Weird Science with Bridget Todd

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women
in them.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Are all their discussions.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The
patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdelcast.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Attention, Bechtelcast listeners, we are going on tour.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Wow, okay, Oprah. And you get a tour date, and
you get a tour date, but only if you live
in the Northeast. This is the kickoff leg of our
10-year Whoops We Didn't Dismantle the Patriarchy anniversary tour, and
we are hitting up cities in the Northeast that we
haven't toured to in many years. We're very excited.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Caitlin, where the hell are we going? We are going
to New York City at the Bell House on October 12th.
Baltimore at Creative Alliance on October 15th. Philadelphia at Philomoka
on October 17th. State College at Manny's on October 18th.
Pittsburgh at Bottle Rocket on October 19th. And finally, Boston

(01:05):
at the Brattle Theater on October 21st.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
First, we are so excited to be celebrating the show.
It's going to be a big, silly variety show. There
will be videos. There will be a recap of the
Bechdel cast. There's going to be an ode to the
dead wife. We're going to get into all of that
incredible post-MeToo cinema from men who didn't understand what that

(01:29):
was supposed to be about. There's just been so much
going on. And we'll also, as always, have exclusive merch.
And we're our own merch people. Come hang. Come take pictures.
And we will also have free merch for our matrons.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
That's right. You get a button.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
So now's a great time to join the matron.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Another reason to join the matron is that matrons get
access to a promo code for a discount on tickets.
So if you're not already a matron, sign up today.
Get that discount. Now, where can we buy tickets, you're wondering? Well,
we'll tell you.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
Well.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
It's at linktree.com. Pretty simple.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Pretty simple. Not that hard to remember. And also, final thing,
if you have pre-ordered my book, The Tower, you can
also get free merch at our merch table. So really,
just come, hang, and if you are coming to these
shows specifically, dress up. It's Halloween time. No wrong answers,
but a crowd full of Doc Ocks would certainly be interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Dress as your favorite movie character. We will be doing
the same.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
And if you don't live in or near any of
these cities that we listed, fear not. Over the course
of the next year, we will be visiting other regions
of the US and Canada to do the show.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
What?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
So fear not. We will be coming to a city
near you soon. Save the date.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Save the date. We're getting married to our own body.
This is the longest relationship of my life, I will say.
And it's not even close. It's not even close. We
are common law married. We are common law married. And
we are common law married to our listeners. Is that
excessively parasocial? Don't think about it. Come to the show.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
And be excessively parasocial at us.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
And we will see you in October.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
See you there.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
The Bechdel cast.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
All right, Caitlin, our parents are out of town and
we have to create the perfect podcast.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Oh my gosh. Let's give it the sexiness of all
these playboy models and the intelligence of Albert Einstein.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
And let's give our podcast huge honkers. And then this
is actually, you know, for everything we're going to be
talking about, about the movie Weird Science today, it was
kind of a nice walk down memory lane because our
podcast also emerged out of the fog in one of
our bedrooms about 10 years ago and then said, So

(03:56):
what do you little podcasters want to do first? And
we said cover Kill Bill very poorly. And that's what
we did. And not what we did. Cover Kill Bill
with actually no understanding of what we were saying.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
True.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
And that's why that episode would eventually be deleted and redone.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Lost media. Welcome to the Bechtelcast. My name is Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
My name is Caitlin Durante. This is our show where
we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the
Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point, which of
course is a media metric created by our dear friend
of the show, Alison Bechdel, first appearing in her comic
collection Dykes to Watch Out For in the mid 80s,

(04:41):
has since been sort of repurposed as a more mainstream
media test. There are many versions of it. The one
that we use is, do two characters of a marginalized
gender have names? Do they have a conversation with each other?
And is that conversation about something other than a man?

