The Blair Witch Project with Chelsey Weber-Smith

Caitlin and Jamie are led into the woods by Chelsey Weber-Smith (American Hysteria) to discuss The Blair Witch Project! Jamie insists she didn’t throw the map in the river.

(This episode contains spoilers)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
On the Bechdecast, the questions asked if movies have women
and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy and beast
start changing it with the cast.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Jamie, I'm so sorry that shut up, shut up podcast
with me.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Shut up, my camera down't shut up. I know you
recording it is your false shut up. That's basically the
movie rights done more or less.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yep, yep, yep, Heather, Poor Heather, Hello, and welcome to
the Bechdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Durante or is
it truly?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I have so many thoughts about just the ethics of
this movie are so wild. I feel like the wildest
thing to me is being like, no, actors, We're gonna
use your full government name and then market it as
if you have died. Died anyways. My name is Jamie
Loftis for now.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
And this is our podcast where we examine movies through
an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as
a jumping off point to initiate a larger conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Hell yeah, there's a lot of different versions of the
Bechdel test. It is a media metric created by queer
cartoonist Alison Bechdel, originally as a one off bit in
her comic collection Dicks to Watch out For back in
the eighties, but has since been adopted as a way
of talking about gender. Is it's portrayed in big cool movies.

(01:43):
There's a lot of different versions of the test. The
one we use is this, we require that there be
two characters of a marginalized gender with names speaking to
each other about something other than a man for two
lines of dialogue or more.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Wow, it's so true.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I forgot to pay attention to it for this movie.
I think that it does though, right because Mary and
Heath Mary Brown. Yeah, that's a superpass. All right, Well,
let's end the episode. So didn't get to speak JK.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
We again. We talk about this from time to time
that people think our podcast is just talking about whether
or not a movie passes the Bechdel test.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
And it's my favorite way to find out that someone
has been lying to me about listening to the podcast,
which is very funny because it's like, I truly don't
give a shit if people listen to.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
The show or out, like you can just admit that
you don't.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah, but I like to imagine I'm like, well, I
guess you wouldn't like the show if you really thought
it was us teasing that great mystery apart for the
better part of two hours. Anyways, you're listening to this,
you know that's not the case. We are covering the
Blair Witch project, and we have an incredible, long anticipated
guest wearing you cannot see, an incredible inappropriate shirt.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Scary stories to tell in the dark. Our guest is
the host of the podcast American Hysteria. It's Chelsea Weber Smith. Hello.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
I couldn't be more thrilled to be here and analyze
this one of my most favorite movies of all time.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
So thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Truly, we're so pumped out this is Do you spend
the whole episode trying to figure out what is so
American about the Hysteria? Right? Yeah, I'm so glad you
suggested us doing this movie because it feels so Chelsea
Webber Smith expanded Universe Coded. I have so many questions
about how the Blurwitch mythology ties into stuff you've covered

(03:40):
over the years. I'm just so pumped.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
I've been like turned into some kind of weird, de
facto blair Witch expert, or at least I like to
think that. I've gone on a few podcasts talking about
this movie, and you know, I think eleven year old
me would be pretty thrilled about that.

Speaker 5 (03:56):
So shout out to the past me.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh yeah, tell us all about your relationship with the
blair Witch Project.

Speaker 5 (04:05):
The blair Witch Project. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
I mean, I was eleven when it came out in
nineteen ninety nine, and I was very much in the
camp of thinking it was real, and I remember hearing
about it. I have no idea how I heard about it,
probably just being on the Internet, and I was obsessed
with the website, which I'm sure we'll get into, which
was kind of part of the expanded universe of this movie,

(04:29):
which is as important as the movie itself is the
marketing behind it. And you know, my parents were going
to see it because I come from a very horror
oriented background and they were pumped to see it, and
I think they probably knew it was fake at that point,
but I'm not sure. But I was pissed because they
were going on a date and not taking me, and

(04:51):
so I ended up just watching the sci fi documentary
that they made as like a supplement.

Speaker 5 (04:58):
Yeah, did you watch it, Jamie?

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Know that before for today, I did watch it. This
movie it's like marketing campaign is like Barbie movie found
Dead in a ditch. This is the most four dy
game of chess ever played by a movie's marketing campaign.

Speaker 5 (05:11):
It's so wild, it's incredible.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
And yeah, so basically what that documentary did on the
Sci Fi Channel was give a bunch of context to
this movie that kind of exists without context, which is
why it's so amazing. So I got really into the
lore in the background that's happening. And then finally I
got to see it, and I think by that time
I had figured out that it was not real, because

(05:35):
it was when it came to video and it kind
of cat was out of the bag. And of course,
you know, a lot of people knew it was fake
because it's ridiculous to think that this would be in theaters, right,
this footage. But and I remembered hearing about it, and
I was like, that's got to be illegal, Like there's
no way they can show this like police evidence footage

(05:57):
of these people who went missing. But yeah, I just
absolutely loved kind of digging into it because not only
was it this documentary, but they had a website that
had all of the documents and all of these different
interviews and information about these missing people, and yeah, it

(06:19):
was just such a full experience. They were on message
boards like adding comments to people talking about it to
try to like stir up different reactions and to kind
of control the narrative that way. So I think just
having that experience as an eleven year old, I just
started to make the Blair witch stick figures. There's actually

(06:41):
currently one hanging in our yard because I still make
them every Halloween. But I started to make them and
hang them in weird places to scare people, like when
I went camping, like hang them on the trees outside
strangers tents, like the absolute little little stinker.

Speaker 5 (06:58):
As you guys said, true true.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Blue the colloquial term.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah exactly. Yeah, actually it's the scientific term. So I yeah,
I think that that kind of explains how it's been
a part of my very DNA since the beginning of
my interests in this type of content, like you know,
hoaxes and hysteria around some of the elements included in this.

(07:24):
It's a commentary I think on a lot of things,
so we'll get into it.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
We wi So, was this sort of like close to
your patient zero for a lot of the work that
you do now?

Speaker 5 (07:34):
I don't think that's wrong.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
Yeah, I think it probably makes a lot of sense
because I so enjoyed being like hoaxed, which is of
course not always true, but it feels like one of
those hoaxes that didn't really cause any damage, Like it
was just kind of a whole lot of fun. I'm
sure there's you know, I'm sure there's elements of it,
but it didn't to me add to the satanic panic

(07:59):
too much of the nineties coming out in ninety nine
as it did, and that would have kind of made
me have a little bit more of a sour relationship
to it, because I don't like demonic satanic horror movies
very much because I think it kind of continuously keeps.

Speaker 5 (08:16):
This satanic fear going.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
But you know, it definitely still has those elements of
even like the witch hysteria of the witch trials of
the sixteen hundreds in America, which is foundational even though
we've never done an episode on it, which is funny.
But yeah, I think it is very much part of
the fabric of what started my love of folklore and

(08:41):
legends because it was such an interesting folklore, whereas a
lot of folklore is pretty boring. But when you mix
it with kind of an urban legend situation, more modern.

Speaker 5 (08:50):
Then you get my attention.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, Caitlin, what's your history?

Speaker 2 (08:54):
I saw this movie in a drive in movie theater
in nineteen ninety nine. Oh yeah, I was thirteen, and
I was so scared. I was like, this is the
scariest movie I've ever seen. And I don't think I've
changed my mind since then, Like I to this day
think it might be the scariest movie I've ever seen.

(09:16):
I know there are haters out there, but I think
it's so scary. I think it's such an effective horror movie.
And then I watched the sequel A bunch oh which
shadows Book of Shadows, not to be confused with National
Treasure two Book of Secrets.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Yes, of course that's true. Yeah. In Flaywash two, do
they kidnap the president.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
The President of the United States? They do not, but
a bunch of scary. I for some reason watched the
sequel several times, or specifically Book of Shadows in the
early two thousands, because I thought it was just like,
I don't know, just like a cool extension of the
first one. And I all so to prepare for this episode,

(10:01):
watched Blair Witch, which is the third installment of the
franchise that came out in twenty sixteen, which I don't
remember it even coming out in theaters. It's something I
feel like I should have been aware of. It was
not that long ago, but I was like, what is
this movie. I don't remember that coming out at all,
and it had a theatrical release and everything. It made

(10:23):
like forty five million dollars of the box office. Anyway,
I watched it. I also thought it was very, very scary.
It does rely on a few very tired, nasty horror
movie tropes, such as the black guy is the first
person to die, but it was very scary. Anytime people
are camping in the woods and it's dark and they're

(10:45):
just sort of like waving a camera around the woods
and you can only see little bits and pieces, I'm like,
I'm scared. The woods are scary. I will never go
camping under any circumstances because probably of movies like.

Speaker 5 (10:58):
This camping period.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
I refuse to go camping. My friends are always like,
let's go camping, and I'm like, but why. I like
indoor plumbing, I like sleeping on a bed. I like
having walls and a ceiling and a floor. So no,
thank you, but yeah, I thank you. Yes, yes, I
did not realize how much I love this franchise until

(11:23):
sort of like revisiting it for this episode. But I
think it rocks. So that is my relationship to the
blair Witch. Jamie, how about you.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
I wish I had as detailed a lore. I feel
like I definitely do not remember this movie coming out.
Sorry I'm so young, but I do, like I wish
I don't know, like reading about everything that surrounded this
movie and like hearing about your experiences, like seeing it
for the first time. If I had been like, you know,

(11:56):
nine or ten when this came out, I would have
lost my fucking yeah, Like this is so It's just
it was so fascinating to read about how this was made,
even though it's like wildly unethical and probably would get
them blacklisted today. But like I was eating this shit
up for the last two days. I have been in

(12:17):
the blair Witch zone. I really enjoy And Chelsea, I
think you that Sarah also showed this movie to you recently.
I love a hoax. I love a hoax, I love
a goof, I love people fallen for a big time.
I didn't realize to the extent how like integral that
was to blair Witch marketing. I'd seen, like my short stories,

(12:38):
I've seen this movie once or twice. I think that
I was pre poisoned by the infinity parodies of this movie. Yep,
so that I had seen this movie parodied a hundred
times before I ever watched it in like high school
or college, and so I.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
Was especially scary movie, right, I feel like scary movie's.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
The main Yeah, huge, and it just like any like
low hanging fruit for any comedy property. But I definitely
remember I definitely saw a scary movie before I saw this.
So by the time I actually saw it, I was like, oh,
this is pretty scary, like but I was so like
subconsciously exhausted by it because it was so everywhere, and
I wish that I had gotten to experience the moment

(13:17):
where like people were like, no, these kids died, and
now they hired look alike actors to promote the movie.
I was like, oh my god. Nineteen ninety nine was
such a bizarrely innocent time that that could be true.
I don't know. Yeah, I didn't have a huge connection
to this movie, but going back, I can't imagine a
more perfectly timed movie, for like, right before people figured

(13:42):
out how to like hoax check shit on the internet.
But I just anything that involves an arg or some
sort of public hoax element, I'm a huge sucker for
Like I know that the most famous example is like
the Orson Wells were the world one, but there was
also Chelsea. Did you show Sarah or did so? No?

