The Apartment with Emily Heller

This week, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Emily Heller discreetly go to their colleague's apartment to discuss... The Apartment. 

Follow Emily at @mremilyheller on Instagram, and check out What Is...? A Jeopardy Podcast!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Burn attention Beck to cast listeners.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
We're going on tour.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
We really are. And it's not just any tour. It's
a tour in the UK and it's a tour where
we are covering Titanic and.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Shrek brilliantly titled the Shrek Tannic Tour. Yes, Shrek Tornic.
We're working on it. There's a couple there's a couple
months before the tour, but yes, we're really excited. We're
currently doing five shows in the UK, with more shows
to be added. Stay tuned at the end of May.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yes, starting with two shows in London on May twenty second,
once at six point thirty that's a Shrek show, one
at nine pm that is a Titanic show. Then we
are scooting over to Oxford on May twenty fourth we
are covering Titanic. Okay, Then we're scooting up to Edinburgh

(00:59):
on May twenty sixth and doing Strek.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
If you're a Scottish Titanic fan, you are going to
have to commute. And I know that that's not but listen, Yeah,
you live in Edinburgh recovering Shrek.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but also you're welcome. And then
if you do want to see Titanic, you can head
down to Manchester. We're doing a show on May twenty eighth,
and that's a Titanic show.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
So as your Bechdel Cast allies in the US can
attest to. Our live shows are super fun. It is
like a live episode plus a bunch of fun stuff.
We dress up, we bring audience members on stage sometimes
we do. It's just it's big and goofy and silly.
And we're covering two of our favorite movies that are

(01:47):
Bechtel Cast canon, so we want to have a good time.
We'll be bringing exclusive merch and we will be doing
meet and greets before and after the show. We want
to meet everybody and we're really really excited. So if
you if you live in those areas, get those dang
tickets because these shows will sell.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Out, Yes they will, So head over to our link
Tree link Tree slash Bechdel Cast. All the tickets are
posted there. And like we said, we're working on at
least one more show in a different city, so stay tuned.
We're hoping to announce that soon. And otherwise, grab your
tickets for the Shrektanic.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
And enjoy the episode on the Bechdel cast.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
The questions asked if movies have.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephi
bast start changing with the Bechdel cast.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Hey, mister Jamie, Yes, mister Caitlyn, I'm mister Caitlin to you,
Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yes, mister Kaitlin, I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Need you to give me the key to your apartment
so I can fu a bunch of people there, and
then I'll give you a promotion.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Maybe Okay, Well, here's the thing. You'll never see me
change the sheets. It's maybe implied that I did, but
it's not really implied that I did. So if you're
cool with me getting promoted and maybe sleeping on your com,
that's okay with me, mister Caitlin. Is Jack Lemon sleeping

(03:25):
on his boss has come the whole mooks? So he
comes home and he's so tired, and I like his
posture isn't that of someone who has the energy to
change their sheets?

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah? No, yeah, so he's sleeping and come and I
don't care about that. I just care that you buy
me a bunch of alcohol.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I'm assuming you're not paying me enough to keep the
var stocked. But like you know, fingers crossed for a promotion,
I'm trying to boy boss my way to the top
of insurance.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
I don't understand the logistics of the sex apartment economy,
but what I.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I love it. It's so movie where who knows why
they need to fucket his apartment but he's sleeping, got
his bosses come that. Really, I couldn't stop thinking about
that the whole time because then Shirley McClain, I'm like,
now she's in the cum sheets on the worst day
of her life. Come on, I know, I hope he

(04:20):
changed the sheets for her. Doubt it, Jesus doesn't seem
like it, because the scenes moved so quickly. I hope
the doctor insisted. I feel like he, of anyone in
the movie, would be like, hold on, maybe we should
change the sheets. Anyways. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My
name's Jamie Loftis.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
My name is Caitlin Derante. This is our show where
we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to initiate
larger conversations but the Bechdel Test, Yes, what is it?

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, Caitlyn, I can tell you, as I've said close
to five hundred times before. Isn't that scared? Anyways, They're Bechdel.
Now I'm going to fuck it up. The bechel Test
is a media metric created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often
called the Bechdel Wallace Test because she co created it
with her friend Liz Wallace. Originally appeared in Alison Bechdel's

(05:16):
iconic comic collection Dykes to Watch out For and was
originally about a more intersectional test than it tends to
be used, as it was pointing out that women rarely
speak to each other in movies as a way of
talking about how queer women are never in movies and
never have relationships with each other. In any case, it
was written as a bit and then became a metric

(05:38):
that people used to this day. The version we used
to start the discussion is or end the discussion, really
is we require that there be two characters of a
marginalized gender with names who talk to each other about
something other than a man for more than two lines
of dialogue, and it should be meaningful dialogue. For example,

(06:00):
if you are the doctor's his wife and you're talking
about chicken soup with Charlie McClain.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
That may be a.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Pass wow, but today we are continuing. It's been a
Billy Wilder year for us. It really is.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
It's true because we just covered Sunset Boulevard not long ago.
Looks like we will be covering if we haven't already
by the time this episode gets released. But it's a
classic movie march on our Matreon and it appears as
though the two movies that are going to win the
poll are Singing in the Rain and Billy Wilder's Some

(06:38):
Like It Hot.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
And today we're covering the Apartment with an incredible guest.
Let's get her in the mix.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Let's do it. She's a comedian, TV writer, and host
of the upcoming Jeopardy podcast entitled What Is a Jeopardy Podcast.
You can also check out her Comedy Central special Ice
Thickeners and her album Pasta. It's Emily Hiller. Welcome back.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me so excited
to be talking about this, especially as someone who I think,
prior to this past year, had seen zero Billy Wilder
movies and now I think I've seen like five wow.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
So it's like it's been a Billy Wilder year for
me too nice.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
What brought it out? It feels like he's back. He's
with us again.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
What he's not?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Like he's Jesus, He's back. What threw you into the
Billy Wilder expanded universe?

Speaker 3 (07:39):
So I'm like, famously not a movie person.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Yes, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I should not be here.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
I so it like it kind of takes a lot
for me to like get into watching movies, but I
recently sort of decided I want to learn how to
write a farce movie, and so I just have been
watching a ton and so I've been getting recommendations for
people and like working my way through lists, and it
just so happens that Billy Wilder is like a master

(08:10):
of that genre also, and so we watch some like
it hot, we watch Midnight.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Oh, I haven't seen that.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
It's so good and so farcy and so wild is
it Wilder?

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Though? Thank you for taking that. I was like, are
we going to leave it on the floor?

Speaker 1 (08:28):
No, I'm going to pick it up and put it
where it belongs.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
They're professional.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
It's like the most complicated farst plot ever, where it's
like this like woman gambler drifter comes into town and
sneaks into this high society event and she gets sniffed
out by this guy who then hires her to seduce
away the man who is culding him. Whoa, And she's
pretending to be like a duchess the whole time. And

(08:56):
meanwhile there is this like taxi driver who has fallen
in love with her, who's like hunting her down, and
it's just the it culminates in this like incredible ballroom scene.
It's just it's really it's really great. But then yeah,
we also watched Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment was one
of the ones where it had been kind of recommended
for the farce list. But it's not a farce. It's

(09:19):
absolutely not a farce.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
No, it's like, I love how like ambiguous it is
in genre too, because it like switches a couple of
different times.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yes, there are some like real hard cuts between like
genre scenes too, where you're like it'll go from the
most dramatic moment of the movie to like one of
the funniest visuals of the whole thing. But it does
have like a lot in common with his other like
farce films or just it's just like the very tight
writing and the very efficient character intros and stuff like

(09:53):
he's just so good at that for sure.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, I'm so excited that you've done so many I
want to much Midnight now, right.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
It's so good. Yeah, it's kind of a b side
of his Yeah, it was really. It was like one
of those ones where it was like a bunch of
the movies on the list, like something like it Hot.
It was very easy to find where to stream that,
but Midnight I feel like we ended up watching it
like streaming on some like weird Russian like YouTube or something,
so it's harder to track down because I mean the
ending I don't I think is like maybe not that good.

(10:23):
But yeah, it's not like a classic. But yeah, there
are some others on the list that I can recommend
as well. But yeah, I'm still watching farce as. I'm
still enjoying them. But it has gotten me to watch
more movies, which like, for some reason it needs to
be part of a series like TV's really easy for
me because I'm like, I understand where this fits in
with everything else I'm watching, you know what I mean?

