Tootsie with Nori Reed

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
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. Zephy and Beast start changing
with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Hey, tuts Hey, doll, Hey, honey, Bunny.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, excuse me of that's actually not cool. Oh that's
not cool when you do that. And then I'm surrounded
by women that are like, wait, what it's not cool
when they do that.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
But I have been speaking that.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
I just watched the feminism getting.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Very eyes by a character who is a man. Actually.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Welcome to the TUTSI episode of the Bechtel Cast.

Speaker 4 (00:49):
My name is Jamy Loftis.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
My name is Caitlin Toronte. This is our show where
we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the
Bechtel Test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie,
what is the Bechdel Test.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Bechdel Test is a media matter created by friend of
the show, Alison Bechtel, originally created as a bit a
fun joke for her excellent comic DEXs to watch out
for in the eighties. The version of the test we
use requires that two characters of a marginalized gender speak
to each other about something other than a man. They

(01:25):
must also have names, and the exchange should be meaningful
in some way. This is like zero point five percent
of what we talked about on the show, but still
my favorite way to find out that someone has actually
never listened to an episode.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
They're like, yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
You, and then you just kind of what we go
through the script right, No, and today this is our
tenth year as a podcast, and one of those episodes
that you're like, you think it would have happened.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Earlier, it just didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
And I don't know if I've had this many notes
in quite some time.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I'm pages, pages and pages of notes. So much to say, oh,
so much to do. So let's let's cut our guest.
Let's get our guest on the mix. We need her
desperately today. Yes, she's a writer and comedian.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
It's Nori Reid.

Speaker 5 (02:15):
Hi. Hello.

Speaker 6 (02:17):
I want to start just by giving a really huge
disclaimer that.

Speaker 5 (02:21):
I chose Toutsy. I chose Toutsy.

Speaker 6 (02:24):
I have never I have never seen the film. I've
heard of it in pop culture, referenced and shows, and
I've never seen it, and Caitlin and Jamie did not
reach out to me to do Tootsy. Okay, so save
the hate mail, put the pens down, put the pens down,
do not cancel this show.

Speaker 5 (02:44):
They I did this. I did this.

Speaker 6 (02:45):
Are we recording on Trinsday in visibility?

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (02:49):
Yeah it put the pens down.

Speaker 5 (02:52):
I put him down.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
There was a part of you that like, should I
text Norri be like you don't have to do this today?

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Find any other.

Speaker 6 (03:02):
Yeah, they asked me to do Tutsy on trains Day visibility.
I was kind of I was kinda like, uh, I mean,
if you want me to, I guess it sort.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Of gave you no choice. Yeah, yeah, you're like, you
have to do this.

Speaker 6 (03:14):
You're gonna call my agent.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
It would be really cool if you did this.

Speaker 6 (03:19):
You guys had guns. It was so weird.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
It was like weird.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
We kind of tied you up a little bit.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
I like that that part.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Was that part was hot Light.

Speaker 6 (03:29):
Yeah, which Tutsy that pervert would have loved.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Oh my gosh. Okay, so you had not seen this movie,
so no any so.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
When you said that in the email, when you were like, Titsy,
I've never seen it was like my god, Well, let's
just see what happens.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
God.

Speaker 6 (03:47):
First of all, like who like the fact that the
whole movie you have to suspend your disbelief that like
people don't know that that Toutsy is a man, Like
like that's so funny. Like everyone's just like, yeah, that's
a that's a that's ais woman. Right, It's like, no,
that's Dustin Hoffman. What are you talking about?

Speaker 5 (04:09):
That was wild?

Speaker 2 (04:10):
That was so wild that the Yeah, the world that
this movie takes place in, You're like, what are the
rules here? There's like even on the idea of like, oh,
it would be way easier for an older woman to
get a job than a white guy in his forties,

(04:31):
You're like, what am.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
I he's so difficult to work with. Yeah, and men
who are difficult to work with famously they can't find work.
Just kidding.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, The premise that there is a deeply empathetic maternal
figure inside of every frothingly angry cisman just such a
strange premise.

Speaker 6 (04:54):
Yes, if a man, if a man is short enough,
he has to become a woman. And that is the
that is the message of the movie. I'm obsessed with,
like acting class culture, so like I did love like
the footage of them and acting class and like, you know,
I love Barry, Like I have such a soft spot

(05:15):
for like actors.

Speaker 5 (05:16):
So I really did love that part.

Speaker 6 (05:18):
Of it, you know.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Sure, Yeah, I mean there are this movie. I think
it has its moments, but there's so.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Few at far so to you, so few.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
So this was your so this was your first? Uh
yeah what what give us? The give us the cliff notes?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Yeah? Are you a fan?

Speaker 6 (05:39):
I there were there were moments where I was disassociating.
I'm gonna be honest with you, Like there are moments
where I had to get on my phone and like
go on Instagram because I was just so overwhelmed with
like what was going on? Yeah, he like also was
like such a bad person and like I was just
like wow, like you were awful and like that was rough,

(06:02):
Like he was just such a bad, bad person to
everyone in his life. Yeah, like he was just sucked.
Like the one part that made me laugh that I
really maybe I shouldn't have laughed, but it really got
me is towards the very end, when like when the
horrible like older actor on set, like the doctor what's

(06:24):
his name, oh, doctor Brewster? He goes whenever it's finally
revealed this whole time that tutsies a man and then
he gets the button and he says, does Jeremy know?
That really made me laugh, Like I was like, that's funny,
that's actually funny.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Because he's talking about his room Bill Murray's character.

Speaker 6 (06:44):
Yes, Jeff, I'm so sorry go Yeah, he was like
he was like, does Jeff know? Like that? Really?

Speaker 5 (06:50):
I was like, that's that's funny. Yeah, that's objectively funny.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, that's that's a moment. That's a moment in uh
in a long movie.

Speaker 4 (06:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (07:00):
And like the Fall character, like his his love interests,
like who is like the dummy?

Speaker 5 (07:06):
Like I just hate I hated that. I hated that, like.

Speaker 6 (07:10):
She was being pushed around and like lied to and
was like the.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
Dumk Terry Guard character. I just like hated that.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
I yeah, the Crime of because Terry. I think Terry
gar is giving a really good performance in a movie
that just like doesn't.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
Deserve her at all.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yes, yes, yes, that scene where she's yelling at her
I was like, she's so good in like her big
scene and then she disappears, she falls off the Cloe cliff.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Yes, I have so many notes about her. There's there's
too much Jamie. What is your relationship with this movie?

Speaker 1 (07:45):
This?

Speaker 2 (07:46):
I feel like probably a lot of people have it.
So my mom loved this movie, which I watched. There's
like a free version of this movie on YouTube, and
I was going through the comments because there was a
ton of views on it, and I was seeing that
a lot of like, Oh, my mom loved this movie
and we watched it together. So I remember my mom

(08:07):
sitting me down and watching this movie with me in
probably high school. I remember liking it at the time,
and I hadn't really come back to it since. So
I came back Leary being like, well, a lot of
changes I was in high school. I'm a completely different

(08:28):
person and this could just go so many ways, and
I did not like the way that it went. I
am not a fan of this movie, but it's one
of those movies that people still, I mean people our
age still will really go to bat for in a
way that I don't know.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
I was Coleman through letterboxed.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
I was like, what do people say about the movie
TUTSI in the mid twenty twenties, and it is still
I think, like kind of delusionally praise the elements of
this movie that just like, maybe it seemed intriguing in
nineteen eighty two, but I'm like, I don't think that
there's really a case for it.

Speaker 4 (09:08):
I'm sure there's.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
A nostalgia component.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
I mean, for the time in nineteen eighty two, there
were hardly any movies that were addressing gender as a
concept and feminism and women trying to stand up for
themselves and be empowering, and like, this just was not
a thing that was happening in most movies of this era.

(09:32):
So I imagine that's why, like people of our mom's generation,
and especially women of our mom's generation, really hold this
movie close to their hearts.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
But yeah, revisiting it.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Now, you're just like, I don't we need to circlettack.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
Like what's going on in this movie. I like Dorothy.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
I hate Michael Darcy Dorsey. I couldn't hate Michael Dorsey
more if I try a piece of shit, And I
just I object with the I'm like, Dorothy would have
nothing to do with Michael Dorsey.

Speaker 6 (10:08):
And she's she is hot. I mean like, like, yeah,
the most unbelievable part of the movie is that Dorothy
and Jessicaalaine Ling's character Julie. Yeah, that's the fact that
they didn't hook up is so it's like they they
would have hooked up if this was real life, Like
they would have had sex. Like like Dorothy's so hot,
She's like really, like she's got it.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
And like exactly what Julie's looking for to Like.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Julie's inviting her over late at night. Literally they're having
so much wine together, like so much wine.

Speaker 5 (10:41):
She's like, you're so beautiful, like come on, stop.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
The soft focus meeting her like family, like her baby,
She's in love. I have the character. I mean, I
I don't know. I don't like the movie. I think
some of the characters are interesting, but they're just like
where it they end up is so like Julie's ending
is so depressing. I'm like, do not under any circumstance

(11:04):
of state. Michael Dorsey, no get away from him. Sandy
Lester's disappeared from the movie.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
Anyways. I don't know. It's a weird one.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
I under Yeah, I think that this is a big
nostalgia movie for people. But if it's been a while,
give it another watch maybe and get back to us. Uh.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
Kaitlyn what's your history with TUTTI.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
I saw this during the Great Kaitlyn movie binge of
two thousand and five, and major huge, yeah, huge, Yeah.
I thought it was corny as hell and low key bad.
I did not like it at all. I thought, good
for you, and not for the same not for the
exact same reasons. I don't like it today, but I

(11:45):
think there is some overlap. I've never liked the Michael
Dorsey character. I don't care about his problems or his journey,
and like you were saying, Nori, I was having a
hard time suspending my disbelief.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Also, they just like promote Dorothy to showrunner like out
of know They're like, well, she's gonna do what she's
gonna do. I was like, have you ever seen how
people treat actors? They're like, shut up, meet puppet, get
it right.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
Like it's so.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Rare, and like there was just so much about Like
I don't think Dustin Hoffman was doing a good job
because there are a lot of roles where CIS men
play women in a movie or a show. I'm thinking
of Louis Anderson, especially in Baskets. Yeah, constantly forget that

(12:36):
that's Louie Anderson at.