Speaker 5 (14:01):
She showed me.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
I had never even heard of it, and I was shocked.
I hadn't heard of it. It was fantastic.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
It was so loved. Which what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Pre Dating the blurir Witch project, there was It's streaming
for free on tub hashtag thank you to be you
be heads to be or not to be? And I say,
let's turn on to b babes. It's a fake documentary,
a mockumentary if you will, called ghost Watch. It's a
horror mocumentary that came out in nineteen ninety two, was

(14:31):
broadcast on the BBC on Halloween Night with real famous
BBC anchors at the time, playing out this hoax script
that basically leads you to believe that there is a
real haunting with like real people dying, the haunting comes
to the studio. It's like fucking amazing. It's so good.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
Did you, Jamie catch all of the Fox Sister references
in it? Because I was seeing shit. I was like
the apples hanging. They had like apples hanging from the ceiling,
which is how the Sisters stooped people. I think they
live on like Fox something Road, And I was just.

Speaker 5 (15:05):
Like, I get the jokes. I love what I get
with Jo it was for the references.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah, it's spiritualism heavy. It's like, yeah, absolutely fantastic. If
you enjoyed The Blair Witch Project, you will also love Ghostwatch. Also.
Ghost Watch is like very funny. It's all these like
Newsy anchored jokes. Kaitlyn, I think you would love.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
It, Okay, I'll check it out.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
I just love this very specific genre of horror, mockumentary,
hoax horror. Yeah, exactly. And then it was really interesting
doing research on I mean there's quite a bit written
about not just like the production and the lore surrounding
this movie, but how it frames and portrays its main character, Heather.
There's a ton of shit to talk about there too.
I was very much in my like freshman sociology seminar

(15:51):
bag prepping for this episode, so I'm very excited to
talk about it.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Hell yeah, let's take a quick break and then we'll
come back for the recap. And we are back, and
here is the recap of the blair Witch project. So

(16:18):
we open on text on screen that says that in
October of nineteen ninety four, three student filmmakers disappeared in
the woods near Birkettsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary, and
then a year after their disappearance, their footage was found.

(16:39):
And then we start watching the footage because this is
famously a found footage style movie. We meet the director
of the documentary, Heather played by Heather Donahue, and she's
just preparing for a trip to the woods to make
this documentary on a local legend, the Blair Witch. Then

(17:03):
we meet Josh played by Joshua Leonard, who's helping Heather
to shoot the dock on a sixteen millimeter film camera.
They then pick up Mike played by Michael C. Williams,
who they are meeting for the first time. They've kind
of like hired him to be the sound guy, and

(17:26):
then they start shooting some stuff, including shots of a
cemetery that holds an unusually high number of graves of children,
many of whom died in the nineteen forties.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
Which I is also just like anytime they're like, oh
a lot of kids used to die, You're like.

Speaker 5 (17:42):
Yeah, yeah, like fifty.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
That just used to be how it was also mad
nerd time Dork report. I went to Burkettsville and I
took a picture exactly where Heather stood.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
WHOA, that's the greatest.

Speaker 4 (17:59):
I went with my friend Will Rogers, who is also
a big Blair Witch head who does all of our
voice acting, and we just had such a beautiful time and.

Speaker 5 (18:08):
We really wanted to camp.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
Well we didn't have time, but I will camp in
those woods one day, Caitlin, I want.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
To come, not even a little bit. So we also
see them interviewing a few locals in Birkettsville, formerly known
as Blair Maryland. They're asking about the Blair Witch and
the locals share various scary stories and legends that they've

(18:35):
heard over the years. There's mention of a man named
mister Parr who in nineteen forty murdered seven children, where
he would bring them down to his basement in pairs
and make one of them stand facing the corner while
he killed the other one. Also, I guess we should

(18:56):
have placed a trigger warning at the top of this
because there will be a lot of discussion of murder
the Blair.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
This is the one time where I'm like, if you
need a trigger warning for the Blair Witch Project, I
literally do not know what to tell you.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
That's fair, that's fair.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yes, I'm a conservative on this issue.

Speaker 5 (19:16):
She's putting her foot down culture.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yes, just so you know everyone, children aren't murdered on screen,
But there's a lot of like lore that is talked
about in the movie, and a lot of it is
children dying.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
It's the Blair Witch Project, you guys.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
It is the Blair Witch Project.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
If I receive a single email about that, I'm gonna
lose it.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Okay. So they also interview a woman named Mary Brown,
who has a reputation around town as being like, you know,
not very reliable. She's quote unquote a lunatic, and she
talks about how she had an encounter with possibly the
Blair Witch when she was a child, and she describes

(20:01):
what she saw and it's scary and spooky.

Speaker 5 (20:03):
And she's like fucking iconic.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, she is the legend.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (20:09):
I just absolutely adore her.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
M hm. And I love that the movie spoiler alert
bears out that she was completely right the whole time
and that they are I guess plot punished for assuming
the worst of her.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah. True, mm hmmm. That was also the only movie
that that actor ever acted in. I believe.

Speaker 4 (20:32):
Well, actually, she signed up to be an intern. They
advertised in like the local paper that they needed an intern,
and she showed up and her house was exactly like that,
including like the weird stick fence. So she's very much
like I'm sure we'll get into this, but all many
of the actors were just people who lived in the
town who were told a rough outline of what they

(20:55):
wanted them to say, and then they ad lived.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Like the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Oh interesting, okay.

Speaker 5 (20:59):
Which is like because it's like all of them are great.
Everyone is great.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, incredible.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Her name is Patricia de Coue Rip.

Speaker 5 (21:08):
She has passed away, so let's yeah rip rip in heaven, Patty.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
I Yeah, she was wonderful, and I also loved the
interview that I always remember is the mom with the
kid who's like, it's just a scary story. And I
guess that she also. That was like basically no instruction whatsoever.
It was just like Chelsea, correct me if I'm wrong,
but just like pretend you know what the Blair witches

(21:34):
and like here's sort of what you should say. And
she did not sign a release and so the filmmakers
had to like tried to find her for weeks because
she just gave the best improvised interview and for some reason,
that's the interview. I mean, like obviously Mary Brown, but
I love the mom one. It felt so real.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
She's amazing, and the little girl the whole time is
like trying to close her mouth. She keeps being no, no,
and then she goes, it's just a scary story. It's
not and then she turns to the camera and goes,
it's real. So no, it's true, and it's so funny.
But I did really quick watch today an interview with
them like that was made in like twenty twenty or

(22:13):
twenty nineteen, and the girls all grown up and hear this,
she is wearing a corn sweatshirt, and I thought that
was incredible.

Speaker 5 (22:23):
Okay, okay, girl, huh, I love it.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
I want to be her friend.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
Which, if you think about it, Corn was one of
the big instigators unintentionally of Woodstock ninety nine, which is
happening in the same year, which I feel is an
interesting cultural all connected incidents.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, we're we ever so young.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Okay. So then it's day two of shooting. We see
an interview that they shoot with two fishermen who tell
the filmmakers about a girl from the eighteen hundreds who
also had an encounter with a witch in the woods.
And then they park their car and head into the

(23:09):
woods with these big heavy backpacks. They've got all of
their film equipment, and they're making their way to Coffin Rock,
where as legend has it, five men were bound together, disemboweled,
markings were etched into their skin, and then their bodies
mysteriously vanished, as if someone had taken them.

Speaker 4 (23:31):
Each man's hands tied to another man's feet. It's just
the way how the talks when she's on cameras.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
It's so student film, where she's just like, clearly I
don't know, parroting like TV talk. Yeah, so good.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
Yeah, like a Discovery Channel documentary or something.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
It's perfect sure. Performance is just like, ah, just unbelievable,
so good, true true.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Then after Coffin Rock, they set up a tent and
camp in the woods.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
That night.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
We cut to the next morning, so it's like day
three of shooting. Josh is talking about noises he heard
the night before. There was like a cackling outside their tent,
and they're like, oh, yikes, but let's keep going. So
they start hiking through the woods to find a cemetery
that's supposed to be there, but there's no trail. They're

(24:27):
kind of lost. They argue about where they're going and
whether or not Heather knows where they actually are. Tension
is very high among the group. But then they finally
figure out where they are and they come upon this
kind of like makeshift cemetery where it's these strange piles
of rocks that someone had clearly like assembled. It wasn't

(24:51):
they just found this way in nature. And then they
are like these sort of like man made nests in
trees that are also filled with rocks, and Heather's like,
didn't Mary Brown say something about piles of rocks where
she was like referencing the Bible, and they're trying to
figure out what the significance of these rocks could be.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
And I love how it's like explicitly said, like, oh,
I just didn't listen to her. I didn't take her seriously. Yes,
I thought she was crazy politic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And
then it's like, well, sorry, bitch, you gotta you shouldn't
listen to our friend Mary always listen to women that
live in the woods. That He's like a basic rule.

Speaker 4 (25:30):
Stick fence, listen up. That's what I say.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
This person has something to say.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
That's rule of survival number one. Okay, So that night
they set up camp again by this makeshift cemetery. They
hear some more scary sounds off in the distance, but
they don't see anything. Then we cut to the next
morning and now they're headed back to the car, but
they're deep in the woods. They might be lost again.