(10:44):
But for movies, it just feels like, I don't know
why it's so hard for me to like get hard
for a movie.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Oh, I love it. I'm like, give me just a
single isolated story that I don't have to keep watching
these characters again.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
The things Caitlin has seen in theaters who would turn
your head around three hundred and sixty years it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I saw stump the yard and theaters twice hell yea wow,
you know, and others. But anyway, well, before we talk
much more about Billy Wilder and the Apartment, tell us
about your podcast.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, I'm very excited. I'm starting a new podcast with
my friend John Colin called What Is a Jeopardy Podcast,
which was sort of born out of the fact that
like John and I became friends because we are Jeopardy.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Fans, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
And yeah, it was like I was just like on
Twitter looking for someone to say something about something that
was like grinding my gears about a certain Jeopardy contestant,
and I found John tweeting about it. And we also
realized that there are no Jeopardy podcasts. There's just the
official one and that's it.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Really.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
There are no like good I mean there have been
like a few that have like no listeners. Wow, burn
I listened to like one or two of them, and
they sound like they're being done at gunpoint.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
That is always I'm always, like really delighted to find
that there are podcasts that still do not exist, and
especially because now I get to listen to you talking
about Jeopardy.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
I mean, there's no comedy podcast about Jeopardy. Forgive me.
I'm sure I'll get corrected if I'm wrong, but work
on your pr if that's the case, because I didn't
find you.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Come on the show.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
But yeah, I'm very excited, especially just because weirdly, Jeopardy
has gone through a few changes in the last few years,
aside from just like the death of Alex Trebek, which
led to that like very tumultuous search for a new host,
but they also have new executive producers who have been
developing this like sort of more tournament forward culture there

(13:00):
I guess where they're really sort of fostering more like
Jeopardy celebs, like personalities who they keep bringing back for
various tournaments and stuff, so you get more familiar with
the people who are on the show, and it just
feels like, there is a lot to talk about, and
we're launching with the start of the Tournament of Champions,
which was delayed because of the writers strike and is

(13:22):
the biggest pool of contestants that they've ever had in
the Tournament of Champions. Also, for the first time in
Jeopardy history, the winner of Celebrity Jeopardy is competing in
the regular Tournament of Champions.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Wait, they're throwing a celebrity out into yeah, among the normies.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
The winner of Celebrity Jeopardy for season thirty nine was
Ike Barenholtz, and they invited him to compete in the
Tournament of Champions.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Wow, Ike Barenholtz, that skins. Oh yeah, he has the
vibe of someone who would excel at Jeopardy. I'm calling
him a dork.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Oh yeah, Well, he had auditioned for Jeopardy before he
was famous.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
H that's cool.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
So he was like, he trained, he was excited, he
was ready and yeah. So he's competing and like he's
matched up against one of like the top five seeds
of the season, so he's gonna get his ass handed
to him. And it's very exciting, amazing. But it's like
the guy who's probably gonna beat him is like one
of clearly the nicest people who you will ever see

(14:24):
on Jeopardy. And he's also the guy who helped not
scab for the TOC.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
He's like, oh, okay, I was curious because I know
that that was a huge thing with Jeopardy.

Speaker 5 (14:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yes, it was a huge thing this year where they
were going to proceed with the Tournament of Champions even
as the Jeopardy writers were on strike, and they were
going to do it using reused clues, so they were
going to do it without the writers. And ray La Land,
who is a professional set decorator from Canada, went online
and was like, as a union man, I cannot in

(14:57):
good conscience compete in the Tournament of Champions if it's
going to happen without the participation of the Guild writers.
And all of the other top seeds of the tournament
were like, we're with you, ray I love that, and
so yeah, it was like a beautiful nerdy snowball that
really warmed my heart. And that's the guy who's probably

(15:20):
gonna kick Ike's ass in the first round.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Good for him. I hope that, you know. I Barenholtz
is like, you know, I mean if you got to
get your ass handed to you by someone. It might
as well be a good person.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Might as well be ray La Land, the sweetest man
in Jeopardy history. But yeah, so I'm I'm very excited.
Our first episode is going to air the week after
the first full week of the Tournament of Champions, so
we're going to get right into it. Two very big
Jeopardy fans who are not smart enough to be on
Jeopardy just talking shit about everyone's favorite game show.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Love it.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Hell, yes, Oh, I'm so excited to listen. I also
like it's always like when I'm listening to a podcast
about a show, I'm always fifty thousand times more likely
to actually engage with the show and like have a
ritual and oh, I'm so excited.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Oh good. Yeah, we're hoping that it will still be
like appealing to people who haven't watched every episode from
the week before. Like it's gonna be fast moving, it's
gonna be basically covering the games from the week before,
but there's always stuff that John catches that I missed,
and like hopefully there are things that I catch that
John missed, And then there's just like general Jeopardy chat

(16:27):
and like we end every episode with some like deep
dive on one of the topics from Final Jeopardy, just
so we can learn more about it and hopefully be
better at trivia in the future. So hopefully there's enough
in there even if you aren't like a diehard Jeopardy fan.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Loveully, I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Well, back to the Apartment, I guess seamless seamless?

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yes, yes, wonderful dismount.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
What is a nineteen sixty movie that was marketed as
a comedy but also takes a hard turn in the
second act?

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:05):
What is the Apartment? Anyway? So, Emily, you had not
seen it until pretty recently, is that right?

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Yeah? I watched it on Monday, Okay, well there you go.
Or Tuesday, Yeah, I watched it very recently. Yes, I
watched it this week. I'm very excited to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Welcome to the folds.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
And weirdly, I watched it on Tuesday night and Tuesday
in the morning, I was like talking to one of
my coworkers and I was like, how's it going, what
did you get up to last night? And he was like,
I watched The Apartment was so good, And I was
like Oh my gosh, I'm about to watch it.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
What a coincidence.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, something's in the air. Billy Wilder is like, I've
been seeing that a lot of my friends are watching
his stuff on letterbox. I'm like, I don't know what
it is, but he's back. He's back, He's.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Back his ghost.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
I hope the farce is back. I feel like it's
been a slow push and return to farce appreciation.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
I have a lot of reason to think that Farce
is coming back.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
God that would fucking rock.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, I hope. So, not to brag or anything, but
Jamie and I moderated a Q and a panel for
bottoms and bottoms feels very farcy to me.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Oh, I've got to see it. I still haven't seen it,
but that is a good argument for me to see
it now.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, it's aesome.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
One of the things that my you know, not to
defer to what a man says, but one of the
things that my that my husband said that as we've
been talking about Farce just sort of incessantly for the
last year and a half, is he was like, I
feel like the fact that maximalism is so big now
means that it is the right time for first to
come back, because fars movies are about like just so

(18:44):
many plots coming in and coming together, like it's things
piled on things. But again, this movie is not a farce.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Right, But we'll cover more farces in the future on
the podcasts. We will, Jamie, what is your history with
The Apartment?

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Oh, I have a pretty extensive history with this movie.
I know that because we just covered Sunset Boulevard. I
will glaze over it quickly. But I took a class
in college bravely called Wilder, Allen and Kaufman, a concept
that has aged really well across the board. But where,

(19:24):
oh my cat's here? Where everyone Casper is present? Casper? Okay, listeners.
Casper's newer to the mix, so you might be on
a first name basis with him, as you are with Flea. However,
Casper's superpower is that he can watch whole movies with me.

(19:45):
He can sit motionless for two hours, eyes locked like Casp.
I made him a letterboxed account because he is watching it.
His system is five stars if he did fall asleep,
one star if he did And that's his system. But

(20:05):
we watched The Apartment.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
But yeah, no, I took a class where there was
a whole sort of like section. We talked about Billy
Wilder movies for a month and I really really loved it.
The Alan portion of the class I got in trouble
a couple of times, but the Wilder part was my favorite.
I really kind of fell in love with Sunset Boulevard.
I really loved the Apartment. I mean we were sort

(20:28):
of covering the hits. I wish we had been encouraged
to watch the b sides. Maybe we were and I
was drunk, I don't know, like I was twenty, I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, but the.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Apartment was one of my favorites that we covered. I
really loved it. I had never seen a movie quite
like it at the time, And yeah, I have watched
it a couple of times over the years since then,
and it very least cemented my permanent and enduring love
of Shirley maclain. Just such a rare, wonderful like every

(21:04):
era of her career is unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
I mean, especially for me, who, like, for the first
thirty years of my life, the only thing I knew
about Shirley McLain I knew from the Animaniacs opening theme
songs that she maybe uses a crystal ball that was
all about her that for many years, it's still the
first thing I think about when I hear her name,

(21:28):
because I was just the exact right age for the
animaniacs to imprint on me that same Shirley McLain was
like a woo woo psychic god bless.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
I remember that now, but I haven't thought about that
in like twenty years. That's so before college. I wasn't
familiar with anything she had done when she was younger.
And she's incredible in this movie. I really love. I
feel like, for its time, it's doing so many things
that no movies are doing, which is how I feel
about most Billy Wilder movies. And yeah, I really enjoyed

(22:01):
this movie. I was really excited that you wanted to
revisit it with us, And there's so much to talk about.
I mean, there's stuff that this movie does that feels
very dated, but there's a lot of stuff this movie
does that I feel like rarely shows up in movies.
Now it's wild It's Wilder, we have to do that.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Every time we do.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Or or Billy Wilder's ghost who is just haunting the
world and compelling us to watch all of his movies
will kill us.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
He's so back. Yeah, it's true. We are being haunted
by Billy Wilder's ghost. That's just like a new marketing
thing we're trying. Long story short, I really love and
appreciate this movie. Can't Live was your history with The Apartment?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I had only seen it once before in my span
of the two or three years where I was in
undergrad getting my first of many degrees in film. I
don't talk about it as much because it's not nearly
as impressive as my master's degree in screenwriting from Boston University.
It is exceptional, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Never done anything like it.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
In any case. When I was in undergrad, I took
it upon myself to just try to watch basically every
movie that was ever referenced in any of my textbooks
or just that had any historical significance. So I would
watch like three movies a day. I don't know how
I managed it, because these days it takes me three
days to watch a movie. And so I watched The Apartment,

(23:35):
and it's not my favorite among Billy Wilder's OOVRA. I
think it's because I find Jack Lemon's character to be
a spineless pooh poo head wow, get his ass, I will.
I just he rubbed me the wrong way. And I

(23:59):
love Shirley McLay, but her character, I just wish she
was more active or just was given the opportunity to
be more active in this movie. There were things about
it that didn't appeal to my sensibilities very much. So
I think it's a good movie, and I think it's
well written in everything. But if I have to choose
a movie that I want that I'm gonna have a
fun time watching, it's probably not going to be The Apartment. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, to be fair, I don't think anyone's coming to
this movie for a fun time necessarily.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
It's chocolate Block with characters where you're like you want
to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and
be like what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, CC In particular, you're just like, oh my god,
we are still caping for like mister Pep at this
late hour in the movie, we're still like, well, maybe
mister Pep is a good guy.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah, CC Baxter more like Pep Baxter.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
See, I wouldn't go that far. I don't hate CEC.
I like CC. I feel like he grows a lot.
I don't think that the end line of the movie
is good. The ending of the movie is very movie.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
We'll talk about it.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, it's sort of like it belongs in the sort
of like historical canon of the like nice guy protagonists
like nice Guy are slash nice guys.