Speaker 6 (12:38):
A certain point, you're like, Okay, that is a trans
woman and we have to be honest about that.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, so it can be done very well. Not to
the same degree, but I think John Travolta as the
mom and Hairspray, Like, sometimes I'll be watching these characters
and I'm like, think, I forget that that's.

Speaker 6 (12:56):
Summer, Like my yeah, you're like, that is high school girl,
like you.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Just that's a girl. That's a teenage girl, yes, for sure.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
And then there's Dustin Hoffman doing whatever the hell that
is with Dorothy, like with that accent, his idea of
what a woman acts and moves like it just felt
so cartoonish and goofy to me because, unlike you, Jamie,
I do not like Dorothy. I think she's better than

(13:27):
Michael Dorsey, but.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
I fives by comparison.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
And I also like the character that Dorothy plays, Miss Kimberly.
I find her grading like the whole performance. I just
I don't. I have never liked this movie. I never
felt compelled to watch it again, and so revisiting it
for this episode, like twenty years after the first time
I saw it. I also was like, kind of I

(13:54):
think I had, like Mendela affected myself with this movie.
I thought it had. I thought the themes of like
and he lives as a woman for a while and
that really teaches him a lesson about how sexist he
used to be.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Well, I think that that's what people thought the takeaway
was at the time. I think that is a popular
narrative around this movie. And then you watch it, you're like, and.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Then you watch it and that barely happens.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
No, he the movie would have it that, like, he
invents feminism and then ignores it and.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Then ignores it and learns nothing from it. Yeah, yes,
that is the trajector of the story. So anyway, Yeah,
it was a very interesting we rewatch. We have so
many notes, so much to discuss. Let's take a quick
break and then we'll come back for the recap. Sure,

(14:57):
and we're back.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Well, what happens in Tutsie, I'll tell you.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
We meet Michael Dorsey Boo by Dustin Hoffman Boo. Michael
is an actor who we see teaching acting classes, putting
on theater makeup and fake mustaches and all that stuff.
He's auditioning for various roles and stage plays and things.

(15:27):
But he keeps getting rejected. They're always looking for someone
else for money. Michael works at a restaurant as a
waiter with his playwright friend slash roommate Jeff played by
Bill Murray.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Also, I totally memory holed Bill Murray being in this
movie in a pretty large role. I was like, I,
I just I didn't remember. Also, in my memory, Geena
Davis is the lead, not Jessica Lang.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
There's so much Mandela effect with this movie.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, including it being good. There's so many weird things
about this but yeah, yeah, Bill Berry, we can't get
around it.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
There he is, He's there, and he and Michael are
trying to raise eight thousand dollars to put on a
play that Jeff wrote. Also a part of this production
that they're trying to put on is their friend Sandy
played by Terry Garr, an actor who is prepping for
an audition for a soap opera and Michael coaches her,

(16:30):
but she doesn't get the part. Then, Michael finds out
that he didn't get a part in a play that
he was supposed to be up for, so he goes
to his agent, George played by the director of this movie,
Sidney Pollock, to be like what the heck George, and
George reveals that Michael has a reputation of being very

(16:50):
difficult to work with and no one will hire him.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
But you know who people do love the hire middle
aged women. They're the most working as people in the world,
as we all know.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
So off screen, Michael decides to start presenting as a
woman to try to get so we cut to him
in a dress, wig makeup. He has decided to become
Dorothy Michaels since no one will hire Michael Dorsey. But

(17:29):
he's only going to do this for auditions. He's not
going to like live as a woman because he is
still a sis man.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
He goes for an audition for the same role that
Sandy got rejected from a soap opera called Southwest General.
Dorothy also gets turned down at first because she's seen
as not the right type. She's too soft and delicate.
So Dorothy gives an impassioned speech that shows that she

(17:59):
can be.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
To the events feminism she events feminism on the soap opera.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah, and the director, Ron Carlyle played by Dabney Coleman,
is impressed by this and casts Dorothy in the role
of Miss Kimberly, the hospital administrator. And so just just
to clarify, we've got Dustin Hoffman playing the character of
Michael Dorsey, who is playing the character of Dorothy Michaels,

(18:28):
who was playing the character of Miss Kimberly. Yes, so
there's so many layers. It's like Shrek with onions. Onions
have layers, very onion like performance. Yes.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
So during the audition, Dorothy meets Julie Nichols played by
Jessica Lang.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Who what an oscar for being in this movie.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Which I guess I sure weird wain to be weird.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
I mean, she's a good you know, like, yeah, she's
doing a good job. And I'm like, was it huh, It's.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Not like a standout performance or anything.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
No, I thought she was Geena Davis for half the movie.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, yes, Okay. So Julie is a cast member who
plays a nurse on this soap opera and Dorothy slash
Michael takes an instant liking to Julie. He's got a
little crush. Then Michael, still dressed as Dorothy, approaches his

(19:32):
agent George and reveals like, oh it's me Michael, and
tells George that he auditioned as Dorothy and landed the
role of Miss Kimberly, and George is horrified by all
of this. He thinks that Michael is sick in the head.
Then a short time later, Michael as himself is hanging

(19:54):
out with Sandy. She doesn't know that he is pretending
to be this Dorothy person, especially because Dorothy landed the
role that Sandy was trying to get and that would
be a huge betrayal to their friendship, something that which
Michael keeps secret the whole time.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
So yeah, now we're introducing the classic element of deceiving
women for most.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
Of the movie.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
It's so bizarre though, because it's like the movie tries
to rationalize it in this way. Many times, it almost
seems like intentionally to keep Sandy excluded from being anything
except a like desperate love interest basically, where yeah, like
she is like Bill Murray's in on it the whole time.

(20:41):
Bill Murray and the agent. They're making these nasty little
comments to Michael that I think intended to make Michael
look like a better person by comparison, even though he
fucking sucks, but like Sandy, the whole premise of it
is like, oh well, she's too emotional to handle knowing
that I did this thing, like and and did it,

(21:04):
you know, after she failed to get this job. But
it's like they're like, well, I would tell her, but
she it's just so old school, like they're like, I would,
but she's too hysterical to handle the plot of the
movie TUTSI.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
I'm like, well, then what is she doing here?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Right?

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Well, you called her love interest, but she's a love
interest that he's not interested in.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
No, she's interested in him. I mean that's I feel
like that happens to a lot of like comic actors,
a lot like Terry garr undisputably haughty, right, but like sure,
she's presented as too emotionally fragile and less desirable than
Jessica Lang, just like by the story and by the

(21:43):
fact that Michael is like not interested in her and
therefore feels comfortable treating her like shit because he's not
attracted to her, so no need.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
To treat her like a person.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Certainly, Yeah, although they do have sex, because what happens
next is she leaves to take a shower. They're about
to like go grab some food or something. Michael undresses
to try on some of her clothes because he's been
shopping for women's clothes to play this Dorothy character. And

(22:15):
then Sandy walks in on Michael while he's almost naked,
and he plays it off as he wants her, he's
attracted to her. Cut to they've just had sex, and
then she's like, you'll probably ignore me now, and he's like, no,
I won't.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
I know he does, and then he does, and then
he just does for basically the rest of the movie. Yeah,
and then he'll show up and be like, hey, sorry,
I'm late by seven hours and she's like, oh, all good.
It was like Sandy, Sandy, God, yeah, yeah, that.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Scene was disturbing. I did not like that scene.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
And it is not the most coercive, disgusting scene in
the movie.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
They save that for the very end.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yes, oh god, Okay, So Michael as Dorothy heads to
the first day of shooting the soap opera, Dorothy finds
out that her character on the show has to kiss
a man. We'll talk more about this, but Dorothy is
uncomfortable because Michael is uncomfortable with kissing a man. So

(23:22):
Dorothy stands up for herself and she changes the scene,
goes off script, and everyone's like, sure, okay, that works too,
And this is the beginning of have Dorothy either have
either of you.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Ever performed in like where you're like, hey, I would
like to make an extreme change to the script, and
everyone's just like, all right, we have no choice, Like
it is just so bizarre.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, I think that usually does not happen like that.

Speaker 4 (23:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
I don't know any soap opera heads in the crowd.
Can you just be like, actually, no, I know that
that's not true, but it is very weird that they
present it as true and the fact that no if
that this is true, and no one else has ever
taken advantage of it before, Like, no one else goes
off book for the entire unless unless Julie does it

(24:20):
at one point and I'm not remembering, but.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I think only in response to dorit they got it.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah, No, Usually that gets you fired if you're just
continuously going off book for the role that you that
lines are written for you and you're expected to say
those lines as written. If you don't do that, you
get fired.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
But but people love Dorothy Michael. People are going cuckoo
for Dorothy Michaels, which I again like I it's I guess,
like an interesting idea that like they're like, oh, Dorothy's
character not even heard. Like Dorothy's character seems to really
appeal to, like working in single women and like appeal

(25:07):
to middle aged women, which is an interesting idea. Unfortunately,
there are no middle aged women in the movie to
really engage with. Like you meet a producer at the beginning,
there's like two women on set who fall into this
age range, and I'm like, well, I wonder what she
thinks about this, but they you never really find out,

(25:27):
and so it just becomes this weird detail that Dorothy
Michaels appeals to middle aged women because the women we
meet are like hot young women.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, right, Because Dorothy's episodes of Southwest General start airing
on TV and people are becoming like huge fans of Dorothy,
they're flocking to get her signature. Her co stars Julie
and April Page, who's the Geena Davis character, also really
appreciate Dorothy's work on the show. Ron the director isn't

(25:59):
so great because he's sexist and he's always being condescending
to Dorothy and to Julie.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, he's very much like the worst guy ever character
again that like we see all the time to make
the other shitty guys in the room seem nicer by comparison,
Like he's just so awful that you're like, well, no
one's gonna see themselves in this guy, so maybe they'll
think Michael Dorsey is awesome?

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Right?