(25:58):
Heather is constantly insisting that she knows exactly where they are,
but Josh and Mike are both pissed at her, and
they do not manage to make it to the car,
so they have to set up camp again and sleep
in the woods that night when and then they hear
the same strange noises as the night before. It sounds

(26:19):
like large branches are cracking, they hear footsteps. They're very scared.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
And every night it gets closer and lasts longer.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Is that the general it intensifies? Yeah, every night, hmm.
They wake up the following morning to discover that someone
or something has made three piles of rocks right outside
their tent, almost as if to symbolize the three filmmakers
and their graves anyway, So they're like, let's get the

(26:54):
fuck out of here. So they pack up, but oh no,
they can't find the map, So now they're more lost
than ever. They accuse Heather of losing the map, and
so they're very pissed at her again until Mike admits
that he threw the map in the creek the day
before because he thought it was useless.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
He kicked it, kicked it.

Speaker 5 (27:15):
Yeah, what a tantrum.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yeah a map? What a big baby?

Speaker 4 (27:19):
What?

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh ooh?

Speaker 3 (27:21):
I forgot because I had There's apology is so iconic
that I sort of forgot that it's basically Mike's fault
that they're lost. I feel like Mike, you know, he
has his moments throughout the movie. But Mike, he's got
to go. He does, and he and he does, he does,

(27:44):
he did, I mean fair enough, he does.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah. So they're very pissed at Mike for doing this.
They get into a screaming match. They eventually calmed down,
but the whole crew is now extremely defeated. They find
another spot where there's all sorts of scary stuff, these
like sticks that have been tied together. They sort of

(28:07):
look like stick figure drawings. They're like the iconic image
of this movie, very recognizable. But they're still lost, and
so they have to make camp again for the night,
and they wake up in the middle of the night
to voices right outside their tent, and then suddenly there's
something kind of like rustling their tent from the outside.

(28:29):
So they take off running, but it's dark and they
can't really see, and they're super freaked out. They find
a spot to hide until the sun comes up, and
then they return to their campsite. Their stuff has been
fucked with. Josh's belongings are covered in this like weird slime,
some witch goo or something, and they're all just like

(28:54):
absolutely on the brink of losing their minds. It also
seems like they're going in circle where they spent an
entire day walking in one direction. They walked south, but
they still somehow ended up at the same exact spot
where they started that day. There's like this log that
had like fallen over a creek and they end up

(29:14):
at the same log.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
One of the scariest parts to me, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
This isn't a spoiler, but the third installment of the franchise,
simply called Blair Wait like a full Franchi a franchise head.
It takes that concept and like really heightens it in
that movie basically to suggest that the Blair Witch is
capable of like either skewing people's perception of reality, or

(29:41):
maybe she's like messing with their compasses or just like
doing something to kind of like alter the space time
continuum so that they are like are constantly lost. And
it's not clear exactly what's happening in this movie where
again they walk in one direction, but somehow I've still

(30:02):
walked in a circle. So it's like, what has the
Witch done to make that possible?

Speaker 3 (30:07):
But this is a movie and like a franchise that
had to like work backwards a little bit to create
Lord to continue the franchise, and I'm always fascinated at
how you're like, oh, sure, yes, it's the Witch can
alter the space time continuum, and that way the sense
that would happen. They didn't just get lost because they
didn't have a map. It was the space time continuum. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(30:30):
we'll talk about the production. It is not really super
relevant to the topic of our show, but I just
do need to talk about it because it's so fucking weird.
But like the actors also did not know they were
going to end up in the same place at the
end of the day. Like those are like somewhat genuine reactions.
It's so bizarre because I guess they hadn't. I think
I think they say in the movie fifteen hours, but

(30:51):
it was not fifteen hours, but it was eight hours
that they were hiking, only to be led back to
the same spot. I too would cry.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
I would cry so hard.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
There are so many good moments with Heather where she
is like really trying to keep things at bay. Clearly
feels a sense of like confidence that turns into guilt
as the movie goes on, and then you just like
hear how she's when she's at the log and she's like,
it's the same log.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
You're like, Yeah, she's like in denial for a while,
because Heather's like a big denial person and she's presented
in denial. And then that's kind of the moment that
she breaks and doesn't want to be filmed. I believe
at that moment for the first time, and is you know,
everybody's been like stop filming, stop filming, stop filming, what
are you doing? And then they kind of all break

(31:41):
and they start berating Heather until she basically breaks down
by filming her and filming her and filming her, which
I think is also a very interesting commentary on what
I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it's there.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Let's speculate later.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah, I didn't find a piece of writing that I
completely was like, Oh, this is the they, But I've
there's been a lot written about controlling the narrative blah
blah blah blah, like I'm very excited to talk about.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
So they've arrived at the same spot that they were
already at, so they went in one big circle. So
they have to make camp again and they do and
the next morning Heather and Mike wake up and Josh
is nowhere to be found, but all of his stuff
is still there, so they're freaking out. They decide to

(32:31):
head east this time, but they still can't get unlost,
so they have to make camp again that night, and
they hear what appears to be Josh's voice calling out
in agony outside of their tent, but they you know, again,
they can't see, they don't know where he is. There's

(32:53):
not much they can really do. They wake up the
next morning there's a bundle of sticks outside of their
tent undoes the bundle, and inside is what appears to
be Josh's shirt, and wrapped inside the shirt is blood.
There's like some teeth and a tongue, maybe some fingers,

(33:15):
little body parts.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
You know. And Heather's like, let me say nothing.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
She does not tell me Nick She's like, if I
don't say anything, it never happened. So she's like trying
to keep it together. Then we get that iconic scene,
the close up of Heather's face. She has like kind
of gone off into the woods alone at night. She's crying,

(33:41):
she's apologizing, she.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Improvised speech so amazed.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, mm hmm. She knows she's gonna die, and she's
basically saying like, I am to blame for what happened,
and I'm so sorry. Then she hears something. It is
a man calling out for help, So Heather and Mike
re night and go looking for him. They come upon
this dilapidated house. They go inside, thinking that Josh might

(34:07):
be in there, and they hear yelling coming from upstairs.
So they make their way through the rooms around corners.
They don't find anything. Then they go downstairs to the basement.
They're again just running through the house, rounding corners. It's
so scary.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (34:26):
Good.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Then they so they're in the basement. Mike is kind
of ahead of Heather. They both have cameras rolling. She
keeps kind of losing him, so she's like screaming. Then
we get a shot of Mike's camera and he drops
it as if he's been kind of like attacked. Then
we cut to Heather and her camera. She's still going

(34:49):
down the stairs. Then she goes into the basement and
sees Mike standing in the corner facing the wall. She
screams memes. She drops her camera as if she was
attacked by the Blair Witch, but you never actually see
the witch on screen. And then that's the end of

(35:11):
the movie.

Speaker 4 (35:12):
To budgetary reasons, it's so good, it's so much better
that they didn't show. Yeah, it's it's the monster problem.
You show the monster and it ruins it. It's always
gonna be scarier in your imagination, and so many horror
movies do that. At the end, you're like, no, that
sucks when you just show me sucks ruined.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
We didn't need to see your goofy looking.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
Monster unless it's Tim Curry in it.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
On a weird spider.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
At the end of it, rip it's hard out. I
read that they had someone appear and like they thought
they shot footage but it didn't come out, or something
like that of like someone on the production wearing all
white and wearing white pantyhose on their head, and then
they were.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
Like that, well that it was like, I don't know
it even if they meant to show it or not,
but they did that as part of what we'll get
into the making of the film.

Speaker 5 (36:08):
And it's the part where Heather's going, what the fucky
is that? What the ucky is that?

Speaker 4 (36:12):
And she just turned and she had no idea that
someone was going to be an all white like running beside.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
While scar Let's take another quick break and we'll come
back to discuss.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
And we're back. I would love to start by talking
about the production of this movie, just because it feels
so important to do like so much. I mean, I
guess maybe not to feminism, but whatever, it's so important.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I think there's relevant stuff.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, they're very much is this is I mean, this
is a movie written and I mean written quote unquote
because it's heavily improvised, outlined and directed by two guys,
Daniel Merrick and Eduardo Sanchez. And we've like heavily implied
to this so far. But what I didn't realize is
this is like the X Games of improv. Yes, and

(37:17):
way to put it, the actors like were actually obviously
knew they were in a movie, but did not know
what was going to happen. They did not know who
was going to die or when. The part that like
sits least well with me about the turbo improv approach
is that they were given less and less food so
that they're acting like I mean, the ethical issues are many,

(37:40):
but I just I had no idea that that is
the way that this movie was made, and I found
it fascinating.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah, the directors and then there's a producer named Greg.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Who were real Greg behavior.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Truly, they in the cast and call let people who
auditioned know that it would be a highly improvised, difficult shoot, and.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Then they all got paid like five hundred dollars or something.
Oh it's non union with pay, travel and meals. Three
weeks in Maryland, extremely challenging roles to be shot under
very difficult conditions, and you're like, God, we got to
be on strike forever.

Speaker 5 (38:24):
This can't during lifelong trauma.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Yeah, yeah, truly.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah the bar is low, but at least they let
the actors know that it would be very difficult and strenuous,
because we've come across casting situations like this where the
filmmakers did not let the actors know to what extent
they would have to be I think we talked about
was that the Human Centipede episode. Maybe that, like the

(38:52):
actors were not fully filled in on like what they
would have to be doing physically, and like the various
I think horror things they have to endure.