Speaker 5 (25:19):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
But I felt like it was weirdly like a better
take on that than like even more modern films like
you root for him more than you do for like
Ducky from.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Like Yes, I was thinking about Pretty in Pink a
lot during this movie. Okay, I mean, I guess partially
just because this movie is now my dad's age, dosing
him much like CC docs and stocks fran Oh god. Yeah,
So I mean it's like old and it's hard to

(25:52):
not watch this movie by like not comparing it to
other movies. But yeah, I feel like CC is at
least a more well. He is deeply imperfect, and I
feel like let off the hook for things that a
modern good movie would not let him off the hook for.
I still think he's like doing laps around the quote

(26:12):
unquote underdog loser characters of the eighties who are like,
you know, Revenge of the nerds, like murdering and assaulting
women and still coming out on top where it's a
bad yardstick.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, you get the feeling that he doesn't feel as
entitled to anything like Yeah, he still wants it to
go a different way, but it feels like he takes
no for an answer a little bit better than other
movie characters. Still not as well as he should but better. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Better.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
We'll get into CC.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, there's so much to talk I mean, this movie
has shades of gray that are like challenging in ways
that I'm like, I don't know if they were intended
to be challenging at the time, but I'm excited to
talk about it.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah. So let's take a quick break and then we'll
come back for the recap. And we're back, okay, So
here is the recap for the Apartment. I will place

(27:19):
a content warning at the top here for suicide. So
we are in New York City. Ever heard of it?
And it's about the same time that the movie came out.
The movie came out in nineteen sixty I think the
movie takes place in late nineteen fifty nine. We are
getting voiceover from C. C. Baxter play by Jack Lemon.

(27:44):
He works at a large insurance company, and he often
stays late at the office until it's all right for
him to go home because he rents out his apartment
the titular apartment too, and then from his company who
are having extramarital affairs and who need a discreete place

(28:07):
to fuck.

Speaker 5 (28:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
But he's kind of like renting for aspirational cloud, Like
he is not charging for this service, right while he
is fully stocking, like he's providing the services of the Marriotte,
but he is not being paid. It seems like he's
working ahead a loss. It's like doing stand up comedy, right.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, it's sort of the rotisserie chicken at Costco where
you're like, it's a lost leader, but it gets people
in the door, exactly same with the hot dogs.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
I was curious if he was charging or what. But
I'm also like, I don't think so. These men are
all higher above him in this like hierarchy at the office.
They presumably get paid better. They're like, you know, middle
or up or management. Why don't they just like go
split se on an apartment that they would have more

(29:03):
easy access to. I don't know. I had some logistical questions.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
I was thinking about that the whole movie, and I
think it really it ultimately boils down to the fact that, like,
it probably just started with one guy and then it snowballed. Yeah,
So I think at if the movie took place over
a longer period of time, we'd eventually get to the
point where it's like, you guys, just get your own place,
you know, seriously, But we're at a moment in this

(29:28):
guy's life where it has just sort of gotten a
little out of control, and it was maybe a more
manageable number of people before.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
I was wondering about that, and I was also like,
I mean, I think probably ultimately the apartment thing is
just a you know, a movie thing to keep you
in the story. But logistically, yeah, logistically it's troubling, and
I'm like, are we.

Speaker 6 (29:52):
To believe, which I do believe that all of these
upper executives are like not firing enough sign aps to
understand that they should all share a spot if this
is the case, And.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Also that CC probably wouldn't point that out to them
because he wants to be promoted, and that's like his
whole journey is that it takes him so deep in
the movie to give up this idea of professional advancement
regardless of like who gets hurt or deceived along the way.
They should just all rent an apartment, Like it seems

(30:27):
like they can afford it.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
That's what I kept thinking.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, but I guess I was like location is everything
or something?

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Right, the apartment is one of the characters.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Well, I do think that they are also probably I
don't know if it was explicit or not, but like
some of these men do sort of pretend like like
it's their apartment. Yes, that too, Like there is an
amount of deception there are, Like I think some of
the women who end up there are people for whom,
like going to a hotel would maybe raise alarm bells

(30:59):
that these guys don't want to raise.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
True, right, I was wondering.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
I was like credit card statements? Was that a thing
in nineteen sixteen? Credit cards?

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Their wives would not get to see what they were
spending their money on, like that part of it where
I was like, no, that would they would very easily
be able to do that.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
But in any case, so we've got the sex apartment
that CC Baxter is like borrowing out, not even renting
out his neighbors, including a doctor. Dreyfus are always like, hey, Baxter,
what's going on in there? It sounds like you're constantly
fucking you sneaky little slut.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
And he's also like that's me. He's like, yep, mister
fuck I thought that was a really funny runner. I
mean it is. It ties into like the greater thieves
of masculinity that surround this movie, but the fact that
he at every opportunity even when it gets you know,
in sometime he's being valiant about it, but other times

(32:02):
it's like he doesn't mind being thought of as mister
fuck right.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Oh yeah, okay. So then Baxter arrives home after one
such night where he has let a guy use his apartment.
In this case, it's Al Kirkby, someone from upper management
at his company, and Kirkaby is like, yeah, I'll put
in a good word for you for this possible promotion.

(32:31):
Later that night, another guy who Baxter works with this
is mister Dobish, calls and he's like, hey, I met
this woman who looks like Marilyn Monroe and I need
to fuck her immediately, get out of bed, even though
it's eleven o'clock, and let me use your apartment.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Right, which is like a winky nod to the fact
that Billy Wildser just worked with Marilyn Monroe the previous
year and some like get hot and also seven year itch.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
I don't know when the seven year itch came out.
I think it was before this could be anything.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
I think it was the fifties. Anyways, like it would
seem more misogynousts than it is if you didn't know
that they had this working relationship.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
True in any case, Baxter gets out of bed, he
goes and waits outside, but mister Dobish leaves the wrong
key after he leaves, so Baxter can't get back into
his apartment, and he catches a cold. So the next
day at work, he's like all sniffily and he chats

(33:31):
to the elevator operator fran Kubilick played by Shirley maclain,
and they're talking about colds, and it's like kind of flirty,
or at least he's trying to be flirty with her.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
It's flirty, it's friendy. I feel like he is like
many men before him, and people of all genders, but
I will single out men in this regard, interpreting friendly behavior.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
As romantic interest.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
She's obsessed with me.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, yes, that does tend to happen, doesn't it. And
then Al Kirkaby, the guy from the night before, is like, oh, Baxter,
I saw you talking to miss Kouba. Look, I'd like
to take her out, but she always refuses my advances
for some reason. And it's like, yeah, maybe because you
regularly assault her.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
We just saw you assault her. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
So then Baxter cancels the sex appointment that night for
this other guy because he wents to stay home and
rest because of his cold. So he has to make
all these adjustments with the sex apartment schedule to shift
people around, and then he gets called to the office

(34:44):
of mister Sheldrake played by Fred McMurray, who we talked
about in the Double Indemnity episode. Oh yes, yes, in
any case. So he's the head of personnel at the
insurance company, and Baxter's like, Hm, is this about my
promotion that's been floated? And then mister Sheldrake is like,

(35:08):
I know all about your little arrangement with your sex apartment,
and I want in on it too.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
He's a dog. I think that one of the great
bait and switches this movie does is like, really, expose
mister Sheldrike for how slick he thinks he is versus
how slick he actually is, where he's like, I'm not
like the other men that have no respect for my wife.
I'm built different and like he isn't And the movie

(35:37):
knows that. And I think the way that that rolls
out is really smart.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, they really misdirect what his feelings are going to
be about the apartment, Like you feel like he's in
trouble at first for what he's doing, which sets him
up as a person with like integrity even though he's
immediately about to be like I also want it right,
Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I mean it's clear that he thinks he's better than
the other men, who are also like deceiving both. I
feel like this movie does a good job of the
twohander like deceiving their their wives and also deceiving the
women that they are with by just lying out their

(36:20):
asses all the time. True, but shell Drake kind of
the worst of all because he thinks he's smart. At
least the other guys don't seem to be suffering that delution.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, it's hard to tell. We don't get to know them.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Very well, but their comic relief.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, right. So then Baxter catches on and he gives
shell Drake the key for that night in exchange for
two tickets to see The Music Man. So Baxter is like, hey,
miss Kuberlic, do you want to go with me to
the play? And she agrees to meet him there, but

(36:59):
first she's like, I have to go meet an old
boyfriend for a drink. And it turns out to be
mister shell Drake, who she had had an affair with
over this summer. But again, he's married, and it seems
pretty clear that that relationship was never going to go
anywhere between Fran and shell Drake, but he's also trying

(37:20):
to rekindle things and he's like, no, I am gonna
divorce my wife actually, And Fran still loves him and
she wants to spend time with him, so she bails
on the date with Baxter to see the Music Man,
and she goes off with shell Drake two Baxter's apartment,
not knowing it's Baxter's apartment. We cut to Baxter being

(37:44):
stood up at the theater and he's all sad and
he doesn't know either that you know, Fran is at
his apartment with another man.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
You know it's the worst. I had this sort of
instinct like when have you ever been watching TV? And
then you do the very like annoying modern thing where
you like swipe at something that cannot be swiped at,
be like next thing. I was like, she should have
texted him, And I was like, now, hold on, my

(38:16):
father is an infant, Like there is no way for
her to reach out. Never mind.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
It's true. So then at work, Baxter has gotten his
promotion that he's been promised, and he moves into his
own office, but he also starts kind of withholding access
to the sex apartment for those like four men who
helped him get the promotion, and he's withholding this access

(38:47):
to everyone except for mister Sheldrake. There's this scene where
Baxter's like, hey, Sheldrake, I think your lady friend left
this broken compact mirror at my apartment.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
And Chekhov's broken compact mirror. That is exactly and also
it doubles as a little metaphor for the state of
the human condition. Hello what I'm cheering, and that.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
She probably considers herself permanently damaged by this relationship in
a way that cannot be repaired.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Wow, I was like, Wow, that's the moment Billy Wilder
won his oscar for this one broken mirror to represent
damaged character. Boom, what what critics are calling it subtle?
It's wild it's wilder, It's really wilder.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yes, So Baxter doesn't know that shel Drake's lady love
is Fran still until the holiday party a few weeks later,
where Fran lends Baxter the same broken mirror so that
he can look at his ugly bowler hat. Got sorry

(40:01):
about it.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
That bowler hat really cracked me up. He's like, I'm
a big shot. Now check out my new hat. And
it's like, you look like Charlie Chaplin.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Now, yeah, yeah, I wrote down red flag there when
a guy gets really drunk, He's like, check out this
cool hat I bought.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Should we go out run away?

Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah? No, is like a sign of hubris to be
like I'm trying a new kind of hat. It's a
sign that the character is like on a decline morally.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah, he's gotta like let someone else fix him and
you know, circle back in a couple of years see
how he's doing.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Yeah, for sure. But Baxter sees the broken mirror that
Fran has and he puts two and two together. Meanwhile,
Fran is very sad because mister Sheldrake's secretary just told
Fran about the several other women who he has had
affairs with over the years and who he has lied

(41:04):
to about how he's going to divorce his wife for them,
so Fran is really upset. Baxter is really upset because
his crush is sleeping with his boss, so he leaves
the party and he goes to a bar and gets
super drunk. Meanwhile, at Baxter's apartment, Fran is there with

(41:26):
shel Drake and she's crying because of his shitty behavior.
He has to leave to catch a train to be
with his wife, and Fran stays behind. We kind of
cut back to Baxter, who's coming back to his apartment
with a woman he met at the bar. He discovers
Fran in bed. She has taken a lot of sleeping

(41:48):
pills and she's not waking up, so Baxter panics. He
goes and calls the doctor neighbor over to his apartment.
The doctor saves Fran's life, and Baxter calls shell Drake
and tells him about the incident, but shell Drake doesn't
really want to be bothered with it, especially it's Christmas Day,
spending the day with his family, And finally Fran wakes

(42:12):
up and Baxter tends to her. He gets her fed,
they play cards together, but she still feels awful, both
physically and emotionally, and she's still in love with and
heartbroken over shell Drake. Meanwhile, Fran's family is worried because
they haven't seen or heard from her in a couple days.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Which I'm like, that's one of the things with me.
For Baxter, I'm just like, you gotta like I understand.
He's like, well, you know, don't call people while you
are like before you kind of get your head back
on straight sort of. But then at some point it's
starting to like before her brother in law arrives and
he sucks as well, but like before her brother in

(42:56):
law rise, it's starting to feel somewhat hostile. Yes, where
it feels like like a baby it's cold outside style hostage. Yeah,
where he's like, well, you know, you're not quite ready.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
I mean he's covering Sheldrake's ass, like exactly.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
He knows that the discretion of the situation will affect
his relationship with Sheldrake, so it's not purely like him
taking care of her. It's him being like, I have
to keep her quiet about this.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah, yeah, I kind of On this watch it was like, Wow,
Baxter is like a cad deeper into this movie than
I remembered.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
That's why I don't like him very much anyway, So
her family's worried about her. Her brother in law, Carl,
finds out where Fran is and he shows up at
Baxter's apartment assumes that Baxter is a sleazy guy who's
taking advantage of Fran, which isn't exactly right, but you know,
Baxter is no saint in this situation and any case,

(43:56):
Carl punches Baxter and takes Fran home, and Baxter is
all like, damn, I'm in love with Fran. So the
next day he goes to work prepared to confront shell
Drake and tell him that he should forget about Fran
because Baxter wants to be with her. But shell Drake
is like, actually, my wife left me because she found

(44:20):
out about all my affairs, So I'm going to be
with Fran. By the way, here's another big promotion for
all your trouble.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
This scene is so fucked in, so many different directions
that it's wild but like it's wilder, wilder. I'm sorry, sorry,
it's wilder, but yeah, I mean particularly, I was like
sort of surprised by the sort of like nakedness that
mister Sheldrake presents, like, well, obviously, if I'm alone, I

(44:49):
will die, so because I've been rejected by someone rightfully,
I must enter this new relationship under false pretenses, and
like he just presents it like of course, of course said.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
It's gonna happen.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
What I really appreciated about this scene too, is that,
like you get into it with watching CC practicing the
speech she's gonna give to Sheldrake of like, I'll take
her off your hands for you. And whenever you see
someone practicing a speech they're about to give, you know
that they're not going to successfully give the speech, right,
good trope, and so you kind of watch that being like, Okay,

(45:27):
I get it, we're not going to hear this, like,
but then you do hear the speech, it's just that
shell Drake says the exact same words. He's like, I'll
take her off your hands, And I thought that that
was like an impressive way of like subverting that trope
to make it feel new, and I was just like, wow,
that's really skillful, because I was kind of rolling my eyes.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, and no, I'm not anymore.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Totally, I mean, and I feel like it gets at
something that I think this movie's doing really well, which
is like drawing your attention to the fact that they
both view her as meat. But yeah, they view themselves
somewhat differently. They both think that they're ultimately good people,
and neither of them are consulting with the woman that

(46:11):
they are laying claim to, like she is property in
both of their eyes, and both of them think, well,
the way that I view her as property is good.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah, right, which is obviously a major reflection of the
mentality of the time and how women were viewed by
most men. Totally, but it's frustrating to watch. Nonetheless. Anyway,
Baxter takes the promotion that shell Drake offers, but sometime later,
Baxter bumps into Fran at work. She's gotten back together

(46:43):
with shell Drake, who is making arrangements to divorce his
wife and to marry Fran allegedly, and Baxter's like, oh, yeah,
I was just using shell Drake this whole time to
get a promotion, I don't even care about you being
with shell Drake, and also I have a big date tonight.

(47:03):
We find out he's lying about all of this. Then
there's a conversation between Baxter and shell Drake where shell
Drake wants to borrow the key to Baxter's apartment again
so he can take Fran there. But Baxter has finally
had enough so he quits. He goes home and packs
up the apartment. He doesn't know what he's gonna do,

(47:25):
but he just knows he has to get out of
this place. Meanwhile, Fran is at a New Year's Eve
celebration with shell Drake, and he's all like, we're gonna
go to Atlantic City to go to a hotel tonight
because Baxter won't even give me the key to his
apartment anymore, especially if I'm taking you there the apartment

(47:46):
his the apartment. And she's like, wait a minute, does
that mean that Baxter loves me? So she runs through
the streets as everyone is ringing in the New Year,
and I'm like, okay. When Harry met Sally certain saw
this movie and has some homage to pay. And Fran
goes to Baxter's apartment and he's like, Wow, I'm so

(48:08):
glad you're here. I love you, and she's like uh huh.
And then they finished their card game from earlier, and
then I guess they're gonna be together the end.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Woooooooo see.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
I actually interpreted her hearing that Baxter had quit his
job less as like, oh, my god, he loves me.
I feel like she knows he loves her throughout. I
took this to me and her being like, oh, he
decided to stop being complicit in this horrible scheme.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Maybe it's giving the movie too much credit, but to me,
I sort of felt like the movie was not like
sympathetic to Baxter's complicity in it. It's like, only once
he decides to stop being complicit in it does he
get what he wants.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
True. I think that interpretation works well. I was interpreted
interpretating wow, okay, awesome job, Caitlin with your brain interpret well, Now,
I don't know what the word is interpreting likes okay.
So I thought that because because you see her face

(49:22):
like lighten up as he's like, yeah, he won't even
give me the key anymore, especially if I'm taking you there.
So maybe it's like a combination of both because she's like,
oh wait, he doesn't want me to be with another man.
He wants to be with me. But I might just
be having too simple of an interpretation.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Yeay, Kaitlyn. I feel like both reads, if it makes sense.
And I also think that it feels kind of intended
that it's left a little bit open ended, because if
it it wasn't intended to be open ended, I feel
like you would have gotten, you know, like a kiss
or something. All we really know is that she is
like willing to I think the most generous read I

(50:11):
was able to get to on the ending, which I
didn't love, but the ending shot is such a banger,
Like it's hard to not love the ending shot, but yeah,
the most generous read I was able to get to
is that at very least Shirley McLean's character is really
happy that he did not sell her out. Further, I

(50:33):
think like, I think that it could be seen as like, Wow,
this is the first time in at least the course
of this movie and possibly her adult life, that she
has not been put out as property and as an
opportunity versus a person. And I feel like that connects
back to like the be men, sh be a human

(50:53):
being theme that the movie seems to want to do.
But I also think you're supposed to think they get
together at the end of As with many movies, I
sort of hope that the ending to this movie is
that they hook up for a month and then break
up and remain friends. That's my wish for most couples
in most movies, is that they fucked for a month
and stay friends for their whole lives.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah. I mean to me, I'm like, the happy ending
of this movie is not that they get together. It's
that she is allowed to consider that there is something
else that's possible outside of the system that she has
been sort of ground down to accept.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
True. Yeah, I agree. Let's discuss further after this break.

Speaker 5 (51:38):
Woo and we're back where back Emily, where would you
like to start the discussion?

Speaker 2 (51:54):
What's jumping out to you?

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (51:56):
My gosh, I don't even know where to start. I mean,
the first thing that I want to say about this
movie is that I just I really appreciated how everything
was paying something off, Like there was nothing new introduced
that was like important that we didn't already know about,
Like even the sleeping pills, where it's like they're introduced
when he's like, I can't give you the Apartment tonight.