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Is that the actor who plays the horrible sexist boss
in nine to five?

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (26:33):
I think it is.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Maybe I haven't seen nine to five since we covered
it a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, I recognized him, and then I was like, I
think that, So he's basically playing the same character in
both movies if I'm thinking correctly. Wild Okay, yeah, but anyway,
then Julie invites Dorothy over for dinner to run some
lines as well, which is exciting to Michael because he's
got a big crush one. But he shows up as Dorothy.

(27:03):
They bond and have a nice time. But oh no,
Michael remembers he was supposed to have dinner with Sandy.
This is the second time and there will be more
after this that he has blown her off or were
forgotten that they had plans.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah, I can't tell how much of this I know that,
like we're obviously we're meant to feel for Sandy, but
sometimes her being stood up, I feel like it's like
visually supposed to kind of be a joke because we
see her like alone and drinking alone, and she forgives
him so quickly. I'm just like, I don't even know
how I'm meant to be feeling right now.

Speaker 4 (27:40):
I feel bad, But like.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
I think we're meant to pity her more than empathize
with her.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Sure, yeah, that is a great way to put it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think we are sort of encouraged to view Sandy
as kind of pathetic in a way that is like upsetting.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Yeah, for sure, Terry guards her better. Yeah, Okay, So
Michael rushes over to Sandy's place. She's still upset that
she didn't get that part on Southwest General. She thinks
that Dorothy and her character Miss Kimberly suck, and this

(28:17):
is partly because she doesn't strike Sandy as the tough
character Miss Kimberly was supposed to be. So Dorothy starts
changing the script even more and making up her own
lines that are more quote unquote empowering to women, and

(28:38):
the fans are loving it even more. Dorothy gets a
bunch of fan mail. She does all these photo shoots.
She ends up on the cover of several magazines. Then
Michael goes to a party where he sees Julie, and
even though he's there with Sandy, he goes up to

(28:59):
Julie and try to hit on her, but she throws
a drink in his face. We'll talk more about the
whatever the love story between them, But then Julie invites
Dorothy to spend the weekend with her, her baby, and
her dad, Less played by Charles Derning, who has taken

(29:24):
a liking to Dorothy. Old Less has a big old
crush on Dorothy.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, him and his bad politics and his dead wife.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
And then this weekend getaway with all of these people
is I think one of the corniest sequences ever committed
to film.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
What the hell is that song playing? I think it's
an original song for this movie. I'd never heard it before.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
What the hell was that.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
It was no good And the whole time Michael dressed
as Dorothy because Julie doesn't know that Dorothy is actually Michael,
but Dorothy's like looking at Julie longingly. They have to
sleep in the same bed because even though this house
is huge, there's only one bed in one bedroom for

(30:22):
them to sleep in together. Meanwhile, Les is pining after Dorothy. Yeah,
this fucking guy. He goes on a tirade about gender.
He's very pro traditional gender roles.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
He starts it like many scary fathers slash grandfathers, where
he's like, so, let me start by saying do whatever
you want, but and then says something extremely regressive or hateful.
So I'm like, okay, so don't so don't do whatever
you want. Anyways, it's firmly nineteen eighty three. It is
the Reagan administration.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Yeah, in this it sure is. Then Dorothy finds out
that her contract is being extended on this soap opera
for another year. But Michael doesn't want to keep playing
this Dorothy and by extension miss Kimberly character, so he's

(31:19):
trying to get out of it.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
He wants to go play like let us off Broadway
or whatever the fuck. I kind of I'm like, you
can just tell, and I think this is intentional. You
can just tell based on the description of Bill Murray's
play that it's fucking awful, Like, oh, this sounds rank and.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
He's such a pretentious piece of shit.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Then Julie asks Dorothy if she can babysit for Julie's
baby while she goes and breaks up with Ron the
director because Dorothy has empowered and inspired Julie to not
put up with Ron's bullshit and his mistreatment, and then
returns home. After this, she's sad the relationship is over.

(32:04):
She's feeling lonely, and Dorothy tries to kiss Julie because
Dorothy is actually Michael and Michael is in love with Julie,
but Julie doesn't know any of that, and so she
thinks Dorothy is a lesbian and she's like, oh, no,
thank you, Yucky. I don't want to be friends anymore.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
It feels I this.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
I'm sure this comparison has been made before, but it
feels very similar in well, not similar in tone necessarily,
but like it's like a Mulan thing going on here,
where I feel like it's they're tolding this very specific
line to like reinforce well, ultimately, all of these characters
are straight where it's like, oh, there's an attraction between

(32:48):
these people, but something isn't quite right, like m hm,
and so the movie, can you know, have it all
always and we can still end with like a sister
couple at the end of them movie.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Right, So, then Julie's dad less is like, hey, Dorothy,
will you marry me? And Julie is all like, oh
my god, you're gonna have to tell my dad that
you're a lesbian and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, it becomes all of a sudden so urgent for
Dorothy to out her I mean, at least Julie's mind,
for Dorothy to out herself to a guy she's met
one time, Like, You're like, that's no, there's no, what.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
Is so ridiculous? Yeah, he's he's proposing after knowing Dorothy
for like two seconds. Then there's a scene where John
Van Horne, who is the actor who plays the doctor
Doctor Brewster in the soap opera. He has stalked Dorothy
all the way home. He's trying to get into her apartment.

(33:58):
He manipulates his way inside, then assaults Dorothy.

Speaker 4 (34:03):
Oh yeah, he stares to rape her.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yes, it's yeah, and only doesn't when Jeff comes in
and he handles this whole thing. Everyone handles this whole
thing very either poorly or bizarrely.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, but John, I just kind of drop it after it,
after it happens where he, like Michael is just like whoa.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Yeah, John leaves. But then Sandy shows up and Michael
has to hurried lee, you know, like shower off all
of his Dorothy makeup, and Sandy's like, why aren't you
returning my calls? And he's trying to play the whole
thing off. He continues to lie to her. She calls
him out for his dishonesty. We'll talk more about this

(34:50):
scene and their whole relationship, but she ends up storming out,
and so now Michael is at a loss for what
to do. His friend Sandy is him his love interest.
Julie doesn't want to be friends with him slash Dorothy
anymore because she's homophobic. Michael doesn't want to be Dorothy anymore.

(35:12):
But he's stuck in this contract on this soap opera.
And on top of all of that, the editor of
the show spilled celery juice, and.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Juice exists, and I'm like, it's been what was happening
in the eighties, I don't know, but he's spilled.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
The editor spilled celery juice all over the footage. So
they have to do a scene live on TV, so
Dorothy takes that opportunity to remove her wig and makeup
and drop the falsetto voice and reveal that the character

(35:50):
Miss Kimberly is actually a man, her brother Edward, giving
this whole soap opera explanation for why everyone is like,
oh my god. Julie walks up to Michael and punches him,
and now Michael is really really sad. He pushes over

(36:10):
a mime in a park.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
I forgot about that and I watched this movie yesterday.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
He does push over a mime and crushes over a mime.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
He meets up with Less to give the engagement ring back,
and Less is disgusted and humiliated because he's also homophobic
like father, like daughter, But Michael's like, well, I'm in
love with your daughter. Julie unless is like, eah, all right,
but just so you know, she never talks about you
or anything. So then Michael, despite that, approaches Julie to

(36:45):
try to like smooth things over, and she's still pissed
at him, and he gives this like barely an apology.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
And crucially, she says, I miss Dorothy and then yeah,
which is intriguing. But then he's like, well, I'm Dorothy,
you're my girlfriend now, and she's like, hmmm, maybe I am.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
And you're like, what a bleak ending? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah, and that's how it ends. So let's take a
quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
And we're back, Okay, I mean, where to where beget Nori?

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Is there any place you wanna you want to start?

Speaker 6 (37:37):
I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 7 (37:40):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
There's just too much. Should we start with a little
bit of context, I guess for this and then we
can really dive. Sure, there's not a whole lot, but
this movie was inspired by a play that a writer
named Don Maguire wrote in the early seventies called Would
I Lie to You? About an unemployed male actor who

(38:01):
cross dresses to find jobs. The script was shopped around
Hollywood for years. It went through different rewrites, different producers
and directors were attached, different stars were attached, and then
the script eventually was shared with Dustin Hoffman, who wanted
the role and also wanted complete creative control of the project.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
So Dorothy Michaels coated behavior.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Yeah, He's like, I'm just gonna do whatever the hell
I want and no one can say anything about it. Yeah,
and he wanted Sidney Pollock to direct, and to try
to get him interested, Dustin Hoffman approached Elaine May to
do a rewrite of the script, and she did a
couple things. She added the Bill Murray character Jeff. She

(38:50):
fleshed out Sandy's character, so Sandy was even less thought
out than she currently is.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
So what am so?

Speaker 4 (38:59):
I'm guessing?

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Elaine May added, like Sandy's one good scene. Maybe I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
I yeah, let's go with that. Let's go with that. Yeah,
so she made different changes. Elaine May is not credited
as one of the writers, but she did this rewrite.

Speaker 6 (39:14):
Of course not of course, of.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Course, we don't want to We don't want to get
the ugly idea that women were involved in this production.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah. The crediteds Greade writers are Larry Gilbert and Murray Shishkel.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
And then before production began, Dustin Hoffman worked with a voice,
speech and body language expert named Lillian Glass to learn
how to speak and have the body language of a woman, which, again,
to me, the performance he gives feels very just like

(39:50):
weird and stilted and like he is capital p performing
woman or like his bizarrow idea of what a woman is.

Speaker 6 (40:01):
Like Yeah, and the accent was just like it really
blew me away. It was like so strange, Like there
was a stutter that he put into it, which.

Speaker 5 (40:11):
Was so like what was that choice?

Speaker 6 (40:13):
Like that, like like the he would stutter and it
was like, why is that part of this woman's experience?
I don't.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
He's just like he's always doing too much. Like there's
just always this energy of like Oscar nomination for me
in all of his roles.