Speaker 5 (39:01):
Cannibal holocaust. Did that? I don't know if that's what
you're thinking of. It could be. I wouldn't be surprised
if it was also the Human Centipede.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
Though it's interesting because as brutal as this shoot sounded,
it doesn't sound like any of the lasting trauma for
the actors, which is mainly we're talking about Heather Donna Hue,
who has since changed her name to ray Hans. That
was as of twenty twenty, which I think I haven't
looked into it thoroughly, but I think is at least

(39:29):
somewhat related to the fact that the Blur Witch Project
uses their full names. But I didn't find very much
about like being particularly traumatized by deproduction of the movie,
but rather more like after it came out, especially for

(39:49):
Ray Hants Dona Hue at the time, and that's also
the name of the character, so she's given a number
of interviews over the years, and I find her to
be very interesting because I'm curious what you both remember
about the reception of this movie when it came out.
It sounds like, I mean, all three of the actors,

(40:09):
you know, because of sort of the naivete of like
nineteen ninety nine Brain some people were like pissed off
that they were actors that were not dead, which sounds
stressful in itself, but it sounds like Heather in particular
caught a ton of shit for this. She got the
Razzie for Worst Actress, which makes absolutely no.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
Sense, absolutely no sense. No, it infuriates me beyond shit.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Gives the performance of the movie easily, like I was
completely shocked by that.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
I want to share a quote from her yeah, where
she speaks to that actor formerly known as Heather Donna
Hugh says quote, I had actually done a student film
two years before with a young female filmmaker who definitely
had a lot of bravado. I had to think, what
kind of woman would actually keep the camera running through
horrible times A normal person would have stopped filming, So

(41:05):
I had to take that character to that extra driven angle.
I don't think there were a lot of female characters
like that in movies at the time. Definitely. I feel
like things have changed a lot. There's been a little
more leeway for female characters. I won the Razzie for
Worst Actress that year, and I think that was partly
because of the character being judged rather than the performance.

(41:29):
She was a very driven woman who didn't wear a
mascara and was on camera in nineteen ninety nine, so
she's basically saying, like people hated that character because of
and you know, we'll talk about that and the gender
of it all in.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
A bit, but like the gender of it.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, she was like unfairly criticized as a performer because
of the way her character is. And again it doesn't
help that like her full name was used, which she
also regrets. Yeah, that's like her biggest regret of the
movie because she like couldn't escape the Blair Witch Project

(42:12):
because her full name was used as the character she plays.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
Which I feel like that's a bad idea. But also
I've read different like people are like the filmmakers shouldn't
have done that. I'm like, I agree with that, but
also the filmmakers could not have possibly seen this indie
movie making a quarter billion dollars, Like it is just
very unfortunate that that happened to all three of them.
But I think it's particularly like it seems to have

(42:37):
affected the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue, especially because
of how particular and like it seems gender that backlash
was towards her.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
Well. Also, to speak to the Razzie again, it's like
really absurd to me because as we've talked about the
acting was also kind of real, like she was actually
very very scared, right, And to give a little bit
more about the production, basically how it went was each

(43:10):
day the actors would get GPS coordinates to go to
and when they got there they would find like a
box with information, very scant information about whatever they needed
to get across that day, information wise, plot wise, and
then pretty much everything else was improvised.

Speaker 5 (43:26):
So urgy, yeah, yeah, so bizarre.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
Yeah, and yeah, the director's producers following them through the
woods screaming at night. At one point they they recorded
one of the director's kids that lived across the street
just playing and doing whatever they did, and just boom
boxed it outside their tent. As we mentioned, there was
the guy who in all white. You know, there was
like the baby crying. They set up all of the

(43:52):
stick figures, none of that. None of those things were
things that the cast was aware of at the time.
It's like they were very very scared. They didn't know
the tent was gonna start shaking.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
You know.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
It's like, I don't understand how I would be interested
to see if the razzies, I mean, I guess they
would have come out before Scary movie because Scary Movie
was two thousand. But in Scary Movie they just take
the snot scene, which unfortunately kind of became the most
famous scene in the movie because when Heather is crying
and apologizing to Josh's mom and Mike's mom and her

(44:26):
own mom, and it's such good acting and she's got
snot coming out of her mouth, which is amazing, Like
it makes the scene so real. It's like silly, but
you're also like, yeah, that's what happens when you cry
that fucking hard. Like having an actor cry so hard
that snot is coming out of her mouth is good acting.
And then it was parodied in Scary Movie so much,

(44:48):
and it was just like so much snock ever knows
that's funny, but you know, it's like it just it
cast a pall kind of backwards on the movie and
now people just think of her with snot pouring out
her nose, which it's so annoying.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
It's so unfair her. And I mean she also, in
that same interview that you were quoting, Kitlin like describes
like the frustration of like using her real name, making
her essentially like Ip belonging to the Blair Witch expanded universe.
Which sounds infinitely frustrated again in a way that I
don't think is malicious because who could have seen it,

(45:24):
But it's still like, it seems like the conversation and
the parodying around this movie affected her, particularly in ways
that feel very like of the time, because we don't
even see Heather on screen very much, because like she
as we'll talk about in a bit, is like for

(45:44):
the most part, dictating what you see and how you
perceive what's going on. But for the few shots, I
guess that like people were fat shaming her or like
judging her body, and like, which is just I'm This
is a quote from I believe this is from the
weak oral history of this movie that came out eight
or so years ago. She says, no size eight women

(46:08):
was playing the lead in dirty jeans with no mascara,
with unwashed hair. No Angenoux was willing to be so unfuckable.
I was the most unfuckable Angenoux to ever be in
a blockbuster. But that was the thrill, the fuck you
thrill of it. How could I say no to that?
Nobody wanted me to go into the woods with a
bunch of strange guys, But how could I say no
to improvising an entire feature without a stitch of makeup,

(46:28):
with layers of clothes and dirt and knives and nothing
but a pile of rocks to scare you with bad ass.
She seems really fucking cool. And then she retired from
acting and became a weed farmer, and I'm just like, God,
bless hi cod good for you.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Also, before she got cast in the movie, she was
a founding member of an improv company called Red Shag,
and she was in a feminist off off Broadway fringe
movement theater called Collision, So feminist icon actor formerly known
as Heather Donahue and a feminist off Broadway fringe movement theater.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
It's so fucking cool, but it's like just even hearing.
I think part of the point of this, like, part
of what makes this movie plausible is that everyone looks
like people and like and after several days in the woods,
which they were, everyone looks like shit, because how could
you not look like shit? But of course the only
backlash it like, you don't hear about how Mike looks

(47:29):
like shit after three days in the woods. You only
hear how Heather looks like shit. And judgments of her,
which again it's like, for this time is not at
all surprising, but I was surprised at how much it
seemed to really affect the actor's life moving forward. And
I appreciate that she's been vocal about that through the years.
And it's funny because it's like she's not even it's

(47:51):
not that she's unsupportive of the franchise, Like she mentions
that she saw the twenty sixteen Blair Witch movie and
thought it was really good and all this stuff, but
also met with the filmmakers or the producers or whoever
was in control of the franchise and was like, please
just keep my name out of it, because the franchise,
like as you both know, continues with like her brother

(48:14):
goes back to try to find out what happened, and
it's like her name is like connected as a dead person.
It just sounds like, yeah, absolutely maddening. And also I'm like,
how many people in the world have ever had this problem?
It must be very isolating to have this problem.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
It's right because as part of the marketing gimmick of
this movie, one of the co directors, Eduardo Sanchez, set
up this what became a famous website to help promote
the film, but it was basically feeding into the illusion
that this was a real documentary, that these were not actors,

(48:54):
they were student filmmakers making a documentary, and that they
died in the woods. So much so that like those
three actors were like listed as having been deceased on
IMDb for like a full year or something like that,
and a bunch of people thought that those people had

(49:15):
actually died and so like, so the actor's parents were
getting calls being like, I'm so sorry that your kid died,
like condolences, and like, what kind.

Speaker 4 (49:28):
Of weird ass person is, Like I've got to call
up this mom give condolences.

Speaker 5 (49:33):
It's so strange.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
And to add to that, they also like made missing
posters for them and posted them on college campuses, which
was so smart because that's like definitely the age I
feel like that was going to go to this movie.
And so even at the premiere they handed out posters
and I want to get my mits on one of
those original posters. So bad of the missing people. But yeah,

(49:55):
it's like they really went hard. They didn't do any
press before the movie, the actors, and they never showed
any trailers, and that was another you know, so they
saved a bunch of money on advertising, which was just
really smart by doing this like gorilla marketing campaign.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
And I think that like not that like a ton
of people, like except you, Chelsea, like would have seen
the sci Fi the doc on Sci Fi ahead of time,
but that just like lends the credibility of what you're seeing.
It's just ugh, it's so cool.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
They put it out three days before, which was cool.
It was like three days before it premiered in like
wide release.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
Yeah, so smart, And I didn't I also didn't realize
just like when I was reading through the oral history
that originally like the whole sort of mockumentary aspect and
like cutting out to members of the family as like
and you know, they died at the beginning of the movie.
It was not supposed to be all found footage. But
then it just like the filmmakers executed everything so well

(50:54):
and the actors did such a good job at like
being in the X Games of improv that that was
the movie. It's so fucking cool. So the last making
of anecdote I wanted to share has nothing to do
with their show, but I just thought was funny, was
that Josh did not know that he was going to die,
but then like got one of their like freaky little

(51:16):
messages and was like, hey, wait till Mike and Heather
go to bed tonight and then just like leave the tent.
And he didn't know why he was being forced to
leave the tent. And then the filmmakers were like, all right,
you're dead, Let's go to Denny's. And then they brought
him to Denny's. Done.

Speaker 5 (51:34):
Denny's is perfect.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
That's so funny.

Speaker 5 (51:37):
That is exactly where I would want to go after that.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Denny's.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
It's an American institution.