(52:18):
I'm sick. I already took a sleeping pill, like, and
it doesn't feel clunky. It feels like, oh, it's serving
a purpose there. You don't expect it to come back.
But then when it does come back, when she takes
the full bottle, You're like, oh, that was just so efficient,
so well done, very good writing. Yeah, and the mirror
coming back.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
This wilder, he's got a big future ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
And I also love the like that's how it crumbles
cookie wise, Oh my.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Gosh, I was thinking, was anyone anyone in the chat
a big fan of Bruce Almighty?

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Wouldn't call myself a big fan.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
I've seen it, Okay, for all my brust almighty heads.
That's how the cookie crumbles is very much the Jim
Carrey character's slogan throughout the movie. And I believe that
it is a clear reference to The Apartment.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Oh it could be the end.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Brussel Mighty heads shout out wow. But I was feeling
the Brusse Almighty the movie. Had seen Apartment the movie.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
I mean a lot of movies have seen the movie
The Apartment when Harry met Sally.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Movies are people, and that's how we engage with them.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
One thing that I appreciate about this movie is that
I think it's a good example of how men fail
upwards and get promotions that they don't deserve, and how
women are often overlooked for promotions and opportunities in general,
because men are obsessed with looking out for each other

(53:55):
when they engage in bad behavior. And I think that's
one of the many reasons that the patriarchy has perpetuated
itself for centuries. I don't think the movie is commenting
on that, but it is presenting it.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
I think it is like presenting it pretty effectively. I
don't know how I would suggest it be shifted, but
I feel like, yeah, you're given many elements of this
like workplace patriarchy, and as a viewer, like you're sort
of expected to put it together yourself. The movie doesn't
really do that, and then at moments I think it
kind of fails its characters. But it's weird because I

(54:34):
feel like there is like all these shades of gray
where it's based on what we see of CC Baxter,
Like it's not that he is bad at his job,
it's that he recognizes that the only way to get
ahead is to cater to everyone around him's basest, worst,
most manipulative instincts to the people around them, and he's

(54:54):
fine with that. So it's like a lot of male
characters we've talked about over the years, he is both
subject to the patriarchy because he's so in the middle,
and he's also being uplifted by it at the same
time and is okay with that.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Right, And you see the alternative. He has that coworker
who works at the next desk over, who's been there
longer than him, who has done probably more better work
than him, because he's so distracted taking care of the
apartment anyway, we.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Don't see him work ever.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Yeah, and that guy is never going to get a promotion,
and he begrudgingly congratulates Ceci when he gets the promotion
that he earned through dubious means. And you recognize that, like,
the alternative to participating in the sort of corrupt hierarchy
of this institution is just languishing in the position that

(55:47):
you're in. And so it both like lets Baxter off
the hook for his choices in some way, but it
also indicts the institution.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Right, Yeah, and then I feel like, on Frand's side,
I'm curious what everyone thinks about it, because I didn't
remember that they tell you that she did have higher
career aspirations but was held back, which it seems like
she I mean, I would guess that she and Baxter
are like they're intellectually matched, but Baxter has the credentials

(56:20):
the fact that he is a white man and the
fact that he because he's a white man, he has
the opportunities to advance. And they were like, well, sorry,
you like can't spell well enough, so you're stuck in
this very feminized working class position of this time indefinitely,
which seems to be I mean, among other things. But
it does seem that like part of her depression comes

(56:43):
from the fact that the world that she's in does
not offer her opportunities for advancement, like nefarious or otherwise.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
I mean, I also wonder what the implication was supposed
to be of the fact that, like, Baxter's neighbors are Jews,
and there was like a class implication there that like,
even though that guy is a doctor, they live in
this like kind of shitty apartment building with this bachelor
and there is like for him and for why can't

(57:17):
I remember her name, Shirley McLean's character, Why can't I
go for Fran Yeah, that they both don't have the
same privileges that other people around them do, and so
they are kind of like scraping to get by. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
I was curious about that too. I mean, I know
that Billy Wilder was a Jewish writer and included other
Jewish characters in his films. I don't know. I mean
that sort of brings me into like some of the
context for the way that this movie was produced. There's
not a ton of it that I think is super
relevant to talk about. But the things that I guess

(57:52):
I would want to talk about is the fact that
like Billy Wilder had like started in noir and you know,
like did Double Indemnity in the fifties. He does all
of these wacky comedies, and then in the sixties. It
seems like this is the first example of him getting
two ideas he wanted to produce in the forties but

(58:13):
wasn't allowed to because of the Hayes Code until the sixties.
So this was like an idea he'd been noodling around
with since the forties, but this was the first time
he actually got clearance to do it, and I don't know,
I wasn't able to find a lot about the writing
of the movie itself. It was co written with a

(58:36):
common collaborator, Il Diamond. This movie takes place in nineteen
fifty nine, but it also feels like a little bit
out of time.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Yeah, I mean, it feels really modern in a lot
of ways, and it's sort of like cynicism about sex
and everything, which I think is a little bit of
like a Billy Wilder homemark, Like his movies are a
lot about like cynical people finding joy in spite of
themselves and in spite of like them feeling sort of
above the morays of the time. But I also kept

(59:06):
thinking about, like what it would be like to watch
this movie if I hadn't already seen mad Men. Ooh, right,
because I feel like mad Men was so like, oh
my god, this was so normalized and we're blowing your
mind with that, and it feels like this must have
felt a bit more radical to see before that was
like the common understanding of what these types of businessmen

(59:28):
were up.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
To, especially because the production code was still in effect
when this movie was being developed and released, the kind
of parameters of it were getting more lax as time
went on, and I think it was in nineteen sixty
that the Hayes production code was like officially dissolved and
replaced with the rating system, but it was still enforced

(59:51):
to some degree when this movie came out. And so
I was surprised that there were things that this movie
got away with that I wouldn't have expected. Did it
to be able to talk about and like pretty directly
and explicitly addressed, such as suicide and suicidal ideation and infidelity, slash,
sex out of wedlock and abortion? Oh wait, what's the

(01:00:15):
abortion component?

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
So I mean, it's not as explicit as talking about
the suicide, but there's a moment when her brother in
law comes to the apartment to retrieve her and he
introduces Dreyfus. He's like, this is her doctor, and the
guy like almost punches him and he's like, not that
kind of doctor.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Oh my god. Okay, I did not connect that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Yeah, the implication being that like she's recovering from an
abortion versus and obviously they don't say it, but it
is strongly implied that like, oh yeah, that would be
the other thing that the doctor would be there treating
her for at home.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, that totally makes sense. God, that did not register
for me at all.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, I barely caught it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
This Vivie is really good, folks. But getting back to
your original point, Emily, Yeah, I thought it was interesting
that the only character that I think, like we know
is Jewish is also the moral center of the movie.
And also yeah, like of a higher class and profession

(01:01:18):
than our protagonist. Yeah, but I really liked I don't know,
I like doctor Dryfus.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
And his wife.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
His wife, I hate that, like we have his her
name is Mildred, we do hear her name, so for
Bechdel test purposes, she just skates through, although she is
mostly referred to as his wife. But I also was
like pleasantly surprised that Jack Krushian, who played doctor Dryfus,
was nominated for an Oscar for that part. Jack Lemon,

(01:01:46):
Charley McLain, and Jack krushn are all nominated for Oscars.
This movie was nominated for a million Oscars and won
a bunch, not for acting. But in any case, I
felt like doctor Dryfus, I don't know, he was interesting
to be because in some ways he and certainly Mildred
are allies to Fran based on what they know about

(01:02:08):
the situation, but they also have very like nineteen sixties
views of sex and promiscuity in general, which I feel
like this movie is sort of playing around with and
referencing how older generations versus younger generations view sex and
promiscuity at this time.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Right, Yeah, I mean they're not as disgusted with him
as they could be, I suppose because they were like,
not in a position to be, but you are like, oh,
they have sympathy for her, even if they don't have
sympathy for Baxter, right, which I.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Was surprised about because so much of slut shaming and
like promiscuity shaming is directed toward women. And there's of
course the famous double standard of oh, if you're a
man who's fucking all the time, you're awesome, and if
you're a woman who's doing that, you're a horrible, dirty,

(01:03:08):
disgusting person.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Or it's just like fundamentally assumed that you're being deceived
versus participating, right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Right, that too, and so for like doctor Dreyfuss's his
wife Mildred, She's like, yes, I'll fix some breakfast for her.
I wouldn't do anything for you, CEC Baxter, because you're
a dirty, rotten scoundrel.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
He's a dog.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
But for her because I think she almost views Fran
as a victim, almost of like CC Baxter's constant parade.
What they perceive is like a constant parade of like
women coming and going out of his apartment.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Yeah, because she's assuming that Fran has overdosed as a
result of CC. She is going off of right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
She knows right, Yes, who knows where her sympathies would
be if there wasn't a suicide attun true exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Yeah, that was something that was on my mind because
this is the first time and I let like doctor
Dreyfus does not hesitate to intervene. It's not like he's
unwilling to help someone who he has moral questions about,
which is what doctor should do, not necessarily what they
always do. But I wondered how Mildred's opinion of Frian

(01:04:26):
would change if she was not in this position. Right,
But I also think it's fair to assume that Ceci's
a liar because he is, So that's something to keep
in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
Can we explore the romance between Baxter and Fran a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Yeah, I think we should.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Because I find it fascinating. So she's introduced in the elevator.
You know, he's trying to be flirty with her. He
asks her for lunch. She like smiles but doesn't express
any interest and like kind of shoes him out of
the elevator.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
I would say it's friendly, but it's not. Yes, mortatious
as he interprets it right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
As fire as my interpretation, Wow, I did it without
even trying. I said the word. She is being cordial
and professional, and maybe that's why she's like not being
flirtatious in return, because she's like, we're colleagues, you know
that would be inappropriate. But in any case, she's showing
no romantic interest. Not long after that, he asks her