Speaker 4 (40:32):
I mean, I think Rainman is the most egregious.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Of those, but like sure, but like he's just always
trying to get an Oscar. I there was an interview
that he did maybe ten years ago around this and
if you can listen to other Bechdel Cast episodes for
you know it doesn't Hoffmann fucking sucks.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
As a person, bad bad guy.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
But there was an interview he did about this because like,
I don't know, once the credits are rolling, I was
just like, who is this really?

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Like who is this movie for?

Speaker 2 (41:03):
And I feel like he kind of gets at it
unintentionally in this interview because he gets very emotional talking
about Titsy he's crying, Oh my yeah, And you're like, god,
I love actors, but if he's so irritating, he's he's crying, crying, crying,
And he says this. He's talking about the process of like,

(41:24):
you know, finding Dorothy basically, and the accent and all
these things, and towards the end of the interview, he
says that he was feeling emotional and talking to his
wife about it and said that the reason the character
appealed to him is because, quote, there are too many
interesting women I haven't had the experience of knowing in
this life because I have been brainwashed. That was never

(41:47):
a comedy for me unquote. So what are you saying
there is that he has never in his life considered
talking to a woman he's found unattractive, and so by
playing a woman that he did not find attractive, that
actually was life changing for him. And he was crying
about this, and you're like, Okay, so I guess the
movie is for whoever feels that way, like.

Speaker 6 (42:10):
Sociopaths, like people who don't experience the emotion or feeling
of empathy, and they have to actually become that human
being to feel any possible empathy. So Tyra Banks. I
think that is who.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
This Yeah, Dustn't Hoppen and Tyra Banks should really sit
down and try to define empathy together.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
And just I don't know. First of all, I don't
buy that.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
This movie uh changed his views on women anyways, similar to.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
How him playing a woman in the movie, like the
Michael Dorsey character seemingly learns no lessons. Yea, the movie
wants you to think he learns a lesson, but when
you look closer, what growth does he actually clear demonstrate?
I would argue very little. I just want to go
through how I have a monologue, if you'll indulge me,

(43:09):
not unlike Dorothy giving all of her monologues. Yeah, okay,
So we have Michael Dorsey as sis man, dressing in
disguise more or less as a woman so that he
can try to get acting roles. So first of all,
he's literally taking a man, taking away jobs and income
from women.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
While playing into all of these like horrific still persistent
stereotypes around drag.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, and through this character, through Dorothy and then again
by extension miss Kimberly. All these fans fall in love
with Miss Kimberly because she's bold, she's assertive, she's empowering,
she stands up to sexism. Women want to be like her,
and the show is more popular than ever because of

(43:59):
this Miss Kimberly character. There's even a producer who says
something like, you're the first woman character who is her
own person, who can assert her own personality without robbing
someone of theirs. And it's like, Okay, well that's a
fault of the writer's room for not writing any dynamic

(44:21):
women characters.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
But anyway, well, yeah, that again that producer character, Like,
I was interested when she first shows up, but then
it's like you sort of are led to believe she
has no power on what happens in the show, that
it seems like she's in charge of.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
Right, Just like, what wouldn't this be within your power?
Maybe I miss.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
Something I don't know shrug, But anyway, so Miss Kimberly
is regarded as this beloved, empowering woman, the only woman
character like that on this soap opera. But again, the
actor playing her is actually a cis man, and so
we have to think about, well, what are the implications

(45:01):
of that here? And I have a whole list of options.
I'm curious what y'all think of this because of the
specific choices that Michael is making for Dorothy slash Miss Kimberly,
Like he's the one changing all of these lines of
dialogue and like making this character more assertive, And so's
the movie suggesting like, oh, yeah, well, only a man

(45:23):
would think to like take these creative liberties and do
something like that. Sure playing into the notion that men
are just inherently more assertive and dominant. Or is it
suggesting that because men are socialized to be more assertive

(45:44):
and dominant and women are socialized to be polite and delicate,
that a man pretending to be a woman is the
only way a woman character could be assertive and dominant
because of the way people of different genders are so
socialized differently. Or is the movie trying to comment on

(46:06):
the one dimensional tropy ways that characters who are women
tend to be written, especially by writers who are men.
Because the Miss Kimberly character is originally written to be
more flat and stereotypical, Julie's nurse character on the show
is similarly flat and stereotypical. But if this is commentary,

(46:29):
I would argue that it is not very effective because again,
a cisman who has lived his whole life as a
misogynist being the one who sheds light on this and
opens everyone's eyes to the way women are being represented
on screen. You know, not the best person to deliver
this message, yea.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
Or is it.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Saying that people will finally listen about sexism when it's
a man pointing it out, because this happens all the
time in real life, where people who are pressed and
marginalized will point out that they are being oppressed and marginalized,
and no one listens until people with privilege point out

(47:10):
that others are oppressed and marginalized, and then everyone starts
to listen to that. I don't think it's that one,
But there's just all these weird I say.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
My takeaway I when I wish I had asked my
mom what her takeaway was at the time, because I
think that's a good interesting study. But like I think
what they're trying to do here, and then like in
the context of the story, it doesn't really work or
makes sense. I mean, so much of this doesn't worker
make sense. It's kind of upsetting. But that like I
think that it's like, oh bye, the tyrebanksy by embodying

(47:45):
Dorothy Michael's able to learn empathy for women. But that's
really not how the story plays out. But I do
think that that was maybe a lot of people's takeaway.
If I were to hazard a guess at what my
mom took away at the time, I think it was that.

Speaker 6 (48:00):
And if it, yeah, Like, if it was that, then
the reveal would be so much different. Like in his
like reveal where it's live on camera and he's revealing
that he's actually a man, it would have had some
dialogue around, like, and I learned that from being my

(48:21):
sister that you guys treat women in a really bad
way because I'm her brother and I'm a man, and
I like there would have been dialogue around how he
played he was his sister and he now knows that
you know women like but like literally there was.

Speaker 5 (48:39):
None of that.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
And like, after he's revealed to be a man, there's
no reflection nothing. It goes directly into him trying to
repair any relationship that he can to have sex with
Jessica Lang and he literally like goes to the bar,
Like the bar scene with her father is one of

(49:00):
the weirdest fucking scenes. I think that Ever, when he's
like he's like I am a man. Like like it
goes back to like don't worry. I'm a man and
I'm gonna.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
And I'm not gay, I don't not worry about bad and.

Speaker 6 (49:12):
I want to buy you a beer as a man,
and like, what are man, I'm gonna have.

Speaker 5 (49:16):
Sex with your daughter?

Speaker 6 (49:18):
I was like, what the fuck is going on? What
is happening? Like nearly fifteen minutes before this father was
trying to have sex with Dorothy and like literally now
Dorothy's like, I'm a man, Like I was like, what
is going.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
It's took the people who the movie lets us see
their reaction versus the people that we don't. Is so
telling because it's like, personally, I don't give a shit
what Wes thinks.

Speaker 4 (49:46):
Of all this.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
I am curious what happens with Terry Garr. But the
last thing we the last we see of her, she's
like what and that's it, Like She's gone, yeah. This
movie is like it's just so ultimately around like whatever
anything it might that people thought it was trying to say.
I feel like it really back pedals on at the

(50:07):
very last minute where it's like, but to be clear,
we were all straight systems, straight no worries.

Speaker 4 (50:14):
Let's drink a beer.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Let's crack up cole One, Let's let's let's uh, let's
put some P and to V and go.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Not men are men and women are women, And don't
get it confused.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Okay shows up to her place of work. He's like,
you're my girlfriend now, and let's get out of here.

Speaker 6 (50:31):
My favorite character was like, I feel like the beginning,
there's a crew member who has a headset. She's black,
and like I feel like she's like the only character
who like knows that Dorothy's a man. Like I feel
like like there's moments where she's kind of like looking around,
kind of just.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Like y'all see missed, Like what are we doing?

Speaker 5 (50:50):
Like like what is happening?

Speaker 6 (50:52):
Like I feel like I trusted her with my life,
Like I was like, this woman knows exactly what's going on,
but no one will listen to her. She's the rightest
person on.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Set, like in the way that black women are almost
always the most discerning exactly people in the room. And
if only she was given any lines of dialogue.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
I kept waiting for her to have something to do,
and it's I learned a little more about the actor
Lynn Thigpen.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
Who passed back in she died quite young.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
She died in two thousand and three, in her fifties,
but she had again just like it is so frustrating,
especially when it's like the this is really the only
black character with like meaningful dialogue and she still has
nothing to do. And of course, like she's played by
a like Tony Award winning, like incredible actor who had

(51:45):
like won in Obi won a Tony she okay, iconically
to me, to two millennial things that she's.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
A part of.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
She plays the chief in Where in the World is
Carmen San Diego? And she also plays the moon and
bearing the Big Blue House, right like I was, like, okay,
a legend. But of course, like this movie just completely
squanders her talent and doesn't write her a character.

Speaker 4 (52:12):
It's just a mess.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
It's a mess.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Yeah, I think the reason the takeaway for so many people,
even though by our standards today feels like scraps, it's peanuts.
It's almost nothing. But at the very end, when Michael
approaches Julie and he says, I was a better man
with you as a woman than I ever was with

(52:38):
a woman as a man, I just got a line
to do it now without the dress.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
He really thought he was doing something, Yeah, and she's.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Just might he might say that, and he might feel that,
but we don't see evidence of that. We're not shown
anything to that effect on screen. Yeah, so it falls
really flat.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
I had saying I want to there. There was a
letterboxed review from a user I really like. Sally Jane
Black wrote a review of this movie a couple of
I think a couple of years back that I think
like kind of captures a lot of like why this
movie doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
So I just wanted to share a little bit of it.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
She says, quote Feminism is not men learning to empathize
with women by using them. Feminism is not a man
praying on a woman who has been his friend for
years to keep up a lie. Feminism is not using
Michael's disgust at being kissed by a man as the
inspiration for his changing character to be stronger. Skipping ahead
a little bit, there is an undercurrent of turf thinking

(53:44):
here in the service of making a film addressing the
plight of cisgender women. This film presents the argument of
those right wing misogynists parading as quote unquote feminists that
men will dress as women to invade women's spaces, prey
on them, lie to them, manipulate them. That a man
presenting feminine is nothing but a predator. While this is
emphatically not a film about a trans woman, it still
rings in the hearts and minds of those who want

(54:05):
to hate trans women. The argument is not, and should
not be walk a mile in our shoes. It should
be patriarchy holds you back too. It goes on from there.
It's a we can link it in the description. I
thought it was a really thoughtful review of this movie that,
of course random letterbox users were being absolutely unhinged in

(54:26):
the comments of oh god, but I think like she
she you know, sort of expands on also very regressive,
homophobic and transphobic and misogynist stereotypes that appear in this
movie and sort of try to tell you that it's
like a progressive, thoughtful character.