Speaker 5 (51:44):
Is always there for you anytime.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
So if it hasn't been clear. The cast camped in
the woods through basically the entire eight day shoot, so
they weren't like shooting, you know, your standard whatever fourteen
sixteen hour day kind of thing, and then like going
into a trailer or going in I think they did
spend one night in a hotel, and it was because

(52:10):
their campsite was basically flooded, just water everywhere, like an
inch of water in their tents kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
And the filmmakers are like, well, we can't kill them.
We're only paying them five hundred dollars for the worst
days of their lives.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
But the rest of the time they were actually like
camping in the woods during the entire shoot. So it
was like very uncomfortable, and like we mentioned before, the
crew was like feeding them less and less. They were like,
you know, your safety is important to us. We're never

(52:44):
gonna like put you in extreme harm's way, but we
also want you to be very uncomfortable. So like they
would scale back on the amount of food that they
gave the cast each day so that when they were
like we're very tiired and hungry, like that was coming,
which is like very abusive.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Yeah, as we.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Alluded to, it just sounds miserable.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Yeah, And it was unclear of like how much of
that was communicated in advanced Like I wasn't able to
find like super extreme detail other than they were told
in advance that it was going to be a very
difficult shoot. But I don't know, like, yeah, if they
were told that they would not receive enough food kind
of thing. Yeah, But yeah, I mean I think that

(53:29):
the ethics of this movie are definitely like can and
should be called into question. I'm not advocating for these
kinds of movies to be made more, but it's pretty
fucking cool. It's got some.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Good performances out of it. So long, I want to
say one last quote from the actor who plays Heather
daughter you. She says, quote, It's very hard for me
to talk about the backlash because for me it was
so directly personal. It was my mother sympathy cards. It
was people coming up to me on the street telling

(54:03):
me that they wished I was dead, saying they wanted
their money back.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
They're such weirdos, freak show show.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
For being in a movie like Go Home. It was
me in my eighty four Toyota Silica breaking down in
La On Losianaga underneath the billboard with my own face
on it. It was a profoundly surrendal experience. I feel
like her treatment by the public upon this movie coming

(54:38):
out is not dissimilar from her treatment within the movie.
And maybe I'm reading too much into things here. Let
me know what y'all think of this, Because as I
was watching the movie, and having not to brag or anything,
but having directed a few students films myself, I was

(55:02):
picking up on a very familiar sensation of like implicit
gender bias, where obviously the cast of this movie Slash.
The crew making this documentary about the Blair witch within
this movie has one woman and two men, and the

(55:24):
woman is in charge. She's the director of the movie.
This is her project. It seems like it was her
idea to do this and that these two guys are
just helping her make it. And throughout the movie they
are constantly getting pissed at her and blaming her for
everything that goes wrong. Now, are they pissed at her

(55:45):
specifically because she's in charge and when things go wrong
you generally blame the person in charge. Or are they
pissed at her because she's a woman and they don't
trust that she's capable and that they don't trust that
she can get them back safely and all of these things.
Is it maybe a little bit of Column and columb

(56:06):
because like they never explicitly say anything like I don't
trust you or think that you're capable because you're a woman.
But also a lot of sexism is not that explicit.
It is extremely implicit because like, again, I've been in
situations where I was like the only fem person and

(56:27):
in many of those cases, like I was in charge
and I was surrounded by men and I could tell
that the men around me just like weren't taking me seriously.
They were questioning my judgment, They weren't trusting that I
could get the job done. They were blaming me for
anything that went wrong, regardless of it was my fault
or not. And no one like outwardly said I don't

(56:51):
trust you because of your gender. But when something like
that is happening, you can just like tell that you
people are perceiving you in that way. And so I'm
convinced that these two men kept getting so pissed at
Heather because of this implicit gender bias. Is she making
mistakes along the way, sure, but I do feel like

(57:16):
she's the subject of this like unfair scrutiny because she's
a woman in charge.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
That's also supported by the fact that so much of
this movie is improvised under duress. So it's like your
natural biases, you know. And this is not to say
that the two actors hate women or anything like that,
but I do feel like the instructions they're given are
so vague that, like, of course, your biases are going

(57:44):
to sort of like bubble to the surface in those
kinds of situations. It feels like a very bizarre, like
a Stanford prison experiment kind of way to reveal those biases.
I was struggling most with Mike at the beginning, and
then as the movie went on, I thought Josh was
more interesting because Josh starts out like he's her friend,

(58:06):
and he is defensive of her towards the beginning, but
when things start to go wrong in a meaningful way,
he turns on her. And I feel like I've certainly
had experiences like that with men that like start on
your side, but when it's like ooh no, they kind
of leave your side when it counts. And in a

(58:26):
way that totally blows up in Josh's face because Mike's
the one who fucking kicked the map into the creek,
so whatever, But I felt I also had that same
tingling sensation of just oh yeah, of course they are
going to turn on her faster, and they are going
to assume less competence. And all of this is complicated

(58:51):
by the fact that none of them are experienced in
what they're doing, like they're doing filmmakers. They don't fucking
know what they're doing. But I think it's clear, especially
as things get worse and worse, that Heather is more
quickly turned on, and like that leads up to the
scene that we've already started talking about, but I want
to talk more about of like where she's antagonized by

(59:15):
Josh and that's a conflict that is never resolved between
them due to their dying.

Speaker 4 (59:23):
Yes, well, and it's just like I think it would
be the only way to really test it, because you know,
Heather makes mistakes.

Speaker 5 (59:29):
There's some hubris there.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
She thinks she knows where she's going, things that would
piss me off if I were one of those guys. Sure,
But had the director been a man, I don't think
there would have ever been a scene where they're like
braiding this man and filming this man, And I think
there would have been like more willingness to collaborate on
the problem versus just like kind of blaming Heather and

(59:53):
ganging up on her and like, yeah, so I don't
think Heather's like some angelic, innocent woman character who's.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
Completely fairly treated.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
But like, I just think the way that we'd be
able to really see is like switching out how they're
for a male director, and I don't imagine that it
would have gone the same way. I think there might
have been fist fights perhaps, but I don't even know
about that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Yeah, I think the thing that struck me the most
outside of them, like accosting her was And the first
sort of inkling that like Josh is maybe has more
of this inherent bias that he probably thinks he does,
is that he is very, very quick to believe that
Heather lost the map he is. That is like the

(01:00:39):
first time that you're like, oh, that's your friend, where
are you now? But he goes with Mike's version of
the story Overheathers seemingly for no for a reason it
wasn't clear to me. Yeah, And I feel like his
behavior towards her, I mean, I think it's like intentional
in the way that it's written and performed, but like
there is like tru that is broken between these two friends.

(01:01:02):
That feels. Yeah, it is like a tricky combination of
leadership and like who is sort of on top of
the pile? Whose project are we here for? Probably for
no money because you're in college, and the gender dynamics,
so it's so wild, like I can't believe this movie
exists because you're like that. I'm sure that there's a

(01:01:23):
bit of all of the actors, whether they like it
or not in how that plays out. But I like,
I think that while all of these things are true,
like Heather, it can be up her own ass at moments.
And I like that they are like she's an I
mlegant film student too, Like she doesn't know what she's doing.
None of them know what they're doing. It's the way

(01:01:43):
that they treat each other once they all realize they're
in way over their head that I feel like is
telling well to that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Like you said, Jimmy, I appreciate that we have a
flawed female character on screen because so few movies allow
a woman or a fem of any kind to be flawed.
They're so often portrayed as these like one dimensional, perfect
little angels who never make mistakes, they have no bad qualities,

(01:02:14):
which is obviously not what being a human.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Is, right, or like the expectation of like hypercompetence in
any woman in the front of a movie, right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
So I like that she is. Yeah, she displays a
lot of hubris, although I do believe because one of
the major sources of tension between them is that they
keep blaming her for getting them lost, and she keeps
insisting that they are not lost, and it's hard to
tell what's actually true, Like does she know exactly where

(01:02:48):
they are in the map and where they are going
like she says she does, and it's just the witch
who's again like altering their perception or a reality or
whatever the witch does. Is it that she's like too
proud to admit that she is actually lost and she
wants to inspire confidence that she is capable and she

(01:03:10):
does know where they're going and that she's not leading
them to danger, that kind of thing. But because sense
of direction has so many gender stereotypes attached to it,
and yet men stereotypically are perceived as a gender that
is really good at directions and they know where they're

(01:03:33):
going and they just have an inherent sense of direction
and then they can just look up at the sky.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Or alternatively, I think that there is like a stereotype
that I find less true as time goes on, but
that if they are lost, they cannot admit it. They
won't stop and ask, yeah, it's so embarrassing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Meanwhile, women are perceived stereotypically as people who have a
really a sense of direction and who just like cannot
navigate where they are or where they're going. And I
think that plays a large part into why I feel
like there's such strong implicit gender bias among these characters,

(01:04:15):
is because such a huge part of the tension between
them is maps and senses of direction and where they're
going and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
Even when Mike admits to kicking the map, he blames
Heather by saying it was useless anyway, So like, I
kicked it because you got us lost to the point
where this map is useless, So why not just fucking
kick it in because you know it didn't matter anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
So furious because she's like, it was useless to you
parentheses because you don't know how to read it, But
it was not useless to me. I knew exactly where
we were on that map, And I like believe her
as she's saying that, Like, I think that's probably legitimately true,
And it's just that the witch is totally to them.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
Even if she's not telling the truth there, Like, that's
not the reason that he doesn't believe her, So it
doesn't even matter to me. It matter because I honestly
I was like, I don't know if I believe her.
It seems like she was kind of bullshitting to some
extent in the previous day. But it's like it doesn't
really matter because I think that like Mike doing that

(01:05:24):
is even more telling because he doesn't know her. He
has no reason to not trust that she doesn't know
what she's talking about. He met her yesterday, So this
is like a bias that has nothing to do with
who she is, right Damn.

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
I mean there's like, I don't know if we have
more Heather, but I think there is another female character
or woman character that we need to discuss, and that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:47):
Is the Witch, the Blair Witch.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Yeah, the Blair Witch.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
And you know, I think like when you do watch
The Blair Witch, you don't get any information about kind
of where or who this Blair Witch actually was. When
you watch the documentary, you learn about the character of
Ellie Kedwick, who was a witch who was accused of

(01:06:17):
like drinking the blood of children, and these children in
the town came or like the whole town then like
tied her to a tree. She died of exposure. She
had like strange symbols carved into her by this group.
So it is kind of a satanic panic situation originally,
but you know, you don't know was this witch actually

(01:06:39):
doing these things, because after she gets murdered, essentially kids
still start disappearing in the town, right, So that's when
it takes on this sort of paranormal dimension. And what
I think is so interesting is we get the character
in the Blair Witch Project and then also in like
all the supplementary stuff of Rustin Parr, who is the

(01:07:01):
child murderer from the nineteen forties.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
Who just a wild because his name is so rest
in peace. Oh yeah, that's my brilliant contract.

Speaker 4 (01:07:11):
It's based on repute's names.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Yeah, So Ellie Edward is a close anagram to Edward Kelly,
who I forget who that is, but child murderer? Yeah, okay,
righter right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
I was like, we have the right guest on Thank
you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
I just read about it on scholarly journal, Wikipedia and
then immediately forgot who it was. Rustin Parr is a
character name or like part of the lore because the
directors were like, what's an anagram for resputant? So wow, Jamie.