(01:05:36):
to go to the theater. She declines, saying that she
has another date with another man, but Baxter kind of
like wears her down a little bit, and she's like, Okay, fine,
I'll go with you. It's right here. When we get
the I Know where you live conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Yeah, this is the part of the movie that for
Vah is the worst, real bad, it's bad.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
One of their earlier conversations in the movie is Baxter
being like, yeah, you know, we're gonna go to this play,
then we'll go out dancing. I know this great spot
right around the corner from where you live. And she's like,
oh sounds great. Wait a minute, how do you know
where I live? And then rather than him being like, oh, yeah,
she's right, is creepy that I know where she lives

(01:06:21):
and that I just told her that and acted like
it was no big deal that I told her that.
Instead he's like, not only do I know where you live,
I know who you live with. I know where and
when you were born. I know your height, your weight,
your Social Security number, and your entire medical history because
I looked up your file at the office. And she's like,

(01:06:42):
uh huh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
She's like, hah okay, this, yes, I remember this for
the first time I watched it, being like, well, that's
certainly disqualifying, yes, you would think, and yet well that's it.
I feel like, well, I think that there is so

(01:07:03):
much to love about this character and will continue talking
about her. I feel like there are moments of inconsistency
where there is like naivete I think like ascribed to
her character that feels wildly unreasonable, where it's like, yes,
she is young, she's in her early twenties, but like

(01:07:23):
people in their early twenties know, it's scary to do that.
Like that's maybe not the guy, particularly if you are
already famously not attracted to them. Like it sort of
lends itself to the wearing one down thing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Yeah, I think he's benefiting here from comparison to the
men who are physically assaulting her in the workplace. Right, Yes,
he's the least bad guy. Yes, And like I think
also like in that first scene where she gets spanked
by that guy and she's sort of like tells him
off a little bit, you are kind of like, oh, well,

(01:08:02):
she's someone who will like stand up for herself if
you're doing something wrong to her kind of. And then
so when she doesn't do it to him, you're like, well,
she's not just placating him. Maybe she's okay with it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Yeah, he must be the guy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Yeah, But at the same time, I'm like, as creepy
as that is and as not okay as it is
that he does that, I do think that the film
is sort of like not necessarily like judging him or
holding him accountable for it, but it is sort of
presenting the fact that he is an observer of the
lives of others and not a participant even in his

(01:08:37):
own life, Like he doesn't even occupy his own apartment, right,
and that is like the main problem that he needs
to sort of rectify throughout the movie. So it is like, yeah,
this is like kind of a messed up way to
like see what life.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
Is all about.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yeah, by like reading people's insurance files. But yeah, that's
giving him a lot of credit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, that was a tricky
one for me. I do like feel like that moment
has potential to be I was like sort of hoping
it would be called back on in a more meaningful
way later, because it's like, if this guy is our
the guy we're rooting for, and that's the way that
he understands how to interface with people where people are

(01:09:21):
kind of numbers and obstacles to be overcome to get
to where he wants to be. I just wish that
that specific PLoP boy was called back to because it's
just like age is bad.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
I mean they did call back to it, they do,
but not in a super meaningful way.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Not No, way that felt critical of him.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
Really, yes, they call back to it when she's like,
you know, she calls back like, oh, you don't want
people to get the wrong idea about how I know
about that?

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
Like right, It just felt like a flirtatious callback versus like, Hey,
that thing you did earlier was fucking weird. Like yeah,
which is weird because she does selectively call him out
on certain things, but it's everything that you know, we
have to keep him our lead, So yeah, right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
I think it boils down to I just wish that
she had been afforded more agency and perspective throughout the movie,
because I mean, I also want to talk about how
she's presented in comparison to the other women who are
in the movie, mainly the women who the men are

(01:10:29):
having the affairs with, because she's like the one respectable
woman quote unquote. It's like the nineteen sixty version of like,
she is not like the other girls. But I still
find the way their romance plays out to be, you know,
not great, because it's a lot of her politely declining

(01:10:50):
or not showing any interest him kind of barreling past
that and wearing her down. And then there's the scene
where he has put the two and two together about oh,
the person who my boss is taking to my apartment
is fran He finds this out at the holiday party,
and he gets so upset about it. And I feel

(01:11:15):
like it's maybe some combination of like, oh, well, I'm
jealous that the woman who I want to belong to
me can't belong to me because another man has claimed
ownership of her, and this is maybe me reaching a
little bit, but I'm also just like pulling from the
context of this era of like, oh, she's like a

(01:11:37):
tainted one. She's damaged goods. You know, she's not this like.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Oh, I see, I didn't read it that. Okay, I
read it as it's still not a super charitable interpretation
of Baxter. But I read that as like, oh, now
I care that people's lives are being affected because I
like this person, and I like that was how I
read that seen, where it was like people are just

(01:12:03):
numbers and bimbos and this is just how the world
works until suddenly someone that you like is involved, and
then all of a sudden it matters, and yeah, well
that's not a negative thing inherently to realize that if
someone is being emotionally, like deceived or harmed is an
important thing. It does sort of reveal him to be

(01:12:26):
like someone who is kind of selfish, and that is
who he is, Like, he's like, well, I only care
if someone I like is affected, which is part of
what he has to get over that. I feel like,
you know, you could argue whether he actually makes that
journey fully but yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
Right, but yeah, it's left a little ambiguous, like what
it is about.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
That that affects him, right, Yeah, yeah, it's hard to say.
But he gets so upset about it that he goes
to a bar and gets drunk and picks up another woman.
Which I'm not casting any judgment on any of that
because it sounds like something I would do.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
No, they're lonely and hanging out. I always remember just
the image of them, like soul loosely dancing cheeksh to cheek,
Like it's so funny.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
It's so funny, And it is that hard cut from
her making her suicide attempt to them dancing cheek to cheek,
and you're like, the darkest moment and the funniest moment
in this movie is just like back to back.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Yeah, I like that stark image of like loneliness and like,
I feel like it could have been way more. I
think that in general, women who are not Shirley maclain
are made out to be kind of well a few
are made out to be kind of like bimbos that
are like, what do you mean You're not gonna blah
blah blah. But I think the exception to that sort

(01:13:46):
of trope is Shell Drake's secretary. I feel like we
do get some interiority for her, and I liked that
in the scene at the holiday party, we have Shell
Drake's I forget what her name is, we do get
a name for her, Miss Olsen, miss Olsen. I was
calling her Elizabeth Olsen in my mind because that is

(01:14:07):
a famous person I've heard of. But miss Olsen, I
thought the way that she presented that information to Fran
while it was like drunk and like not super well,
presented the way you wouldn't when you're drunk. I thought
that that was like more than I expected, because I
feel like it would have been very easy in this setting,

(01:14:28):
in this time to have it turned into a rivalry
and a shameful thing, where I think like miss Olsen's
anger is well placed. It's at shell Drake. She knows
he's a piece of shit, and she literally says to
Fran like, there's nothing to be ashamed of. He is
we've seen him do this, like you are not. And

(01:14:49):
as someone who has been young, naive and in that
position being told by someone like hey, this guy you're with,
he's a piece of shit. I've been in your position too,
it never feels good. And seeing it written by two
men is never quite on. But those like hey, just
so you know, I see what you're going through, and

(01:15:12):
this guy's a piece of shit.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
You're part of a pattern. You're not special. This is
like he's going to do this again. Yes, totally, it
is a true warning. She's not saying it to be
like fuck you, like yeah, she is saying it to
be like I am the ghost of Christmas past.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
And totally yeah, Having now been on both sides of
that equation, that is a very meaningful interaction that we're
seeing there. And the fact that that is what puts
her over the edge and sends her into suicidal ideation
is like, we should talk about that also, something that

(01:15:50):
certainly happens. I don't know. I was surprised by that
moment watching it this time, because I feel like in
a movie in nineteen sixty I would assume that it
be like a woman shaming another woman of like, how
could you be so naive? How could you blah blah
blah blah blah, But instead it was like a callous,
imperfect moment of recognition.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Yeah, I tend to agree that her intention is, you know,
looking out for her fellow woman who is going through
something that she already went through. But that character is
also established to be someone who seems like kind of
devious in the sense that she's like always sneaking around.

(01:16:35):
She's very nosy, she's trying to like stir things up.
Because we also see her call mister Sheldrake's his wife
and you know, arranged to get together for lunch to
tell her about all of shell Drake's affairs.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
I don't think the movie judges her for that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
Though now I felt like that was it was like
a twist to reveal that she had had a relationship
with Shell Drake, because at first you are like, oh, yeah,
she's one of those nosy people and that's why they
need to hide it, and then it sort of is
like a reveal of like, oh, he's talking about her
like she's nosy, but really she's scorned, and like it
is a situation that he created, not a situation that

(01:17:14):
she created.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
Yeah, maybe I.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Was just because so many of the other women were
presented as being like ditzy, fluozy or like naggy in
some way that I just sort of carried some of
that into that character, because I do feel like a
lot of those other I think.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
The women who are brought into the apartment are right, yeah,
there is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
It seems a lot of judgment cast on them by
the movie. And maybe I was just carrying some of
that and projecting it onto the Miss Sulsen character.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
I will wave a flag for miss Olsen. I think Missulsen,
you know, she she did it imperfectly, but all of
her motivations to be made sense, Like it wasn't just
like she was a spiteful, nosy person, like she was
fucked over by her bot, like she was presumably harassed

(01:18:05):
at work, ended up in this relationship, and then for
her own livelihood, forced to stay and watch him do
this to other women. And then we see her make
a drunken attempt to acknowledge one of those other women to.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
Break the cycle.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Yeah, which, unfortunately, what happens like that I don't think
can be pinned on miss Olsen. Again, this is all
traced back to Sheldrake and him thinking that he is untouchable,
which I feel like made it hit even harder and
more frustrating that at the end, you know, he's always
going to be fine even though he doesn't end up

(01:18:43):
with Fran and Fran escapes his fucking evil spiral. You know,
like he will continue to be fine indefinitely, which is
true of the time and true basically still now.