(05:01):
And we particularly like it when it's meaningful dialogue and
not just like throw away nothing dialogue that you could
delete out of the movie and nothing would change.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
And crucially, and crucially, I just want to say, in
light of what we'll be talking about today, just because,
I mean, we've been saying this, but just because a
movie maybe technically passes the Bechdel test doesn't mean that
it's good for the culture. I just want to get

(05:32):
ahead of it.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
I just want to get ahead of it because when
this movie actually does pass the Bechdel test, I was
kicking and screaming and I was like, well, now my
life is hard. This sucks. This flawed metric.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Two women talk about another woman.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yes. And in a conversation I'm actually very interested to
talk about because I feel like like happens maybe a
few a handful of times in these movies. I'm like, oh,
that's the start of something maybe more interesting. And of course,
it goes nowhere.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yes, indeed.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
We are covering, again, in the running trend of our
10-year anniversary, we're covering a movie you would think we
would have covered years ago, but we have, in fact,
been avoiding for many years. But we have been outpaced
because we have an incredible, wonderful returning guest. And so
we are recovering. I said we were recovering. We are

(06:21):
recovering from Weird Science 1985.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
And let's get our wonderful guest in here. I'm so
excited to see her.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
She is the host of iHeart's podcast, There Are No
Girls on the Internet. She's the author of the audiobook,
Love at First Prompt, AI and the Future of Intimacy.
And you know her from our episodes on Eve's Bayou,
Reality Bites, BAPS. It's Bridget Todd.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Welcome back.

Speaker 4 (06:49):
Welcome back.

Speaker 5 (06:50):
I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you so much
for having me. I'm so excited to talk about Weird Science.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Oh, goodness gracious. Us too.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
I'm so curious because I know, first of all, our listeners,
I feel like there's a ton of crossover in our listenership,
I'm sure. But if you are a Bechtelcast listener that
is not listening to There Are No Girls on the Internet,
not following your content, like it's just you are doing
the good work week in and week out. We're so
stoked to have you back. Thank you so much. Of course.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
And we'd love to hear more about your book. Tell
us about it.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
Yes, the book is called Love at First Prompt. It
is an audio book. You can get it at loveatfirstprompt.com.
It really explores why we are so fascinated with the
concept of humans and technology like AI having intimate connections.
So whether that's romantic connections, sexual connections, platonic connections, you know,

(07:50):
I'm interested in exploring that from a perspective where I'm
not actually trying to cast judgment on individuals who say
that they feel like they have some sort of intimate
connection with AI, but instead I ask, what is driving this?
Why are we so fascinated with this? And what does
this mean for all the tech companies that are essentially
trying to commodify intimacy, connection, sexuality, romance, friendship, and all

(08:14):
of that?

Speaker 2 (08:15):
I mean, I'm so, so, so excited to listen to it.
And also, when I read about it, when I read
your announcement, I was like, Bridget truly is just like
doing the work that needs to be done, but must
be really frustrating to do sometimes.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Speaker 5 (08:33):
But it is interesting because in researching the book, I
kind of had to go back and realize that that
this was a topic that I've been fascinated with since
it's almost since childhood.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
I remember watching the movie.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
Blade runner, like the idea that a human and a
piece of technology would forge even a friendship.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
You know, I used to watch, um, Oh God, why
am I blanking the name of that movie?

Speaker 5 (08:56):
Um, 80s movie with the robot and uh his name
is uh johnny j5.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Oh why am i blanking on that movie oh my
god i'm also blanking on it uh short circuit yes.

Speaker 5 (09:08):
Oh i wasn't even close i was not even i
don't know what that is oh my god short circuit
so this is i'm like dating myself but it was
an 80s movie where a like a guy who is
like a toy engineer makes a robot and then him
and this robot kind of create a real bond.

Speaker 4 (09:25):
Ever since my whole life.

Speaker 5 (09:27):
I've sort of been asking this question of what happens
when a human and a piece of technology become friends,
become lovers, become, you know, they have a romance. It's
something that, you know, we seem to have a real
fascination with it in culture.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
We really do.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, I'm so excited to hear your thoughts on this
movie as well, because as I was watching this, even though, like,
You know, hard to find a more dated movie, uh
at least like with its tech stuff and amongst other
things than weird science but it does feel as if
i'm curious how this sort of factored into your research

(10:05):
and your work that media has such a stranglehold on
how we view like artificially created characters and i mean
to the point where i'm trying to think of the
exact example of Oh, I'm thinking of like we recovered
her last year, I believe, and how, you know, like
Samantha was such an influential character that she's cited by

(10:28):
tech bros now trying to make Samantha and how like,
you know, all media tends to be like this and
a lot of but it seems like especially really, really
sticky in this area specifically.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (10:41):
Yeah, it's so funny because Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI,
has cited her as his favorite movie.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
It was that motherfucker, wasn't it?

Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 5 (10:50):
And he said that, you know, he has cited her
as the inspiration for the way that he wants humans
to interact with his company's AI. But then he will
also say, oh, but I don't want people having... intimate
connections or like sexual or romantic connections.

Speaker 4 (11:06):
And I'm like, did you see her?

Speaker 5 (11:08):
Because intimate and sexual connections is a part of it.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
It's a huge part of it.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
It's kind of the reason people liked the movie. And
also how, I mean, now I'm just like, I'm talking
your ear off. I just need to listen to the book.
But how we are in media, I think, conditioned to
really empathize with these AI characters and to be rooting
for them and how that, I mean, at least I

(11:35):
personally struggle to, to bring that energy to the real world.
You know, I see, I see a clanker in the wild.
I want to kick it.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
That's such a good point.

Speaker 5 (11:48):
And it totally aligns with when people talk about AI,
like it's, I mean, I make tech content all day
long and I catch myself saying, oh, well, you know,
like personifying AI as if it is real, even though
I know that it is not. And it's important to
maintain that it's not because it absolutely, you know, empowers

(12:10):
tech companies when we talk about their technology in this
way where it's something that it's not. When we talk
about Chad GPT, like it's sentient or it can do things.
When we say things like, oh, Grok did X, Y, Z.
And it's like, no, no, no, Grok didn't do anything
because Grok's not real.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
You mean... humans used Grok to do XYZ, right?

Speaker 5 (12:27):
And so it's always this constant friction that I do
very much think, to your point, Jamie, is like really
enabled by media about technology, media about sort of like
you know, a babe come to life or a robot,
you know, did y'all, have y'all covered the movie Companion?

Speaker 3 (12:46):
We have pretty recently, like within the past year or so.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (12:50):
That's a great example of a movie where like by
the end you're rooting for the AI bot.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
You know, you're like, get it girl.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Same with Ex Machina where you're just like, yeah, kill him.
And then you're, and it is tricky because when I
rewatch movies like Companion or Ex Machina, I'm always rooting
for her. It's impossible not to. I was thinking a
little bit about, I forget what the name of the
Sophie Thatcher character in Companion is, but how she has

(13:17):
control over her own intelligence and all of that.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
He set it way down because he wanted her to
be a moron.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Okay, that's another thing.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
That appears in this movie.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
That happens in this movie, although I think they eventually
decide to make the woman that they create have einstein
level intelligence yeah but like another part of this conversation
is like one of the reasons i think that people
are fascinated with the idea of like having a an

(13:49):
ai companion or like creating a fembot or whatever it is,
is the fantasy of being able to create or be
with the perfect partner, specifically the perfect woman who they
can design to have the exact qualities that these men
think that they want. Because real human women come with

(14:14):
all of these flaws. But of course, these alleged flaws
are often just a woman having opinions and agency and autonomy.
But yeah, just this idea of like designing the ideal woman,
quote unquote, and the implications therein. And we'll talk about
how in the movie Weird Science, that concept could have

(14:34):
been thoughtfully explored, but isn't.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Really yeah i guess it's like this before we like
really get into it i know that this is like
maybe a very silly question bridget but like does how
the two guys in weird science creating lisa kind of
square with how a lot of people use ai to

(14:59):
simulate intimate experiences Oh.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
As I was watching it, I was like, this actually,
I mean, we can get into some of my issues
with the movie, but I was surprised by how much
I recognized the scene when they're trying to kind of
build their bot babe, how much I recognized that in
the research about how people interact with AI when they're
sort of building or training AI for things like romance

(15:24):
or erotic role play, right?

Speaker 4 (15:26):
You see people saying... I.