Speaker 5 (01:07:48):
I need to correct myself really quick. Edward Kelly was
a an occultist.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
Okay, okay, I don't think he murdered anyone you know
for Edward Kelly intact.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
But all this to say, and we've talked about the
representation of witches in many episodes. We've covered a lot
of which movies.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
And we're fans of which media in general.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
True, how be I was making a list of everything
we've covered. We've done the Avich, We've done Witches, We've
done Witches of Eastwick, The Love Witch, The Craft, Practical Magic,
hocus Pocus. I would even throw Kiki's Delivery circollowen, we
Love a Witch, right, And many movies that are not

(01:08:34):
necessarily specifically about witches but have witch characters, such as
the Wizard of Oz and things like that. Witches are
very pervasive in Hollywood media, and especially horror media.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
And if you're covering movies that center women, you're gonna
end up covering a lot of movie about witches. Very true, true,
like positively and negatively right, because.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
I mean, most of these which movies are playing into
the stereotypes and the popularly held misconception that you know,
witches are evil, they're agents of the devil, they're malicious.
They're almost always women, which like kind of lends this
sort of like, well, women equals witches equals women are evil,

(01:09:23):
which is a belief that got a lot of people,
again mostly women, killed during various witch hunts and witch
trials throughout history, even though, as we've discussed on other episodes,
people who were perceived to be witches throughout history were
usually just like empowered women or people who didn't marry

(01:09:46):
formed of yeah, unmarried women, healers, people who didn't conform
to very rigid roles as far as like gender and
sexuality and things like that throughout history, and then people
are like, oh, well they must be a witch, and
then a lot of them were persecuted. This movie is
doing the same shit.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
Absolutely, Yeah, Chelsea, I'm curious what your thoughts are on that,
because it's very interesting to me that, like, you see
some sort of transgressive ideas with Heather and bicentering her,
but it does feel like there is like a saminess
even though the way that this movie presents everything is
so different, but there is a sameness to like a

(01:10:29):
woman crosses a boundary and like gets a little too curious.
I think that's another trope that is kind of present
here and not really challenged. And yeah, the idea of
the witch is just like reinforced in a way that
I didn't even really almost notice the first time, because
you don't see the witch, which I think helps, but
it doesn't really resolve.

Speaker 4 (01:10:49):
The issue, right, you don't get who the witch was
in the actual movie.

Speaker 5 (01:10:54):
Then you get the background, which does kind of present a.

Speaker 4 (01:10:56):
Possible false accusation, but then kind of, Okay, are still
getting murdered. This ventual ghost is still kind of coming
after children. And I think that there's a lot to
do with the Satanic panic in this movie, especially as
it relates to women, and for anyone uninitiated into the

(01:11:16):
Satanic panic. In the eighties and nineties, there were tons
of accusations of Satanic cults kidnapping and ritually abusing children,
and this was just an idea so widely held that
like Oprah Heraldo, police departments all over the country were
trained in spotting Satanic ritual abuse. People were recovering memories

(01:11:38):
by like dubious therapy techniques of abuses in their childhood
that were so outrageous that it's so difficult to believe
now that this ever happened. Children were also being coerced
unintentionally by therapists and ended up in saying that all
these things happened, like that their teachers in their daycares,
which was like a big place like daycares or the
center of this, the teachers were not only abusing them,

(01:12:02):
but they were like putting them in kittie pools full
of baby sharks that were biting them, And that their
teachers were flying around on broomsticks and they were flushed
down the toilet to like live in the basement, and
that there was like a gorilla's arm ripped off and
a horse was sacrificed in the classroom. And yet no
shred of physical evidence was ever found.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
I know all of this, and it is never less
shocking to just hear it sort of raveled off in
the list. Yeah, let's just you know, right, baby sharks,
gorilla arm right.

Speaker 5 (01:12:28):
Right, right, right right, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
So it is so difficult to believe now, and yet
it was like a widely held belief in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
There was also a lot of media and like, yeah,
children's toys and a lot of things that were blamed
for perpetuating this panic.

Speaker 4 (01:12:44):
Yes, rock music, yeah, D and D Yeah, absolutely everything
was suspect in the eighties and nineties that fundamentalists didn't
like or feminist, because feminists were also unfortunately part of
this as well, not necessarily for any reason other than
trying to protect children and not being educated on kind
of what was going on. Because guess what, we probably
all would have been like part of this because when

(01:13:07):
you were in it, it was so scary. You didn't
have any evidence that this wasn't happening. It's such an
amazing story that there's like satanic.

Speaker 5 (01:13:13):
Cults in the woods.

Speaker 4 (01:13:15):
It's like, it's easy sometimes to believe these things when
police departments in the FBI are reporting this as actually happening,
right right, But then I think there's an interesting thing
happening at the same time. Where Like, on one hand,
the Satanic panic largely blamed women, like a lot of
the people who went on trial for abuses were women

(01:13:37):
who were said to be sexually abusing children in these
satanic rituals. And it also had a lot to do
kind of in retrospect around the fact that women in
the eighties and nineties were starting to work more and
more and be outside of the house and daycares were
becoming a lot more popular, and so a lot of people,

(01:13:58):
including myself, theologists who look back on this. Do believe
that a lot of this backlash toward these daycares had
to do with the fact that they were this symbolic
thing that said, Okay, women are no longer mothers, Like
women are coming out of this long term position as

(01:14:18):
only homemakers, and they're like kind of like fuck this
more than you know, like the sixties seventies you have
more women working, but by the eighties it was like
a lot more common, and it was also like very
condemned by fundamentalists. So you have this like weird blame
that is coming like the Witch Trials in a way, right.
I mean, men were certainly blamed for some of these

(01:14:40):
ritual abuses, and some men were blamed for some of
the ritual abuses in the Witch Trials as well, But
generally when we look at these things, we look back
and say, okay, this was like women doing these things,
which is so wild. But then in the nineties rattling
this off, you also have third wave feminine, which I

(01:15:00):
think is like, that's why I think you get so
many like good witch movies, because even like the Craft
is still like kind of an empowerment film, it's like
also has sort of the hubrius of power and the
problems with that. But you know, I think there was
a reclaiming of the Witch in the nineties that came
along with this new kind of feminism that was just

(01:15:23):
kind of retelling these stories in a new way. So
you have kind of all those influences throughout because they're
writing this movie throughout the nineties, right, it comes out
in ninety nine, but throughout the nineties, like we're still
having the Satanic panic happening, And originally the movie was
supposed to be more satanic. They were supposed to find
all these like satanic artifacts and pentagrams in the house,

(01:15:44):
and then they changed direction for whatever reason.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
Which I'm grateful that they did. This is not quite
Blair Witch adjacent, but I also feel like connecting things
to daycares. It also feels so tied in with like
the stranger danger ideas of the eighties and where it
was like it was popular to make children afraid of
strangers and present strangers as the ultimate danger when it's

(01:16:08):
statistically more likely for danger and abuse to come from
someone you know, and all this stuff. That's sort of
like you don't think that there would be some level
of presence to it in the Blair Witch Project, but
there is like the idea of a stranger luring you
out into the woods to get you. Like it does
feel like there's a little bit of like late twentieth

(01:16:30):
century stranger dangerous stuff tied in there as well. I
wanted to talk a little bit about Heather as the
visual storyteller of this movie for the most part, and
I kind of wonder. I mean, I've read a couple
of essays about it. The one that I want to
share stuff from is from two thousand and two written

(01:16:52):
by Denica McDonald. It's called Trespasses into Temptation, Gendered Imagination
and the Blair Witch Project. I don't agree with everything
in in this essay, but I thought it was really
interesting and sort of like gets into this in a
very academic way. She's quoting the shit out of Laura
Mulvey and I like had flashbacks to my freshman year

(01:17:14):
of college, but both kind of talks about how there is,
first of all, the very sey presentation of the Witch
like we've just talked about, but also in a way
that feels like it possibly got lost when the movie
came out because there's so much about this movie that's
so interesting and different that it's like a little easier

(01:17:37):
to forget that there are very stereotypical horror tropes present
in this movie too, where like a woman gets too
curious and has to receive her come up and for
crossing this invisible boundary of where you're not supposed to go.
So I wanted to share a little bit from her
essay because I just thought it was interesting. For the

(01:18:01):
first half of the film, Heather is the strongest character
in the film. She's focused, organized, domineering. She refuses to
be the object of both the larger films gaze and
the documentary's gaze. She has brought her own camera to
record all of the events that take place. Moreover, the
project was her idea. She takes possession of the only
map for the excursion, as well as the only compass.
It is also Heather who has scouted out the project

(01:18:23):
and who leads the excursion. Literally, she holds all the cards. However,
out of all the characters, it is Heather who has
the most difficulty accepting the reality of events around her. Thus,
when she realizes she is losing control of her controlled
and well planned project, she frantically dismisses what she cannot explain.
She repeatedly refuses to accept the seriousness of the situation
she finds herself in and desperately tries to hold on

(01:18:44):
to what is real by reheating phrases such as things
like this just do not happen in America. This is America.
It is impossible to get lost, it is impossible to
stay lost, which I think I wonder how improvised that
line was, because that, to me, I was like, Wow,
that's a fun in like doctoral thesis is worth of
something to talk about inside of that.

Speaker 5 (01:19:06):
And then they all scream God bless America.

Speaker 4 (01:19:08):
Yeah, or the two guys just starts screaming that, which
I think is interesting too. Write like she says that,
and then they just start screaming these like American anthems. Yeah,
just because you know they've they've obviously lost it a bit.

