Speaker 5 (02:04:57):
That word that's a joke, right, that's that's a joke.
Speaker 1 (02:04:59):
Oh no, that's exit that. It came out five years ago. Unfortunately,
it's very scary. It's a scary watch. It's scarier than
mister sir.
Speaker 5 (02:05:06):
I did think a.
Speaker 6 (02:05:07):
Lady in the Tramp earlier because The Boy Dog is
another example of a house representation in children's media.
Speaker 1 (02:05:14):
Forget I believe, I believe Lady in the I think
Lady is Tessa Thompson.
Speaker 3 (02:05:20):
Sure, I never saw it.
Speaker 1 (02:05:22):
I think I was the only person that's yeah, it's
Tessa Thompson and Justin Thurreau.
Speaker 3 (02:05:28):
And you're like, yeah, I was too busy gearing up
for the live action Pinocchio Disney reboot.
Speaker 1 (02:05:37):
So shout out to the Pinocchio Wars on the Matreon.
When speaking of which, Okay, let's wrap it. I'm hungry,
let's wrap up the show.
Speaker 6 (02:05:44):
I just wanna say one last thing. Disney has been
good to me personally, and I do you think follow
the checks and I I'm just gonna say another thing
and I forgot, So it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (02:05:56):
Disney is good to me and that it made and
or my favorite show.
Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
I will say there, Disney is still making cool, weird
stuff like I mean, you mentioned Bunked as a great example.
I just finished work. I hope it gets renewed for
all manner of reasons. But like a super silly kids
show called Stugo. So if you have a kid, and
I think I would say like the Seven or eight range.
(02:06:21):
That's a very silly, fun show that's on the Disney
Channel right now. It's like speaking to your point, Grama.
They can do it, so why not do it more?
Because people like it. This movie did make its money
back and then some. It made believe seventy one million
dollars off of a seventeen million dollar budget. But as
is the way with many movies that have a lot
(02:06:45):
of like author involvement and Disney being hands off, it
does seem like the price for that was that everyone
took a pay cut, because you cannot have a stacked
cast like this for seventeen million dollars without a serious
pay cut and throwing kids into one hundred and thirty
degree holes. So while it is amazing that this is successful,
(02:07:07):
I do feel like there is always some sort of
exchange of like, oh, you want to make your perfect art,
here's four dollars, bitch, you know. Like, but but I'm
glad that this cast. I mean, I just feel like
it's a perfectly cast movie. It's so good, it's.
Speaker 6 (02:07:20):
Very well done. I hope they do more holes in
the world.
Speaker 1 (02:07:25):
Yeah, yeah, Karama, thank you so much for coming back.
You've covered such an interesting wide variety of movies on
the show.
Speaker 6 (02:07:33):
I'm saying on the record, bring me back for Stepmom
if you ever get around.
Speaker 3 (02:07:37):
Yes, absolutely yes, And then so it'll be it's two
Disney movies, two Jordan Peele movies.
Speaker 1 (02:07:43):
Oh yeah, and then now and step in the future
starting a new chapter.
Speaker 6 (02:07:48):
I'm gonna be like Tarantino. He said he was gonna
like do eight movies and then never come back.
Speaker 1 (02:07:52):
Which you can't wait for that part, right, He's really
dragging out the last one.
Speaker 5 (02:07:59):
I ever come back.
Speaker 3 (02:08:01):
No, you can come back after that, please do if
you want. Anyway, where can people check out your stuff?
Follow you on social media, etcetera?
Speaker 6 (02:08:11):
Yeah, at Karama Drama, on all the platforms that you
might use. I started talking about libraries recently on my
TikTok because I'm a big, big slat for libraries, love them.
Speaker 5 (02:08:24):
I have for library cards.
Speaker 1 (02:08:26):
Wow, hell yeah.
Speaker 6 (02:08:27):
You can have a lot of library cards and get
a lot of different things with them.
Speaker 5 (02:08:31):
I highly encourage you to go get do it for
Hector Zeroni.
Speaker 1 (02:08:35):
The Hector Zerni Memorial Library.
Speaker 6 (02:08:37):
Go get a library card. Where can you guys be
found using your.
Speaker 5 (02:08:41):
Library cards or not?
Speaker 6 (02:08:43):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (02:08:43):
You could? You can find us on mostly just Instagram
these days. At Bechdel Cast, you could follow our Patreon
aka maatreon at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast. We
have shouted out The Pinocchio Wars, one of our best series,
but we've had it since twenty seventeen. So for five
dollars a month, you get two bonus episodes every single
(02:09:04):
month and access to our back catalog which goes back
almost ten years, so there's a lot of spicy content.
That's actually where you will be able to listen to
us discuss the prison industrial conflicts for a second time
if you so choose, because we are covering Shawshank Redemption
over on the Matreon this month, which is Holes for
grown ups.
Speaker 3 (02:09:25):
Yes, I basically decided that for my birthday month, I
wanted to do Holes, Shawshank Redemption and Oh Brother, Where
Art Though? Which is a movie about three men escaping
from prison, and one of them is Tim Blake Nelson
who's also in Holes, So it's all connected, just the
way the plot of Holes is.
Speaker 5 (02:09:44):
And both movies feature down in the river to pray.
Speaker 4 (02:09:47):
Right Yes wow, yeah, it thinks that they changed it
to valley because there's no water.
Speaker 3 (02:09:55):
Yes, so that is what's happening over on the Matreon.
As it is my birthday this month, it would be
a nice little gift to me and to the podcast
in general if you subscribe to the Matreon if you
haven't already listeners and.
Speaker 1 (02:10:11):
Uh, with that, let's go to the yell NAT's pool
and watch a shoe commercial with our best friend, a
basketball player playing a baseball player.
Speaker 3 (02:10:22):
Okay, bye, bye bye. 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 Volskrosenski.
Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and
(02:10:45):
a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about
the podcast, please visit link tree slash Bechdel Cast
The Bechdel Cast News
Hosts And Creators
Caitlin Durante
Jamie Loftus
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