Speaker 6 (54:44):
I don't know, I really I really like that so much.
It reminds me of do you guys watch We're Housewives
of Beverly Hills? By chance?

Speaker 4 (54:52):
I have?

Speaker 6 (54:53):
Yeah, Well, there's there's a nonprofit called like walk a
Mile or something, And there was one season where Taylor
wants all the husbands to be in this like marathon
race where the whole premise is that you're gonna run
in heels, and they're all cackling and all the husbands

(55:13):
are going, that's crazy, Like we have to wear heels
like you, and like it's supposed to raise money for
like survivors of domestic abuse, and it literally the whole
thing's like how funny that this big man is gonna
wear these stupid little heels.

Speaker 5 (55:29):
That we wear.

Speaker 6 (55:31):
And it's like the whole thing is so gross and
so like like to me, this is the same culture
as TUTSI. It's like it's this such so so strange,
and it's about how different gender experiences like are supposed
to relate to each other and in like this like
umbrella of misogyny and it's really weird and gross and

(55:55):
it just reminds me of that, Like how funny that
these men are going to put heels on and it's
supposed to like raise money for women's survivors.

Speaker 5 (56:03):
It's like that's so weird.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Yeah, that's insulting and bizarre.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
Yeah, well, similar to again, even though Michael Dorsey is
a cis man pretending to be a woman. There's still
transphobia inherent in the way that everyone who knows about
what Michael is doing thinks it's weird and that he's
stick in the head, Oh my god, you're gonna wear

(56:31):
women's clothing out in public.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Well, and like crucially he really only ever talks to
other CIS men about.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
This, right because it's George and Jeff and they're both like, ow, yucky,
what are you doing, you weirdo? And Michael's just like
shrug a.

Speaker 6 (56:48):
Shrug, yeah, Like they never explicitly say it, but there's
this weird underlying feeling of like all the men being like,
of course we want to do this too, Like obviously
I want to wear a dress too, but that's it's
disgusting and shameful, and there's this like weird underlying current
of like of like, yeah, of course, like men would
be wearing dresses if we could, like, but we're not

(57:09):
supposed to. And like it's just like their whole relationship
to like cross dressing is this weird feeling of it
existing and it being very inherent in culture but so
shameful that like you obviously can't talk about it or
do it, but like the way they talk about it
is like this weird like knowingness that it's there and

(57:32):
it happens and that people do it.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
You know what I'm saying, Yeah, no, I've it's so
like and and I think, going back to like something
you said earlier, Kaitlyn, it's just like if this was
the best that like pop culture had to offer at
the time, like what a sign of how bleak things
were at this time? Or there is this And there
are two other movies I that I honestly have not

(57:55):
seen either of them, but they came out in either
nineteen eighty two or nineteen eighty three that floor similar
themes as Victor Victoria with Julie Andrews comes out this
same year, and then Yentle with Barbistrays and comes out
the year after with what I understand to be similar premises.
I have not seen the movies, but like.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
This was clearly like on like this was something that.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
Yes, that was there, it is it was in the
zeit guys at this time, but like not in a
way that it just feels like it's stopping short of
saying anything intentionally or like in this very Reagan eraw
way presenting something and then at the end saying well,
but never mind, and let's let's restore the quote unquote

(58:41):
normalcy and let's restore order.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
Yeah, everyone take off your costume. Yeah, and live as
the gender you were assigned at birth.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (58:53):
Yeah, it was. It was.

Speaker 6 (58:54):
It was interesting to watch this as a trans person
and kind of like see the progress that has been made,
Like I you know, we are regressing so much as
a society. Obviously if you look at anything that if
you're awake and you can see anything that's happened in
our country, it is terrifying for trans people. But with
that said, like it is crazy just to see the progress,

(59:17):
like as a trans person who's like in the industry,
it's like wow, like this is where we were at
that moment, Like you just there was like the jokes
that were made, the the only way people were interacted
with him cross dressing was through like psychiatry of like
like okay, you need to see a psychiatrist. You need
to like fix this and figure it out. And it

(59:38):
was crazy just to see that like there has been progress,
like there has been It's been amazing to see that
there's progress and that I don't know, just like I
forget I forget that that, Like, you know, we.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Have come away, yeah, comparatively, possibly a long way in
forty five years since this movie came out. Also with
all of the legislation.

Speaker 6 (01:00:03):
And they're going back regressing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Yeah, but culturally there are significant differences where we actually
have trans characters on screen played by transactors.

Speaker 6 (01:00:14):
I just remembered, like, was it last year something like
some right wing production company they released a movie about
like CIS men basketball players having to do drag and
be cross dress and be women to like play basketball. Really,
I like, yeah, yeah, I saw ads for it, and

(01:00:36):
I was like, wow, like we are back at Tutsi. Huh,
Like like that's so funny, Like we're back, We're back.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
At Tutsi and now we're correctly classifying it as Republican.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
That's so bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
I yeah, yeah, I don't know. I rewatched a section
of Disclosure just because I remember Tutsy coming up quite
a bit in that documentary or like there's multiple clips
from it, and the section that I watched. I think
it's interesting that and just like a point that I
didn't consider on this first run, but how men in

(01:01:11):
drag in the eighties specifically were kind of often positioned
as a way to make it in a way that
we see all the time seem like women had it
better than men at this time. Women had more opportunities.
And there was I forget what the other eighties movie was,
but they used Tutsi as an example of like, well,

(01:01:32):
a man in drag has a chance of being more
successful in a professional environment, which is just like so
ridiculous on premise, and would be treated better and paid
more and respected more than if they were just a
random guy. And then there was a different movie that
was cited that I wish I could remember the name
of that is even more ridiculous, where it's like men

(01:01:55):
in drag that are like the plot narrative is that
they're trying to get better house, and you're like, in
what world it's I don't know. I'm sure that someone
has written a like doctoral thesis on why exactly this
was happening in this moment, but it was like you
see it again and again, it's just bizarre.

Speaker 6 (01:02:15):
It just reminds me of the eighties in terms of, like,
in terms of women's liberation of like, you know, sexuality
is power, Like I feel like it was you know,
the seventies at the sixties, Like now I'm going back
multiple decades, but I just feel like with like liberation,
it must have been some sort of pushback and some
sort of like pushback against this, like women being sexually

(01:02:38):
free and being like, oh so now you're like because
you know, with misogynists like only viewing women as sexual objects,
and like, I just feel like there's some weird relationship
between like women being more sexually liberated and being like,
oh so now you have privilege and now you can
like have more than men because you know, I can

(01:02:59):
only look at you as sexual object or something.

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Right, and that threatens people, And that's why there's always
the cycles of progress and then backlash and then progress.
I mean, it's why there's so much anti trans legislation
happening right now, because trans people are more visible and
freer to exist in the world than they once were,

(01:03:22):
and that upsets a lot of horrible people and hence
the pushback.

Speaker 6 (01:03:28):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, like what you were saying, I
know you were talking specifically about drag, but in terms
of like the trans experience, Like I feel like there
is a lot of hatred of specifically men towards trans
women because men are miserable and they even with all
the privilege that they experience, they're so deeply unhappy. And

(01:03:51):
when they see someone feeling liberated, someone taking their destiny
into their own hands and a symbol of freedom, it
makes them angry, so angry that they're still stuck in
that prison of masculinity, that even with all the privilege
that they get, makes them so deeply unhappy because they

(01:04:11):
can't be allowed to feel and have emotion and all
those you know, whatever the weird gender politics that we have.
And then it comes also from CIS women, where like
they see trans women and they go, you're just a
man and you have the privileges of a man and
now you're a woman, but you but you were socialized
as a man, and there's a lot of anger there,

(01:04:35):
and you know, trans people can't win. It's like, you know,
you're just you're really put in that position where you're
just like I don't want to be a symbol for anything.
I just I'm just a person and I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Want to live.

Speaker 6 (01:04:48):
Yeah, I just you know, in today's trans today of visibility,
like right now, visibility sucks. It sucks to be visible
as a transperson, right now because of all the attacks
and all the you know, horrible stuff that's going on
again trans people the transity visibility as a phrase is
so weird.

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
It's like I.

Speaker 6 (01:05:08):
Don't know who wrote that, but they it should have
been punched up, like transity of visibility is so weird,
Like like what do you mean visibility? Transity of empowerment?
Like there's so many better words.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
I feel that way about a lot of taglines of
that nature, where sometimes it's like even when someone's like
you are valid or whatever, you're like, can we like
do a little better than that? Like I don't know,
it just feels like I given, of course everyone deserves
to be visible, but then what's so weird?

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
I almost feel the same way about like International Women's Day,
where I'm just like, okay, thanks for being nice to
me and acknowledging women this one day, But like what
if we could just do that all the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Time or or that I mean, I whatever, like let
women exist, like the word exists bothers me too.

Speaker 4 (01:06:02):
You're like, yeah, that, I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
We're asking for enough. I think we should be asking
for more than visibility and existence.

Speaker 6 (01:06:11):
Also, if you can't like afford groceries or like gas
or like if you can't have like healthcare, it's like
who cares? How like visible or invisible or like if
it's your day, or like it's like who the fuck
cares if none of us can survive, Like you have
to survive to exist, Like you can't exist without food.

(01:06:35):
Like it's just I feel like it's so patronizing to
just like try to have these days highlighting people when
it's like we just as people are trying to like survive, Like,
h it just makes me very angry against like the
billionaire class. I'm sorry, I just get very that's exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Yeah, it's like okay, for the other three hundred and
sixty four days of the year, can you pay me enough?