Speaker 5 (01:19:20):
But that's also interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
But the idea of like, and I genuinely don't know
how intentional this was in the filmmaking because of how
it was made, but I think it's very rare to
in general, give anyone who's not a man a camera
and give them narrative control. I love that they give
that to Heather, and they also take it away from
her in certain moments where it's like, technically most of

(01:19:46):
this movie is presented by quote unquote the female gaze,
but it isn't because of not only the moments where
you see the black and white of I think it
Josh is shooting, but also it's like inherent to the movie.
And I think, like the website lord that two male
directors were hired to edit it so fascinating. I don't

(01:20:08):
know even what to make of it, because a lot
of it feels like probably unintentional, but to like have
a woman at the front of a movie thinking that
she is controlling, you know, controls the gaze of the movie,
but everything about the way it happens is taken out
of her control and is like sort of used to
undermine her credibility as a storyteller because you know that

(01:20:33):
she dies when the movie starts, and you get to
see all of these things that she doesn't want you
to see. I just think it's very interesting. I can't
think of another movie like it, I know, definitely, and
then the America stuff just I don't know. I feel
like that's almost like a little cherry on top of
what you were talking about just now Chelsea, where it's

(01:20:53):
just like sort of the exceptionalist arrogance of Americans and
of like this like specific late twentieth century kind of
moment where you're like a bad thing wouldn't happen in America,
and you're like, oh, baby, hang in there.

Speaker 4 (01:21:08):
This is like so similar to me, to another thing,
and I am absolutely obsessed with which is the story
of the Donner Party. And they are another group of
people who kind of marched into a situation believing that
everything would be completely fine because sort of that maybe
partially because of the halo of protection that we have

(01:21:30):
as Americans, or we think that we have because of
this idea of like manifest destiny, like this is our land,
this is our place, like nothing bad can happen to us,
because like we are chosen to go westward and like
it's sanctioned by our higher power, and so we can

(01:21:51):
act however we want. Because the Donner Party just they
did things like stop and party for three days when
they were like two weeks behind the weather. They did
these things that landed them in this situation, believing hucksters
who told them they'd be completely fine going in this
other direction and getting lost, and there's so there are
a lot of parallels between these two stories, not to

(01:22:14):
say that you know, it's the same intention behind going
into the woods, but there is something like particular to me,
I don't know about like three white young people going
into the woods being like everything's gonna be totally fine.
You know, we're gonna like go and I would do
this speaking as someone who would absolutely have done this

(01:22:35):
and absolutely been the heather of the situation.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
I think we all would have been the heather at
different points in a judgment.

Speaker 5 (01:22:41):
Just a fact.

Speaker 4 (01:22:42):
Yeah, So I think that there's still like an interesting
thing about that, like hubrisk, because that's a big theme
of this film, is like you think you can go
and chase like the paranormal and you can go after
like these stories and you have like the site of
a halo of protection. I used to travel in just

(01:23:03):
such dangerous ways.

Speaker 5 (01:23:04):
I used to hitch II. You can do all these things,
And looking back, I'm like.

Speaker 4 (01:23:06):
Yeah, I absolutely had this like idea that I was
protected somehow, And there is something to that as well,
like that lens of some kind of privilege or some
kind of invincibility.

Speaker 5 (01:23:21):
That also has to do with youth, of course, like
the folly of being in your early twenties.

Speaker 4 (01:23:26):
Sure, but yeah, I think that that's kind of another
lens of like the overconfidence certain groups in America myself, including.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Totally young white middle class yeah people.

Speaker 3 (01:23:38):
Yeah right, yeah, And that's like so much of like
what this movie shows feels just like experimental and possibly unintentional.
Where I don't know that we've mentioned this yet, but
originally the directors envisioned it being three men who were
leading this movie. And it wasn't until how they're auditioned
and gave an amazing audition that they were like, oh,

(01:24:00):
actually we're going to put you at the center of
this movie. So so much of what is gendered about
this movie is very possibly not a part of the
original plan. But that's not to say that that doesn't
come into the performances and into the editing and into
the marketing and into the reception. It's just so bizarre
and fascinating and the same thing of like it's the

(01:24:22):
late nineties, So I don't know, but it's like I
wonder how intentionally they were cast for Race for Appears.
I Mean, it's all kind of unclear, but it comes
out just because of how the movie was shot and
made and what it seems like the personal experiences of
the actors were because so much of them had to

(01:24:43):
go into the parts. Yeah, the America stuff. I was like,
oh fuck, I totally forgot about that part of the movie. Wow,
not them cultural commentarying at the turn of the Millennium.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
No, Well, one of the things Heather says is when
they're being like hunted in the woods and they don't
really know who or what is hunting them, she says
something like, well, they can't chase us forever because this
is America where we've destroyed most of our natural resources,
basically saying like, we're gonna run out of forest eventually

(01:25:21):
and we will come upon the civilization.

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
Not even totally misguided thoughts, but come.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
On, yeah, that would be my logic. If I was
lost in the woods, I'd be like, well, if I
just keep walking in a direction, there will be a
road eventually.

Speaker 3 (01:25:38):
But you never see the blur witch controlling the space
time continuing. No one's ready.

Speaker 4 (01:25:42):
For that exactly, And I love that they just throw
in this little pinch of hillbilly horror where we have
I believe Josh saying Oh my god, I think that
there's like some redneck I can't remember what he says,
but some rednecks fucking with us out in the woods,
which I all say, so really, I'm into looking at
horror movie through the lens of class and like that

(01:26:05):
they're out in the woods and this is kind of
the only place where these like scary, impoverished people live
who are gonna get you if you go into the woods. Again,
like that like middle class college student, like a Deliverance
type movie where it's like, oh, we're just gonna like
canoe down this river because nothing bad will happen to us,
even the way of like no real plan. And yeah,

(01:26:27):
I think that that's another just like interesting American moment
in the movie that we're kind of led to believe
that could be a possibility at least.

Speaker 3 (01:26:35):
And you can feel that in how the interviews go
at the top of the movie as well, where there's
especially when they come into contact with Mary Brown, which
feels like a combination of they do not think she
is of sound mind. I think they're also judging her
because she's poor and she's old. Yeah, and then also
another time with the guys that are fishing, Like you

(01:26:57):
can just even hear I don't know, like you can
hear in Heather voice that she's like, I don't take
these people seriously because they are poor and live rural.

Speaker 4 (01:27:08):
Yeah, they're not listening to the Harbingers and there's like
a bunch of them and they're just a you know,
they're not listening to them at all, which is a
you know, classic horror and a classic college student mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
Yeah, Josh even makes a reference to Deliverance because like
that's the thing, like people's frame of reference for a
lot of just what happens in life is the media
they've consumed. And he's like, well, probably what's happening is
that there are like people who live in the woods
and they're the ones fucking with us.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
Like in Deliverance, You're like, who do you think made that, Josh?
Middle class white people you feel defice.

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
Similarly, I forget which character it's either Mike or Josh.
They come upon that like makeshift cemetery and one of
them says and it's just like a throwaway line of dialogue.
It's not a plot point or anything like that. It's
just like a they said something, and he says ooh,
looks like an Indian burial ground, which is like, first

(01:28:08):
of all.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
We've also talked about on this show, which is just.

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
Like, yeah, an example of something scary or haunted being
likened to indigenous history in some way. Where again, as
we've discussed, so many horror movies attribute something very scary
to a native burial ground being disturbed or a Native

(01:28:32):
quote unquote curse of some kind, something like that that
a character again just like makes a throwaway comment about.
I feel like there's also a similar moment, another throwaway
line where they talk about like voodoo or like a
I think they like see the stick figures and make
a reference to how they're like voodoo dolls. We've also

(01:28:55):
talked about this the way that Princess and the Frog, Yeah,
that voodoo is widely misrepresented in media.

Speaker 3 (01:29:04):
It's such a fascinating like time capsule of these very
specific biases that still exist. But it's just like the
way it's laid out in this movie is very natural
because it basically is yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:29:18):
And these biases are coming out, and like the acting,
because they don't have a script, So I am assuming
that Josh did not have a script that said this
is an Indian burial ground. You should say something about
this being an Indian burial ground. That's like just coming
completely out of the influence that media has had on
him completely. Yeah, which is just as interesting as a script.
It's it's basically the same thing. It's still the writer

(01:29:40):
slash actors bias being expressed.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
Which I feel like those three actors should have been
credited writers on the movie since it's all their dialogue,
but they were not credited as writing the movie. The
only credited writers are the two directors, Daniel Merrick and
Eduardo Sanchez, who wrote that outline for the movie. So yeah,

(01:30:05):
they conceived the story and the basic plot points, but
it was the actors.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
But like the most iconic moment of this movie was
technically written by the actor formerly known as Heather Donihue.
Those are her words.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
I just wanted to point out two quick things. One
is that speaking of like their biases just kind of
coming through in the dialogue they're improvising. A few of
them make some fat phobic in like body shaming comments. Also,
one of the guys is filming Heather when she's trying

(01:30:47):
to pee in the woods, which is very gross.

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
Illegal and they film her dirty butt, yeah, which is
very friend evil friend behavior. I will say, not that
it excuses it, but zooming in on someone's dirty butt rude.
I'll make the controversial observation that it could happen to
any of us.

Speaker 5 (01:31:08):
It's classic comedy.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
I would never do that. I would never film your
dirty butt, Jamie. I just want you to know that
Jamie would film me.

Speaker 3 (01:31:14):
I might film your dirty but I don't know. I
don't know. It depends on how dirty it is.

Speaker 5 (01:31:20):
The ruth comes up, how.

Speaker 3 (01:31:21):
Feisty I was feeling on that day.

Speaker 5 (01:31:24):
But you wouldn't put it in them.

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
I wouldn't put it in the final cut, think, but
I maybe send it to a group text.

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
Oh sure, fair? Yeah, does anyone have anything else?

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:31:34):
I think that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:35):
I think that this movie does pass the Baxel test.

Speaker 5 (01:31:37):
It does.

Speaker 2 (01:31:38):
Yeah. Between Heather and Mary Brown, yay. And if we
knew the local that they're interviewing, who's like holding the
toddler in her arms, if we knew her name, which.

Speaker 3 (01:31:48):
It spiritually passes to me. Yeah, her real name is
Susie Gooch, which is also like, okay, an incredible name.
I'd love Susie Gooch.

Speaker 4 (01:31:57):
I think it's also worth pointing out that there is
no romance true at all in this movie, So there's
actually no conversation at all about a man romantically. It's
like the only girlfriend we have is Josh saying like,
my girlfriend's gonna know I'm missing, and that's kind of
like the only.

Speaker 3 (01:32:15):
Line, Like we got that, Josh, we get it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:18):
Does she live in Canada?