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
Well, it's like anyone who decides like I have a
moral conscience about what's happening and I'm going to tap
out is lost from the company. Yeah, like they are
all exiled, and she's one of those people who's like,
I'm out. I guess because I exposed what's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
Right, which tracks because men are obsessed with getting rid
of anyone who will not comply with their horrible behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
I had a little bit about because like we've sort
of been talking about for a while now, like how
this movie was marketed successfully as a comedy and also
prominently features a suicide attempt. I think, I mean that
was certainly like hinted at in many movies. I think
this is one of the more famous examples of a

(01:19:47):
suicide attempt being a major plot point. There was a
really good retrospective piece that came out in twenty twenty,
remember that in The av Club Bike Caroline Seed that
touches on sort of how the theme of suicide is
touched upon. I think that in some ways, fran makes

(01:20:11):
what appears to be like an unplanned attempt on her
life after mister Sheldrake leaves in truly the most horrific
way possible, like he's a He's just like such a
fucking piece of shit. And as she is recovered from that,
I felt like the movie didn't judge her in the

(01:20:32):
way that I would expect a movie of this time
to judge her. I think that where I get a
little trick is like she is portrayed as so naive
during her recovery. I want to be generous with her there,
because she is recovering from something extremely traumatic and extremely
horrific and she's still sort of coming back to who
she is. The moment that really sticks with me is

(01:20:55):
that she's not judged by Baxter and I'm not like
Team back, but I think the way that he handled
the immediate aftermath was thoughtful, especially in the scene where
he I think that up until this point in the
movie that I don't know how to correctly phrase this,
but that you wouldn't see this scenario with a man

(01:21:17):
because of how we have been trained by this movie
and by society at the time to think that men
are knowingly dogs and women are unknowingly deceived, and that
is like the binary we've been presented with. And so
when Baxter comes to her very honestly and is like,
I once almost made an attempt on my life, also

(01:21:38):
over a relationship, and I'm so glad I didn't, and
here's why, and all of this, and having that be
like a moment of healing and recognition, even though you know,
I think realistically she's still not out of the woods
with navigating her feelings on this. I thought that scene
is really beautiful and nice.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
I agree, and I also found it surprising, again based
on the context of the time and the just sort
of cultural mentality toward suicide and it's misunderstanding of mental
health and all of that. So yeah, I found the

(01:22:21):
movie to be like very generous with its handling of that,
especially for the time.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
I love friend, and I also think that someone showing
up for you in that moment does not mean that
you have to be their girlfriend. That's where I have
a hard time.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
I mean, to be fair, she does go back to
shell Drake for reasons. I mean, who among us hasn't
gone back to a bad relationship, even though we you know,
logically you know better, but emotionally at that exact moment,
maybe you don't. So we won't blame her for that.

(01:23:00):
But the very jarring thing to me about the recovery
of the suicide attempt is the scene where the doctor
is like treating her and then like I think, giving
her smelling salts or something to help her getting consciousness,
and then he slaps her across the face multiple times

(01:23:20):
to try to wake her up. I'm sure that was
standard medical practice four the time, a little.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
Oh my god, necessary to show, I would say.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
No, it was not necessary to see a man slapping
a woman across the face like six times in a.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Row, especially as he was about to become the moral
compass of the movie not two minutes later.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
Yeah, so you know. Nineteen sixty Although when I had
my gallbladder surgery in twenty nineteen, and I was like,
coming out of the anesthesia, I was woken up to
a doctor slapping me across the face. What so maybe
it is Yeah, it was like traumatizing and I was like,
excuse me, is that necessary? But a doctor was slapping

(01:24:12):
me in the face to wake me up because they
thought I was dying because my heart rate was low.
And then they're like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:18):
Went vampire mode.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
They were like, they're like, are you a runner? Like
do you exercise? I was like yes, and they're like, well,
your heart rate is alarmingly low. But if you're a runner,
that's actually kind of normal. But if you're not, we
thought you were dying. So they slapped me just in case.

Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
And medical slap sometimes I mean like, and we know
the medical system is so fucked is sobody ways.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
But sometimes I don't know, Like there were times over
the summer where I was with a doctor. I'm like,
you're describing like witchcraft. You're just being like, ultimately, we
don't know, we're gonna throw some leaves at it, and
guy knows what happens. I'm like, I don't feel secure
in your abilities. I don't trust you live off love.

(01:25:09):
I think, Okay, the last thing I have to say
about Baxter, yeah, is that again I think that this
is done unevenly throughout the movie. But I appreciated where
we talk so much on this freaking show about patriarchy
the guy, and there's one guy who represents all the patriarchy,

(01:25:30):
and if we vanquished this one guy, the world will
be solved, and we will. We've also seen racism the guy,
and you vanquished racism the guy or it racism the
lady Brave, and then racism is helved, you know. So
it's like very clean movie solutions. I like that this
movie does not subscribe to that. I think that the

(01:25:52):
tricky thing is that in the guys who aren't Shell
Drake who go to the apartment, as well as the
women who go with them, are made to be comic
relief in a way that is funny but kind of
ultimately a little dissonant. But with Baxter, I really like
that he is I think the movie knows he is

(01:26:14):
like an agent of the patriarchy because he's quite literally
an agent of the patriarchy. He is like sharing his
bed sheets with them for advancement. He is knowingly benefiting
from this and doesn't give a shit about anyone in
the equation until it's someone who he cares about who

(01:26:36):
is being negatively affected by it. I feel like we
don't really see characters like that very frequently in a
knowing way. I think where that gets tricky is the
ending implication that possibly like it almost like positions Shirley
mcclan as the reward for realizing he was an agent
of the patriarchy, where he's like, now that he has
abandoned the toxic workplace, that he has walked away from it,

(01:27:01):
he can have girlfriend and at the end of the day,
isn't that what it was all for? Blah blah blah.
So that that's a little you know, and again that's
open to interpretation. We've talked about different interpretations of that,
but I just appreciated that, like normally, when we see
characters like that, the movie completely absolves them of everything,

(01:27:25):
and it's like, at the end, he does get the
promotion and he's gonna solve insurance from the inside, and
this movie is smarter than that, right, And I love
it for that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
Yeah, but it still does reward him with at least
like a woman's tension for that night, unclear if they'll
like get together romantically. But again it begs the question
to me, what does she like about him? Besides the
fact that he's respectful enough to take off his hat

(01:27:57):
in the elevator, like, she's given no indication that she's
romantically interested in him. And I don't know. Maybe you
can make the argument that through this journey of her
relationship with shell Drake and she finally comes to realize, Oh,
this man doesn't respect me or care for me the

(01:28:17):
way a person should. And it seems like Baxter, based
on the way he took care of me after my
suicide attempt, he's the better option. I don't know exactly
what the implications all are.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):
I like that it doesn't tell you what it is, too,
because then it makes it easier to love this movie
on a longer timeline, which I want to.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
That is fair, I because I don't have as much
of an attachment to it, and I don't feel like
at this point, or at least at the point where
the movie ends, that Cec Baxter earned the redemption that
he appears to get by being able to hang out
with friend.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
I mean, he he did give up everything he had,
He did this is jet including the apartment, and he
did get punched really hard and gave up his apartment
and his job and his career and like literally has nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):
I guess I just think that, yeah, I'm like, men
should give up that and more to deserve any redemption.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
So I think that again, it is very connected to
that moment of human connection between the two of them
when they are sharing this experience of like they have
both been at an extremely low point and like, please
let me share my experience with you, that you might
take something from it to get through this difficult experience

(01:29:52):
for me. Honestly, I think the movie is heightened if
they don't end up, or even it being implied that
they end up together. But the generous interpretation at the
ending for me is that again he says I love you,
I love you so much, and she says, okay, let's
play cards. I feel like it is like weird thinking
they are going to get together. But I just what

(01:30:13):
I would have loved is just yeah, like another moment
of like the moments of human connection between the two
of them. I like, I've had moments of human connections
with guys who kind of sucked that have been impactful.
And you know, I don't think that his life should
be totally but his life even he's like also not
for nothing. He is fucked and like that that's not

(01:30:34):
what movies are interested in, nor should they be. But like,
you know, he's fucked, Like he what is he gonna
you know, he's he's a guy. He'll bounce bounce back though,
and I do believe that she will as well. Something
I like about her character as we're not led to
believe that like I'm just doing this job until I
find a husband, Like it seems like she wants to

(01:30:55):
have a career like it that's never brought up as
something that is like a temporary thing for her, and
judgment isn't passed on her for it. I don't know
I'm becoming defensive of this movie, but I think that
like C. C. Baxter, I'm friends with people like C. C. Baxter,
and the trick is never fuck them. M that's the yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):
I mean, I do think that this movie is more
critical of the sort of social understandings of the time
than it has to be, yeah, to tell the story,
and I think that it is like it doesn't let
this guy off the hook, even though he's not the
one cheating on his wife, you know what I mean,
Like he gets all of the consequences that are coming

(01:31:37):
to those guys that they never experience because he's standing
in and saying like, yes, I'm fucking all these women,
Like he doesn't get to, you know, correct the record
about like I wasn't actually fucking all those women. Other
men were doing that in my bed, you know what
I mean. And he still pays the price for it,
and it is still like, well he does owe something, but.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Yeah, yeah, Anyway, I think that the one hundred dollars
that Shell Drake gives to Fran that she should have
kept it because uh men, oh women money you read
It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
I would have. I mean, if if I were a friend,
I would not have made a statement by not keeping
the money. I'd be like, thank you and goodbye forever.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
This is mine. I deserve this one hundred dollars in
nineteen sixties money that is one thousand dollars roughly in
today's money.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
Buddy, let's freaking go to be fair.

Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
She thought she was going to be dead, that's true,
so when she left the money, she had no use
for it. The only use for the money was to
say I don't forgive you feel bad that I'm dead,
which I'm like, Yeah, if she knew she was going
to live, yeah keep the money. But she didn't, and
so she got to use it as a fuck you,
which is cool.

Speaker 2 (01:32:51):
Another example of Baxter big pro shell Drake where he's like,
I got one hundred dollars for you, where it's like, well,
just let her have, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (01:32:59):
When she survived. It seems like the money gets returned
to chldreake again, but it's like, no, like, you're alive,
keep it, use it. It's one thousand dollars in twenty
twenty four men.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
Yeah, well he didn't really know what the money was
at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Uh, this movie passes the Bechdel test, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
It does good for it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
It passes primarily between Mildred and Fran when they are
talking about her recovery, which I feel like is very
you know, plat relevant, So it passes. I do think
that Fran again, like most women we see in movies
to this day, like it would be really cool if
she had a female friend. Yes, there's no shortage of

(01:33:42):
women in this workplace who are marginalized in much the
same way she is for her to talk to, And
I feel like that is the way in which it
sort of plays into a very like sparse story character
wise but also just how I think. So often, like
iconic women characters in older movies are often in a

(01:34:03):
bubble where they are the woman, where we know that
she lives with her sister, We assume that she has
some sort of close relationship with her sister, even though
it's like the only thing we know is like, your
sister thinks you're a lady. So it's like, well, maybe
her sister would slut shame her for being a person
who knows, But we're surrounded by all of these potential
women for her to be allied with. We don't really

(01:34:24):
see those conversations, and when we do, like with ms
Olsen and Friend, it's strictly, you know, centered on the
shell Drake issue, right, but it does pass. So there
you go.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Well, because this movie's only interested in Fran to the
extent that she has a blossoming relationship with C. C. Baxter,
and outside of that, the movie doesn't really have any interests.

Speaker 2 (01:34:50):
And I disagree, I disagree.

Speaker 3 (01:34:53):
I disagree that's not true at all.

Speaker 1 (01:34:56):
Then why don't we see her at home, having an
interior life, having friendships, Like what.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
I don't think that she's the protagonist, but I don't
think that means the movie is disinterested in her.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
Yeah, And I think it's interested in her outside of
her relationship with Baxter, because I think that it's like
it understands that there's things about her that Baxter doesn't
understand because of his preoccupation with a relationship with her,
that she has all these other dimensions that he's not
seeing even though he has access to her insurance file,
Like he gets surprised with information about her that we

(01:35:29):
as the audience know, And I think that it's like
that shows that the movie has more of an interest
than he does in her.

Speaker 1 (01:35:36):
Yeah, I guess I wish we just saw more of
her life outside of what we see in the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
I very much would have liked to see her and
I don't think it would even take away from where
the focus of the movie seems to want to be.
To see her interact with other people at work and again,
like have a friendship. That seems like a fault of
the movie, especially because it's Billy Wilder movie. It should
be operating at a higher level, we are introduced to

(01:36:07):
a lot of women, So for the interactions between women
to be so sparse feels telling about like where his
interests lie. But I don't think that that means that
the story is disinterested in her.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
And I also think that thematically the movie is like
it's about this collection of some people who are who
when Christmas comes around, they're not needed anywhere, Like that's
part of why, Like he is an observer of other
people's lives who just like is doing like the insurance
information about like people who actually have families and things

(01:36:40):
going on, but he doesn't have that for himself. And
she is literally an elevator operator who's like she takes
people who have somewhere to go to the places that
they need to go, and she herself doesn't have those things.
And so I think even the fact that she has
a family the reason, Like it would be great to
see her with her family. But I feel like what's

(01:37:02):
important about her character in this movie is that like
she is being kept on the outside of life in
the same way that he is, and that like she
is unable to develop those relationships that you're asking to
see because of being held in this limbo with this
relationship with Sheldrake and just like being sort of an

(01:37:23):
intermediary in other people's lives, Like that's part of what
she's struggling with in the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
So yeah, well, with that mind, let's get to our metric,
the nipple scale. Yes, how you feel about the movie
on a scale of one to five nipples based on how.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
Zero if sorry, wow, Jamie, we've had five hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
I'm so tired. You don't understand. So based on how
it deals with intersexual feminist themes.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
Ooh, this is going to be a tricky one for me. Again,
of the women we do see on screen, it feels
like they're is like one or two respectable women, and
everyone else can't be taken seriously because they're the flings
of the men who are having these extra marital affairs.

(01:38:13):
And I just feel like a lot of kind of
tropes that were popular of women of the time are
present with a lot of these characters. I do like
fran as a character a lot. I just wish we
knew more about her, and maybe I think I also
just like don't have the language to understand what movies

(01:38:41):
from this era are trying to telegraph. To audiences as
much as I should, because there's a lot of stuff
that I just don't really pick up on and that
I don't interpret correctly. This happens every time I watch
an older movie. I'm just like, what are they even
trying to say? What are they telling me? Because I
just like my brain doesn't operate that way, I think. So,

(01:39:02):
I don't know how I feel about this movie. I
do want to say that, as is very typical of
movies of this era, which is a major reflection of
the rampant racism of the time. This is an entirely
white cast. There, I think, is one black man you
see on screen in the entire movie that's like the

(01:39:24):
only person of color that you would clock throughout the
entire movie. And again, as is typical of the movies
of this era, he's in a service role. He's shining
the shoes of mister Sheldrake. Aside from that, it's an
entirely white movie.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
So, and there's the guy playing piano oh at the
Chinese restaurant who they do have a like his record
which is called Rickshaw Boy.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
Uh not great, not good, not good.

Speaker 1 (01:39:53):
There's a number of scenes at a Chinese restaurant. That right,
you do see some other people of color in the
background of those scenes. Again, no one really has any
significant speaking roles or anything like that unless you're a
white character in this movie. So I'll give the movie.

(01:40:14):
I honestly have no idea. I'll give it three nipples,
question Mark, two nipples, one nipple, four nipples. I have
no idea. I don't know how to watch movies from
before nineteen eighty the end.

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go three Okay, nice, Yeah,
who would you like to give your nipples to.

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
I'll give one to Shirley McLain, I will give one
to missus Dreyfus, and I'll give my final nipple to
miss Olsen because again I feel like I projected some
stuff onto her and that was not fair of me
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:40:56):
It's good to be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
Yeah, I'll settle on three nipples, and I have no
idea if that's actually how I feel or not, because
again I don't know how to watch old movies.

Speaker 3 (01:41:07):
I think you're overthinking it. I think you're like wondering
what this movie is trying to telegraph, and it's not
trying to say something like it's trying to make you
think about questions. I think it's like it feels like
it's trying to challenge, like who's getting left behind? Yeah,
and make you think about that, you know what I mean.
Like it's talking about what's happening at the margins, you

(01:41:30):
know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
Which I enjoy stories the center, those characters and that
type of narrative. But I don't know, like, at the
end of the day, while I do think the movie
is well written, I just it's just not really for
me and I have nothing else to say about it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:50):
I'm going for a nipples. Yeah, I have nothing else
to say because I have to pee and leave, so
I and I'm going to give one to you Fran,
one to miss Olsen, and I'm gonna give one to
missus Sheldrake while I'm at it, because I hope she
was on to bigger, better, less piece of shit flop

(01:42:12):
husband type activities hell yeah, following this movie, and those
are where my nipples are gonna go.

Speaker 3 (01:42:18):
Nice Emily, I'm gonna give it three nipples. I'm gonna
give one to Fran and then I'm going to give
the other two to that woman whose jockey husband was
being held hostage in Cuba because she was supposed to
have sex that night and she didn't get to have sex.

Speaker 2 (01:42:32):
And she was appropriately pissed off about it, where she
was like, we made the lonely person's packed.

Speaker 3 (01:42:38):
How could you? What the hell is going on here?

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
Yeah, and she was so excited that she was gonna
fuck the guy who's like, I'm a sex pot. She's like,
you're a sex pot.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
Woo. Yeah, which I feel like the movie's and on
the joke, like the number one indication that someone is
not actually a sex pot is if they cannot stop
saying that. Yeah, it's always who you least suspect. Yeah,
all right, well that's the apartment Everily, thank.

Speaker 3 (01:43:06):
You so much for joining us, my gosh, thank you
for having me, and thank you for getting me to
watch this movie that I probably wouldn't have watched us
quickly because I loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
Any time? Where can people check out your podcast? Follow
you on social media, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:43:21):
I'm at mister Emily Heller on all social media, and
you can subscribe to what is a Jeopardy Podcast wherever
you get your podcasts oooh.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
You can follow us on social media as while at
Bechdel Cast. You can go to our link tree link
tree slash Bechtel Cast and grab tickets to our upcoming
tour in the UK at the end of May. And
you can go to our Patreon Patreon dot com slash
Bechdel Cast, where you get two bonus episodes every month

(01:43:52):
plus access to the Beck catalog for five dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (01:43:58):
Wow, And you can get our merch over at tipublic
dot com slash v Bechdel Cast. Get our tickets to
our upcoming tour in the UK if you haven't already
on our link tree. And with that, let's give up
our apartment and wander into the unknown.

Speaker 1 (01:44:16):
Woo Hi Hi. 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 Katherine Volskrosensky. Our logo in

(01:44:36):
merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks
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