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Yes? Yeah? Like live the patronizing, Like how how so
many social movements were like co opted by like companies
for like one day out of the year to be like,
oh yeah today, like Shelle Gasoline loves trans people.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
And you're like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Like I got an.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
I got an email from an escape room place that
was like happy International Women's Day, women get forty off
of an escape room, and I'm like existent and patriarchy
is an escape room.

Speaker 6 (01:07:37):
Oh my god, that's so funny.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
That's great. I remember one of my favorite like commentary
on that kind of like patronizing representation, no politics stuff
was I think it was Iffy wady Way. During the
George Floyd protests in twenty twenty, he made a fake
post from Spaghettios Spaghettio says black lives matter, and it

(01:08:03):
just like it was so funny and like just perfectly
was like what what does what does it mean? What
does it mean to say Spaghettio's believes that black lives matter?
What is Spaghettio's doing about.

Speaker 6 (01:08:15):
My favorite version of that? And this was not even commentary,
this was real life is on. There was one year
for International Women's Day where Burger King tweeted and was like,
we think that women belong in the kitchen. And then
it was like it was like highlighting their like their
like management program, and it was like this is nuts,

(01:08:36):
this is nuts.

Speaker 5 (01:08:37):
You can't do this, you can't do this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Oh they think women belong.

Speaker 6 (01:08:42):
In Yeah, said we think that women belong in the kitchen,
and then it had a link to their like program, Yeah, what.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Are we doing? What's going on?

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Exactly?

Speaker 6 (01:08:52):
I feel nostalgia for those days we've things have gotten
so bad that I'm missing the performative representation I miss I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Miss banks celebrating pride. I miss Bank of America pride
because that I mean, like speaking to your point like
that isn't even really happening anymore. Like they're like, oh,
we don't need to pretend to be an ally anymore.

Speaker 6 (01:09:13):
There's no more pretending.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Ugh, I mean it's yeah, I do feel weirdly.

Speaker 4 (01:09:19):
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
I think when that like twenty sixteen trend was going on,
it was miserable, but you're just like, wow, people used
to fake allies better, like.

Speaker 6 (01:09:30):
Billionaires used to pretend like they didn't want us all
dad like they like they used to be like no,
we we want you to be alive. And now no
more of that. It's like, no, we want you to
die and like you need to die.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
It's like what well, it's and I think that like
getting back to to see like, I think that there
is that energy thereof like the feminism that Dorothy Michaels
represents is catchphrase feminism and she's a Republican.

Speaker 6 (01:09:58):
For out of the way, Dorothy is a Republican.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Oh yeah, for sure, there's a scene where Dorothy as
Miss Kimberly on the show. In one of her what
is supposed to be an empowering speech that she gives
on set, she's talking to a patient who has been
violently abused by her husband, and Miss Kimberly is like,

(01:10:26):
if you're being beaten by your husband, then you should
just beat your husband back. That's what I would do.
And she's discouraging her from extracting herself and her children
from this abusive relationship. She's like, no, just beaten back.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
It's all very like U. And also the actor there
was like it disagrees with I don't know, it's just
always like Dorothy has to be the most feminist in
the room, even though Michael's behavior bears this out. Negative
twenty percent doesn't make any sense speaking going back to

(01:11:02):
Dorothy Michaels is a Republican. The second you said that, Nori,
I was like, oh, she kind of like Dorothy Michaels
kind of looks like Anita Bryant, like homophobia Era Bryant,
Like it's.

Speaker 6 (01:11:14):
So true, that's so true. Like the costuming, Yeah, like
that is.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
Her, Yeah, yeah, like she is.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
She's a friend to no one I just don't under
I don't know Dorothy Michaels at best is talking in
these platitudes that are also clearly written by men, which
you know, I could see someone arguing is commentary, but
it's not, because it's like, it can't really be commentary
on TV that much because we don't really know who's
making the TV. We can assume that it's a room

(01:11:43):
full of sismen, but we don't see that. We don't
understand why this woman producer has no power on her
own show. We don't know what the one black woman
in the movie is thinking at any time that the
actor isn't like, you know, putting into her eyes.

Speaker 6 (01:11:57):
Basically, I have a question, Oh please, if this movie
was made today, how do you think it would end?

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
So I have sort of a good answer to that
because this movie was adapted for Broadway recently, Yeah, within.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
The past like six or seven years, I think, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
And like one Tony's and all of this stuff. It's
weird because not very there were lines that changed, but
there was not a lot about the plot that changed. Sorry,
I have uh I did this research about a week ago,
so I need a second up to pull it up.
But I think the main difference was that there was

(01:12:36):
a lot of queer criticism of the Broadway musical, being like, well, what.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
The hell like what was that?

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Because it was once again written and directed by sis
straight guys, the Broadway Musical was praised in the general sense.
It was nominated for Tony's it did well. The setting
was changed from soap operas to I think Broadway, but

(01:13:06):
there was a ton of criticism around how little changed.

Speaker 6 (01:13:10):
Ah my god.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
It reminded me of a conversation we had on our
two Wong Fu episode Caitlin, because that had a similar
trajectory as did Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. They were
also both adapted into Broadway and like didn't do a
lot of course correcting on the flawed source material.

Speaker 3 (01:13:28):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Yeah, I don't know, I feel like depressingly, the answer
is maybe I don't. I don't know how differently it
ends a what do y'all think?

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
Yeah? Yeah, do you have a pitch for.

Speaker 6 (01:13:39):
I haven't thought too much about it, but I think, like,
I think there would be the speech would be different.
I think it would include what he learned. Maybe this
is more hopeful than maybe this is, like what I
would hope rather than like what would actually happen, as
you just said, what the it got rebooted and nothing changed,
But like I just would hope that like there would

(01:13:59):
be a different speech, Like there would just be some
different speech. Yeah, and him and Julie would not get
back together. They would not He would not be able
to get with her. He would have a really hard
conversation with with the character the woman.

Speaker 4 (01:14:13):
That he was leading on Sandy.

Speaker 6 (01:14:15):
I think he would not win in the end. He
would win nothing. He would have lost everything, and I
think would just have to like live with like that.
That was weird that he did a weird thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Yeah, which is like not even punishment enough really, like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
He should donate all the money he earned on the
show too.

Speaker 6 (01:14:36):
Yes, yes, the women, Yes, yes.

Speaker 4 (01:14:41):
The way.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
I'm curious what you both think about Julie's storyline. I
thought Julie to be so perplexing. There are elements of
her that like, I don't know. There were like little
commentary bits to Julie's character that I was like.

Speaker 4 (01:14:58):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
We won't be getting it to it, but that's interesting.
One of the more subtle things is that she does
not discuss publicly that she is a mother. I thought
that was a kind of that felt like actual effective
commentary of like, well, being a mother and being an
unmarried mother, you would be perceived as unattractive or old

(01:15:19):
or whatever it was, and so she doesn't talk about
her child publicly and only sort of tells people that
in the nineteen eighty two version of A Green Circle,
because there there is clearly some stigma with that. You know,
there is some light commentary on how poorly women were

(01:15:39):
represented in TV at this time, but again it's completely
undercut by the fact that, like I mean, in the
I think when we meet Julie, she's she's like, Hi,
I'm the slutty nurse, and then you're like, well, because that, yeah,
that's the character that has been written for her, right
she has to play. And it's not that she is

(01:15:59):
an aware of that. It's that she is accepted that,
like she or you know, it's like sort of position
like she's accepted that there she will never be treated differently,
so so like might as well laugh about it, which
is like, sure, you can fall into complacency when you're
when you don't think you'll ever be treated like a
person at work. But then the movie sort of posits like,

(01:16:22):
and so what she needed was Michael Dorsey to make
her realize that wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
Okay teach her about feminism, right, Yeah, yes, that is baffling. Also,
later on, she's talking about how how much she values
Dorothy as a friend and how much Dorothy has taught
her and inspired her, and that's why she breaks up
with Ron, and I'm like, okay, but like that breakup

(01:16:51):
scene happens off screen, I don't really have any other
any other indication.

Speaker 6 (01:16:56):
Didn't she come back and say she didn't or did
I make that up? I feel like I have a
memory that she was like I didn't do it, or
like she.

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):
Does eventually, and then she says like, I'm lonely. Who
am I gonna have dinner with now? And I think
she says something that almost implies that Dorothy teaching her
about standing up for herself and being empowered as a woman,
like has made her lonely and made her because of
the awareness she has, she's now like unhappy with the

(01:17:26):
world and power dynamics and stuff like that, which fair
like people who are aware and informed and enlightened are
also often deeply unhappy because of.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
I was like, well, I mean I can really I
didn't yet, So I'm not criticizing that's my perhaps my
lived experience. That's exactly how I feel right now. So yeah,
I'm not criticizing that. And I'm also maybe just reading
into it because she doesn't explicitly say that. But what
we do know, or what she does say, is that

(01:17:59):
Dora Dorothy has taught her so much because Dorothy's always herself,
and the joke is, well, Dorothy isn't herself, that's not
even Dorothy, that's a guy named Michael Dorsey, but Michael
Dorsey as Dorothy has taught Julie how to be an
empowered woman.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
But I'm also just not really seeing evidence of that,
so I don't know what she's talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Yeah, I think like any progress in Julie's character is
spurred by Dorothy, and at the end that it just
ends up being like kind of sad, h when you.

Speaker 6 (01:18:32):
Say sad like one of the saddest scenes for me
is when Michael is so late to that dinner that
h oh with Sandy, such Sandy makes and then like
he's like you should be mad at me, be mad
at me, Like don't apologize and like them putting her
character in such a low point that the perpetrator is

(01:18:54):
telling her like, why are you not mad at me?
It's like, yeah, like you wrote the scene, Like you
wrote the scene, and you wrote it to where she's
that pathetic. That really was sad.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
Oh it really bummed me out. Yeah, where it's like
I don't know, for the only like Julie and Sandy
both hot, white blonde ladies, so already.

Speaker 4 (01:19:16):
You're like, Okay, this is what the movie's doing.