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):
I read in the oral history that that was originally
written into the outline was that Josh and had There
had a romantic So it's like, you can't even hand
it to the director because they originally wrote in that
like Josh and had There had a romantic history. But
then based on how the early improvised scenes were going,
they're like, forget it cool because their relationship was becoming

(01:32:39):
so friend antagonistic that they're like, let's just cut that
element and have you just react to each other. But yeah,
they weren't above it, but it just was like a
testament to the actors, like, I mean, it wasn't necessary
either way, right, Definitely, their performance has made it clear.

Speaker 2 (01:32:56):
Interesting, So yes to passing the Bechdel type, but onto
the perfect metric. The Bechdel cast nipple scale, which is
our scale where we rate the movie zero to five
nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.

(01:33:16):
And I will give this ooh two and a half
or three nipples just because I really like the character
of Heather in that I appreciate that she feels so
authentically human in the way that women are not often

(01:33:39):
allowed to be on screen. She's flawed and she has
to deal with again what I interpret as implicit gender bias.
Whether or not that was an intentional piece of the
filmmakers or not, it is how I experienced the movie.
As I was watching it. Two men's treatment of her

(01:34:02):
felt extremely familiar to me in that very kind of
gendered way where totally they aren't coming out and saying
it explicitly, but their behavior and just the way they
interact with her and the way they do not really
trust her at any point again felt as though they

(01:34:24):
were harboring these sexist biases, and I think that's interesting
to watch. And again, whether as intentional or not, it
is there to me so and it's something I never
noticed until this watch of it either. But I also
hadn't seen the movie since I was a teenager probably However,

(01:34:48):
the lack of challenging of like the traditional witch narrative
of oh, of course there was a witch who is
evil because which is be evil murderers for no reason,
that not being challenged at all, and that trope just

(01:35:09):
being fully leaned into. And you don't get much backstory
or lore of the Blair Witch in this movie, but
in the two sequels, and I think I didn't watch
that documentary that you're both referring to, but it seems
like there's more lore that is canon to the property

(01:35:30):
and to the Blair Witch, that dives more into who
the Blair Witch was and what she's all about. And
again it's just like playing into those tropes of like
woman equals which equals evil. So didn't care much for that.
So with that in mind, I think I'll give the
movie two and a half nipples, and I'll give one

(01:35:52):
to the actor formally known as Heather donaghue, and I'll
give one to Mary Own, and then I'll give my
half nipple to the woman who has the toddler, Yeah,
who improvised Susy.

Speaker 5 (01:36:12):
Gooch and famously now a corn.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
Fan whose daughter is now a huge cornhead baby gooch
a Corn Cob if you will, totally corn.

Speaker 5 (01:36:23):
So yeah, that's my reading.

Speaker 3 (01:36:25):
Yeah, I'm gonna go three. I really enjoyed getting to
talk about this movie. This movie does so many things.
I don't even really care if it's intentional or not,
because it's like what we have and there's so few
movies like it where it's like you're literally stressed testing
late nineties white middle class biases just inherently to how
this project was made. It's so interesting. I really I

(01:36:48):
have a lot of love for the character Heather, and
the actor formerly known as Heather Donahue, and all of
the actors. I mean, just like absolutely wild that they
survived this experience. And again, whether intentional or not, the
idea of like a woman controlling the narrative and having
the narrative taken away from her after her death and

(01:37:11):
also in the last day of her life, I think
is really fascinating. And if it's a mistake, I don't care.
It's fucking cool. And then there's all the less challenging
part of this that we've talked about, of the presentation
of witches and how Heather's treated in certain moments. I think, honestly,

(01:37:31):
the presentation of the Witch herself is the thing I
have the biggest issue with because how had There's treated
does feel like a part of that stress test, and
it feels very relevant to how her character works out.
And I think it's frustrating and fascinating that the apology
scene is what most people remember from this movie because

(01:37:51):
it is a scene that is credited as being written
by two men when it was not. It's a great
piece of acting that was widely mocked for years, in
years and years, and it kind of I think because
it's famous, which is again, this isn't a fault of
the movie, really, but I mean, like, let you sort
of believe that Heather brought this on to herself and

(01:38:13):
brought this on to her friends. Yeah, with the apology
sort of being the thing that sticks with her. No,
no one, It doesn't stick with anyone. That Mike's the
one that got rid of the map. It doesn't like
the other characters. Accountability isn't what sticks with people. And
so I just think the movie fucking rips hell, and
I just really enjoy talking about it with you both.

(01:38:34):
I'm going to give it three nips, and I'm going
to give them all two Ray Hants aka the actor
formerly known as Heather Donna Hugh looking forward to figuring
out where I can buy her weed online.

Speaker 4 (01:38:49):
I think she's out of the game now, sadly. Damn,
she's just being a Buddhist now, which is rad and
I would be too distressful history.

Speaker 3 (01:38:59):
You're going to a balance, seriously, this has been your life, yeah, Chelsea,
how about you? Ugh?

Speaker 4 (01:39:05):
Okay, I think that one of the most interesting themes.
And that makes me again like agree with you both
really about the portrayal of the witch being the most
egregious offense against like women. And I didn't actually mention
this before, but there's a theme of blame, which we've talked.

Speaker 3 (01:39:27):
About with Heather.

Speaker 4 (01:39:28):
But then we can also look at the blame that
was placed if we're looking outside of the movie, which
I think is okay, because these things existed in kind
of concert with each other. So it's like, yeah, it's
the Blair Witch Project. But a lot of people were
on the website, a lot of people were watching the
fake documentary, and you learn about Ellie Kenwick who is
blamed by the town for the disappearances of children and

(01:39:51):
then murdered, and then you also have Rust and Parr,
the child murderer of the nineteen forties who is essentially
considered to have been possessed by a woman. Right, So
it's like we have this actual horrific murderer that did exist.

Speaker 5 (01:40:07):
There's no lore.

Speaker 4 (01:40:07):
It's like Rust and Parr existed, he killed children, they
were found, but it's still somehow a woman's fault, like
the map is somehow Heather's fault. Right, So there's this
like theme of blame that isn't really analyzed in any way.

Speaker 5 (01:40:21):
So let's see.

Speaker 4 (01:40:23):
I mean, I think I'm going to go up to
three because mostly because of my bias and being so
in love and obsessed with this movie.

Speaker 5 (01:40:31):
Heather, Mary Brown, Ellie Kedwick, hell Ya.

Speaker 4 (01:40:35):
And you know what, maybe I'll give another Well now
I can't give one for marketing, but I would just
like to say the best marketing that has ever existed
in any franchise period.

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
Like, yeah, completely impossible to replicate. Like it's just never again,
so fucking cool, Never again, Chelsea, thank you so much
for bringing this to us. I just like, there's no
one I would rather talk about this movie with.

Speaker 5 (01:40:58):
That's so nice.

Speaker 4 (01:40:59):
I am so grateful that you asked me on and yeah,
it was a joy ride for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:41:05):
Of Hubris.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
What a wonderful camping troop.

Speaker 4 (01:41:08):
You know, in those Maryland woods. I'm from the Northwest,
not as scary. Our woods are not as scary as
those thin trees out there.

Speaker 5 (01:41:16):
Oh it's so freaky. I want to go. So I
guess we're camping, right.

Speaker 3 (01:41:20):
I'm coin, I'm cone see you there.

Speaker 2 (01:41:23):
Here's a quick little story to end the episode with.
I grew up in the middle of the woods in
rural western Pennsylvania. There was a local legend that is
like in local history books about this ghost who was
haunting people and then he manifested as this eternal flame

(01:41:45):
and so the but this flame that like popped out
of the ground one day was actually just like a
pocket of natural gas that ignited maybe from lightning or something.
But this flame, this like or eternal flame, ghost flame,
was right outside my house where like my dad built

(01:42:06):
a little like well.

Speaker 5 (01:42:08):
Yeah, sessed. So there's a shit.

Speaker 2 (01:42:11):
Ghost story that existed on my property growing up.

Speaker 3 (01:42:16):
Okay, your neighbor was the eternal flame.

Speaker 2 (01:42:20):
Yeah, oh, it's like the legend of the burning Well,
I'll look into it. I'll see if I can find anything.
I was like, you have to talk to listen.

Speaker 5 (01:42:27):
This is a great moment for self promo here.

Speaker 4 (01:42:30):
This is American Hysteria has been doing a new project
called the Urban Legends Hotline, and you go to our
website Americanassria dot com and you can leave a message
about an urban legend that you had growing up, and
then we turn it into like a very detailed and
very intensive episode. So I would love if you called
in and talked about this ghost flame because I love

(01:42:51):
it and you never know what you're gonna find. We
analyze it through every possible lens, newspapers, dot com.

Speaker 5 (01:42:57):
We're there.

Speaker 3 (01:42:59):
I listened to the pig People episode. That was a
hotline episode, right, Yeah it was.

Speaker 4 (01:43:04):
It was cannibal pig people murdering teenagers. That's the kind
of stuff you can find on our show.

Speaker 2 (01:43:10):
Yeah, tell us all about your show where people can
find it, etc.

Speaker 4 (01:43:15):
Yeah, American Hysteria, you can find it anywhere you get
your podcasts. And yeah, we cover the fantastical thinking of Americans,
moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, crazes, anything that
kind of stirs a large amount of people.

Speaker 5 (01:43:32):
We try to cover.

Speaker 4 (01:43:33):
So a lot of the shows are written narrative me
describing talking, and we have clips.

Speaker 5 (01:43:40):
You know, it's very multi media project.

Speaker 4 (01:43:42):
And then we also have interview episodes with all kinds
of cool guests talking about all kinds of cool topics.

Speaker 5 (01:43:47):
So I hope you guys come and listen.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
Hell yes, and thank you again for joining us. Come
back anytime.

Speaker 5 (01:43:53):
Please, yeah, just say the word.

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
You can follow us on social media at Bechtel Cast.
You can somebscribe to our Matreon at patreon dot com
slash Bechtel Cast, where you get two bonus episodes every
single month, plus access to the back catalog of many
many bonus episodes, all for five dollars a month.

Speaker 3 (01:44:17):
And you can get our merch over at teapublic dot
com slash the Bechtel Cast. And with that, let's go
into the Freaky house and get gun.

Speaker 5 (01:44:31):
I Dream.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
I'm down. Bye bye,