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
But Sandy is just treated so horribly by the plot
in a way that like, I think that we're supposed
to I mean, obviously Michael having sex with her is
framed as a joke, even though it's like co weird,
coercive sex, and then he treats her poorly for the
rest of the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:19:36):
It just made me so sad.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Yeah, watching her with the with the food alone and
then immediately forgiving him.

Speaker 4 (01:19:42):
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
I like when she lashes out at him. I like
that when she says I never said I love you.
I don't care about I love you. I read the
second this is all very second my feminism. I read
the second sex. I read the Cinderella complex. I'm responsible
for my own orgasm. I don't care. I just don't
like to be lied to. I feel like there's something
in there, but it doesn't pay off in any any way.

(01:20:06):
It's just sort of like lip service because like Terry
garr is selling me on it. I do think that
there is I mean going back to like the idea
that like being empowered can also translate to feeling kind
of isolated and lonely. That's sort of what she's saying here.
She's like, I am a feminist.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
I you know, I've.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
I've done the work, I'm doing my best, and I
just I feel like shit, I just want to be
treated like a person by you, and like there's like
there's there's like truth in that. Unfortunately he never does that,
so like why bother.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
He never tells her he was lying to her the
whole time, He never apologizes, he never comes clean in
any way. She just never appears on screen after that scene,
So there's no resolution there. Yeah, like you said, Jamie,
like them having sex feels very like he tricks her.
He lies about his intention of why he was naked.

(01:21:02):
There's also a weird thing where she sees him and
she's like, Michael Parentheses horrified. But then she's like Michael
Parentheses in True Morning, I'm like, Okay, what the hell
is this? And then he's like, yeah, I want you.
And then so they have sex. She says something like
men have sex with me and then they lose interest

(01:21:22):
and they ignore me, and I don't want that to
be this way. But also, the movie is so all
over the place with how it characterizes her, because for
most of the time, it seems like like the way
she's waiting around and constantly being stood up by Michael,
the movie wants you to think that she's pining after

(01:21:43):
him and expecting to get into a serious, committed relationship
with him. But then at the end she says, I
don't even care about any of that. I just don't
want to be lied to, which fair, But then what
was all that other stuff where the movie makes it
seem like she does deeply care about that stuff. So yeah,
I just feel like the movie cannot make up its

(01:22:05):
mind on how we are supposed to perceive her how
she actually feels about the situation.

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
Well, and also there's a big to do made of
like she doesn't want to do the play with him
anymore because he's been so deceptive. And then at the end,
the only indication of her existence is.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
That she does do the play.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
There's like a sign with their names on it, so they,
I mean, everyone is just so trapped because.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
She says like, normally I would say screw your play,
but because I'm a professional, I'm gonna do it anyway,
so I'll see you it rehearsal or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
And then she says, I do I do like this
is just like I love Terry Garr. But like when
she when she does that whole speech and then she goes,
are these chocolate covered cherries?

Speaker 4 (01:22:48):
I laughed. I like it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:50):
Also, there's a part where he so Michael is talking
about Sandy to his roommate Jeff, and he's saying something like, well,
I never promised her that I would be exclusive, but
I'm kind of letting her think that so as to
not hurt her feelings. So he says that. Then in
a later scene, Michael as Dorothy is talking to Ron,

(01:23:13):
Ron regurgitates that exact same thing about Julie, where Ron
is like, well, I never promised I would be exclusive
to her, but I'm telling her that I'm exclusive, so
is to not hurt her feelings. And I would think
that would be a moment of Michael being like, oh
my god, that's so shitty and I did that same
shitty thing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
And he just keeps packing.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
He has no reflection, no introspection whatsoever. He's just like, well,
you suck Ron, You're a shitty guy. And it's like,
you're also shitty.

Speaker 4 (01:23:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:23:46):
The only change that we see, the only progress that
we see, is that Michael just starts liking dresses like
more like he just starts to have more of appreciation
for the craftsmanship of like like like like by the end,
he's like, this is a Houston and like I love Houston.
And it's like, oh so like literally the only thing

(01:24:06):
that you've changed is you like like designer clothing. I
don't like Like it was so bad and superficial.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
There were so many opportunities for him to learn the many,
many ways that women are oppressed and marginalized simply because
of their gender, and he learns basically nothing, except for
he says something like it's so expensive to buy all
these clothes and lingerie.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
And handbags that it does remind me of a date
I went on years ago where it was like a
guy emphatically explaining to me how expensive skincare products were
for women, for like Mony, and then at the end
being like kiss please, like I didn't, and you're just
like okay, Like I don't know. I there's just so

(01:24:57):
much going on in this movie that makes me very
sad for all marginalized people of the nineteen eighties. It's
so and I feel like this is something I know
we're running out of time, but something that feels actually
very in conversation with not the Bechdel Test, but like
Alison Bechdel's work, which was you know, happening throughout the eighties,

(01:25:19):
the idea of like for many people. And I saw
this in the comments I saw this on letterbox, mostly
from older users, saying that this was the closest they
saw in a very successful movie to lesbian representation and
how depressing is that. Like God, There's been a lot

(01:25:39):
of pieces written about this over the years. One I'm
gonna quote from is from a blog called diva Drivel
kind of a good thing, kind of a good name
called looking for the Lesbian in TUTSI. I just wanted
to to share this perspective because I actually I like
I do. I do see the appeal of Julia's character,

(01:26:00):
even though it resolves in the most republican way possible.
So from this piece, in spite of the baggage that
comes with a film that presents dated ideas about gender
and sexuality, I still find myself drawn to Tutsy because
of the unresolved ambiguity of Julia's sexuality. Julia's blonde, beautiful,
moderately famous, and already entangled in a front relationship, blah
blah blah. Despite Julie's aversion towards seeing Dorothy out of

(01:26:24):
her clothes, as Michael pleads, she confesses to having quote
the same impulses unquote as Dorothy. In a curious statement,
she tells Dorothy that she is responsible for the encounter
because she is just not well adjusted enough, which is
such a specific choice of words.

Speaker 4 (01:26:41):
There, it continues, what does Julie mean by this well adjusted?

Speaker 6 (01:26:47):
To what I just got to say? I just want
to say that TUTSI walked so that Carol could run.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Okay, they're in conversation, Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:27:02):
But yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
Implicit in her statement is that lesbians are not well
adjusted women because they indulge these impulses.

Speaker 4 (01:27:09):
While well adjusted.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
Women learn to bottle them up and put them away,
which is like, I, honestly, I have no idea what
we're supposed to think about Julie. By the end of
this movie, it seems like Julie herself is very unresolved
about what this whole experience has meant to her, and
the movie kind of doesn't care enough to give us
any sort of meaningful resolution. I think we are just

(01:27:32):
supposed to be like, well, now she has to date
Dustin Hoffman, like that sounds miserable.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
She threw a drink in his face. Cloes. There's a scene,
Oh Yeah, where Dorothy and Julie are hanging out and
Julie is talking about her relationships with men and ron
and just dating in general and how complicated it is
to be a woman in the eighties, and she says
something like I wish a guy would just be honest
enough to walk up to me and say, listen, I'm

(01:28:02):
confused about this too. I could lay a big line
on you, but the simple truth is I find you
really interesting and I'd really like to make love to you.
So later, when Michael, who is again at a party
on a date with Sandy, blows Sandy Off goes up
to Julie says that exact same line, and of course

(01:28:25):
Julie throws a drink in his face because that is
a that is a nutso thing to say to someone.
He's coming on so strong, and then he's like.

Speaker 4 (01:28:33):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
But it also kind of makes Julie seem like she
doesn't know what she wants because she just said she
wanted that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:40):
I don't think Julie does know what she wants, And.

Speaker 6 (01:28:43):
The underlying message is that women are liars. I think
like there was a very male, very misogynistic message there
that I was hearing around, like women say they want
nice guys, but then when nice guys like I heard
that like gross manosphere kind of language.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
You know, totally yeah, Michael is manosphere code.

Speaker 4 (01:29:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
Like it is presented like Julie doesn't know what she wants,
but the movie doesn't care about that. Like I would
be willing to engage with a character who's like unsure
about like what do I want out of a relationship,
Like what is my sexuality order, my preferences, bah blah
blah blah, but like the movie doesn't care. So it's

(01:29:28):
just like you're presented with all of this stuff. It's
also kind of like weirdly like Dorothy's doing some like
mommy stuff on the trip, and like in a way
that felt so manipulative, where she's like talking about her
dead mother, and then it felt like Michael as Dorothy

(01:29:48):
was like I'm your mommy now.

Speaker 4 (01:29:50):
It was just really confusing.

Speaker 3 (01:29:53):
Oh yeah, because they get into bed together, and then yeah,
Deutsch's I mean, I love sharing the bed with a friend.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
Uh, and I hate movies that discouraged me from doing
that is fair.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
I cannot share a bed with anyone under any circumstances.
I would rather sleep on the floor. We've shared a bed,
I know, but I'm so bad because I'm the worst sleeper.

Speaker 2 (01:30:16):
Hated Settle. Seattle, you hated that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):
We've shared multiple beds together. I think also in Washington,
d C.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
Do you know I Seattle stuck out with me. See
you remember where we were?

Speaker 3 (01:30:31):
I don't know. It meant to let me tell you something.
I have such bad insomnia that if someone is in
the bed with me, unless I have taken a Shmorgus
board of sleep Betime drugs, I will not sleep. I
have laid awake until seven am because a man was
next to me in a bed.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
I hate to hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
And this has happened on multiple occasions in my life. Anyway,
they share the bed, Dorothy starts like petting Julie. She's like, no,
don't stop. My mom used to do this, and I'm like,
that could be a nice moment in a different movie,
but it's in this movie and it's weird. And then
this all culminates in Dorothy trying to kiss Julie, Julie

(01:31:14):
pulling away that you know, the scene we've been talking about.
And then the aftermath of that is Julie being like,
I'm too homophobic to be your friend anymore basically.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
Which is kind of couched in the like, it's not
that I'm homophobic, it's that I need you to out
yourself to my dad today.

Speaker 3 (01:31:33):
Yeah, and I feel like I'd be leading you on
because the mentality of the time was that here people
were so sexually aggressive that you can't even be friends
with them.

Speaker 6 (01:31:44):
Yeah, I have to confess something. We have limited time left.
I have to confess something. Tell us I was sexually
attracted to her dad. Oh less, I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:31:55):
Know, but I did get he was so sweet, he
was so sweet, and his wife died and he's a widower,
and he just like was like so nice to Dorothy
and like he just wanted like to be happy and
like live like a joyful small life and that Really,

(01:32:15):
if I was Dorothy, I could not have resisted and
I would have gone with Less.

Speaker 4 (01:32:20):
Wow, he should have been so lucky.

Speaker 6 (01:32:24):
He was just like he was solid. He was the
only man in that film that was a solid man.

Speaker 3 (01:32:30):
But I hate him.

Speaker 6 (01:32:32):
Well, did he do something bad? Am I forgetting that
he did something bad?

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
His last I think his last appearance is like sucks.

Speaker 6 (01:32:41):
Oh yeah, because.

Speaker 3 (01:32:42):
He's weird and homophobic. But then even before that he
goes on this tirade about how gender.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
Needs to be this rigid, happy thing.

Speaker 3 (01:32:51):
I couldn't say. He's also like he keeps being creepily
like touching Dorothy and invading her space and thing crossing
her boundaries.

Speaker 6 (01:33:01):
In real life, Less would end up with a trans woman.
In real life, Less just trans attracted. He finds out
later in life he finds a woman who's trans, and
he lives a beautiful, happy life on the farm with
his trans lover. Like that is that's real life, that's
real life. In the movie, it's really weird, and there's

(01:33:22):
a lot of weird stuff going on. But in real life,
Less he has a beautiful trans wife. That's just that's
that's that's life.

Speaker 4 (01:33:30):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:33:31):
I'm here for it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
Maybe that's maybe that's how it ends in everything else
is exactly the same, except Less has a beautiful trans wife.

Speaker 4 (01:33:41):
At the end of them, like, he takes he takes
your dancing.

Speaker 6 (01:33:44):
He just wants to dance.

Speaker 4 (01:33:48):
We're I like.

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):
The way he's presented is very sweet at first, and
then the layers start to peel back.

Speaker 5 (01:33:54):
They do peel, they do peel.

Speaker 2 (01:33:56):
Okay and Julie, Julie, this family, Like, I don't know
what the hell was going on with this family.

Speaker 3 (01:34:03):
It's a mess.

Speaker 6 (01:34:04):
There was sexual tension between them, Yes, I.

Speaker 2 (01:34:07):
Was gonna say there was a very like the way
she I also just think it's whatever. I you know,
I want I want my mom to have a nice boyfriend.
Sure of course I do, why not? But I wouldn't
be like, I'll leave you two alone, good luck, Like
you're like, oh gross, gross, Like I want her to

(01:34:29):
have a great relationship that has nothing to do with me,
Like what gross? Like, Yeah, people love to hyper sexualize
the relationship between fathers and daughters.

Speaker 4 (01:34:41):
It's their favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:34:42):
Oh god, wasn't that a thing? Weren't we talking about
that in like Say Anything or something?

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
I Say Anything is one of the horniest father to
outer relationships ever because he gives her like a ring
at the beginning of the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
Yeah, he proposes to his own daughter or something.

Speaker 4 (01:34:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:34:59):
Gross.

Speaker 3 (01:35:00):
I know we're running out of time. I just have
a few quick things I want to rattle off. First
of all, I think this movie suffers from too many subplots.
There are like seven, and it should have been maybe three, tops.
But the subplots that we haven't really talked about are
the quick thing with the actor John Van Horn, who

(01:35:20):
plays doctor Brewster. He attempts to rape Dorothy.

Speaker 2 (01:35:25):
And that's written off with what is definitely intended to
be a joke. Sally Jane Black talks about this at
her review as well, where Michael says rape is no
laughing matter, and then there's like a literal pause for laughs.
For the nineteen eighty two audience that's like, sure it is.
It's the funniest thing in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:35:45):
Yeah, So that's a mess. There's a tiny, tiny little
Geena Davis subplot where it's I guess it's more of
a through line than anything, but the whole thing there
is that she keeps being almost naked in front of Dorothy,
not realizing that Dorothy actually Michael, and so she's like
in her bra and underwear all the time, and then
when she realizes that Dorothy is a man, her eyes

(01:36:10):
bulge and she's like, oh no, I've been naked in
front of him the whole time, And that's played as
a joke. There's a few instances where Sandy makes fat
phobic remarks, always about Dorothy, but she never knows that
she's talking about Dorothy.

Speaker 4 (01:36:27):
And also Dorothy not for nothing, Dorothy isn't.

Speaker 6 (01:36:30):
Fast skinny as hell, Yeah, because it's.

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):
Dustin Hoffman and Dustin Hoffman is very thin.

Speaker 4 (01:36:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:36):
I mean that's just again the like absolute, like crippling
depression of the nineteen eighties where we're just like.

Speaker 4 (01:36:43):
What are you even saying?

Speaker 3 (01:36:45):
It's it's mind boggling. Yeah, there's just there. I know,
we're we're there's more to say, but yeah, we're we're
running out of time. So I'm like, ahh, but I've
had a great time here today.

Speaker 4 (01:36:58):
I have me too. Does this maybe pass the Bechdel test?

Speaker 3 (01:37:03):
I don't know, Like, no, it doesn't unless someone were
to count Dorothy as a female character. But no, no.

Speaker 6 (01:37:11):
Way, because like without that, like there was no scene
where two women were talking, right, I can't remember one.

Speaker 3 (01:37:19):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
And if it did happen, it was a coincidence at best. Yeah,
like all of that, Like all of Sandy's friends are men,
which as an actor doesn't really make sense. It doesn't
seem like Julie, in spite of being a sweet person,
is friends with any of the other women on set.
It just like, is yet another example of every woman
in the story being just like narratively, Like there's these

(01:37:42):
little narrative baby gits around them so that they can
never speak to another woman. And yeah, I don't think
it passes the Bechdel test literally or spiritually.

Speaker 3 (01:37:54):
No. But what about our nipple scale, the scale where
we rate the movie on a scale of zero to
five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.
This is tricky again. For the time, this was probably
a feminist masterpiece in nineteen eighty two, Sasha butmer bleak

(01:38:15):
as hell, But obviously looking at it in twenty twenty six,
everything that it is maybe trying to do falls absolutely short.
There are so many issues with all of the text,
all of the subtext, everything about it just is kind
of rotten to me. So I think I I'll give

(01:38:39):
it a half nipple for its legacy of being a
quote unquote feminist work for its time and paving the
way for other better stories that explore similar themes about
gender and misogyny and things like that. But again, by

(01:39:01):
today's standards, it is not really doing anything. So half
nipple and I'll give it to Terry Garr.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Yeah, I'm gonna go half nipple too. If this is
like a movie that you loved, a nostalgic premises, like.

Speaker 4 (01:39:16):
Revisit it. I think it's it is.

Speaker 2 (01:39:18):
This probably was considered very like different and it it
I just have only really ever seen in the broadest
possible way this movie presented as a tale of empathy,
and I think if you go back and watch it,
the empathy just isn't there.

Speaker 4 (01:39:33):
Where Where is it? Where is it?

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
At is the empathy in the room with us right now?
It is just a Reagan relic that, like you said, Kaylin,
and I think you know, if you got something out
of this movie and it led you to actual empathetic work,
then great. But yeah, for for our purposes, it does
not do well.

Speaker 4 (01:39:54):
Half a nipple. Also going to Terry Garr, what about you, Nori?

Speaker 6 (01:39:59):
Yes, I okay, So I'm gonna give a quarter nipple
for nostalgia like I really did, like you know, the
grainy camera that I was really loving, the style, the
colors that I was really into that nostalgia element. So
a quarter nipple for that alone, you know what. Another
quarter nipple for the love of my life less, So

(01:40:23):
half a nipple, okay. In terms of trans nipples, I'm
gonna do negative ten. It was so painful to hear
some of that dialogue. It was so transphobic and really hurt.
And also Dorothy was brick as hell, and no one's
believing that that's a woman. Okay, so negative ten. I'm

(01:40:47):
gonna give my half a nipple to my boy Less.
You know, before the the onion peels, you know, before
the layers were shown, he seemed like a nice guy.
But unfortunately we did see who he was, so that sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:41:01):
But yeah, but in the reboot, he will be on
the farm with his gorgeous trans wife Yes.

Speaker 6 (01:41:08):
Played by Sasha Colby from Groupos Drag Race.

Speaker 2 (01:41:13):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:41:14):
Yes, well, Nori, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 6 (01:41:18):
Yes, oh my pleasure.

Speaker 4 (01:41:20):
Thank you for enduring Tutsie. We're sorry.

Speaker 6 (01:41:24):
I'm going to need some therapy. I'm going to need
to do some therapy after this. No, this was a
delight to talk to you, guys.

Speaker 5 (01:41:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:41:31):
Oh my gosh. Where can people follow you on social media?
Find your work, et cetera.

Speaker 6 (01:41:36):
I'm on Instagram. It's just nor read find me there.
I'll post about shows I'm doing. I'm always performing in
the LA area, So yeah, check me out.

Speaker 4 (01:41:47):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:41:48):
And you can follow us on Instagram and our Patreon
aka Matreon, where for five dollars a month to get
two bonus episodes every single month, plus access to the
back catalog, always on a fun little theme that Jamie
and I cook up. And that's at patreon dot com
slash Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (01:42:06):
And with that, let's we could we could fix Less,
We could fix Less. Yeah, let's go to his farm
and fix him. Couldn't fix Michael, but maybe less, but maybe.

Speaker 6 (01:42:18):
Less put less of address as less.

Speaker 4 (01:42:25):
By Bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:42:29):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and
produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.

Speaker 3 (01:42:35):
Me Kitlyn Durrante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
And edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever Heard of Them? That's
Me and our logo and merch and all of our
artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftis, Ever heard
of her?

Speaker 4 (01:42:51):
Oh My God?

Speaker 2 (01:42:52):
And our theme song, by the way, was composed by
Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Vosskrasinski. Iconic and a
special thing to the one and only Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash
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