Speaker 5 (15:28):
Want you to talk to me like this. I want
you to treat me like this. You know, really kind
of down to the most specific minutiae. essentially building their
own bot. I was really, really reminded of the scene
when they're feeding in, like, oh, here's the lip she's
going to have. For some reason, here's Beethoven's hands for

(15:49):
some reason, which they feed in and I guess never
return to.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Which is like one of the biggest missed, like dropped
threads in the movie where you're like, and what if
she used that to do anything else? But whatever. That's
why companion exists, I guess.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Well, I'm so excited to jump into it. And I
know that there's going to be so many other questions
that come up around this intimacy simulation slash mommy, girlfriend, sister,
wife situation. But let's get into our history with this movie. Bridget,
what's your history with Weird Science?

Speaker 5 (16:25):
So I had never seen it all the way through.
I was pretty familiar with it. But weirdly, when I
was growing up, I was obsessed with the short-lived, I guess,
miniseries sitcom version of this that used to be on
the USA Network.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
I've seen every episode.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Well, it's not even that short-lived. It was 88 episodes.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
And ran over four years.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
I guess that that's, like, old-school short-lived, though. Everything used
to get, like, 300 episodes.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, sorry, keep going.

Speaker 5 (16:55):
Yeah, the sitcom, I mean, I was, like, probably eight
or nine when I was watching it. I have to
imagine that it was worse than the movie, but I still,
for some reason, had a real deep soft spot for it.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
And then this was your first time watching the movie.

Speaker 5 (17:11):
Yeah, I had seen it in bits and pieces. I
don't think I had seen it all the way through.
And something that I remembered when I was rewatching it
for this episode is that in the very first episode
of my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet,
I was interviewing a tech historian named.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
Claire Evans, who was amazing.

Speaker 5 (17:26):
And I was asking her, I was like, you know,
why do we see technology as this sort of boys'
field when the reality is that women and marginalized people
were at the start of technology and computers since the
very beginning? And she cited a lot of kind of
marketing that really kicked in around the 80s that seemed
to suggest that technology was, you know, two computer nerds

(17:48):
building a babe, like in the movie Weird Science. And
so that was the first time that I was like, oh, yeah.
But According to this tech historian, weird science was a
big part of this marketing idea that made people associate
technology and computers with kind of horny, nerdy guys and
not the women and girls who had been at the
forefront of computers since the very beginning.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
That's fucking infuriating.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
It is.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Woo!

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Jamie, what about you? What's your relationship with this movie?

Speaker 2 (18:19):
I guess just mainly one of avoidance. Yeah, this is
a movie that I knew we would cover one day.
There would come a day. But I had like a
cultural osmosis understanding of this movie. Basically kind of rooted
in what you just said, Bridget, of like the horny boy.
Like I've seen this movie compared to like a send
up of Frankenstein and a send up of Pygmalion. I see, obviously,

(18:43):
there's like clear parallels between both of them, but it
is kind of its own thing. And I don't really
mean that as a compliment. But yeah, I guess I
hadn't seen it all the way through. And I have
to say, I'm not a John Hughes fan in general.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, me either.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
He just does not connect for me. And so there's
so many interesting things to talk about in this movie itself.
I thought it was quite boring. And it made me
do something that I didn't know was possible, which was
want Bill Paxton to get off my screen. I've never
had that feeling before or since. But I think Bill Paxton...

(19:20):
bless his heart, is giving one of the most annoying
performances I've ever seen. And I love Bill Paxton so much.
I can't believe I can't believe that they they did
him like this.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
No, I agree. And he's pretty well known for giving
like a quite outlandish character performance.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
And he's usually like loud and kooky. I mean, I'm
thinking of his character from Aliens and stuff like that.
But like this is just like what in the hell
is going on?

Speaker 2 (19:52):
This is a mess. He looks bad, which also is
basically impossible to do to Bill Paxton.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
Terrible haircut.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yikes.

Speaker 5 (19:59):
He's supposed to be like a teenager.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
Older brother, but he.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
He's visibly 33.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
Yeah, he's like visibly balding. He has a receding hairline.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
It's true. I can't believe they did My Dear Friend
Bill Paxton like that. But yeah, he is obviously 30.
And that, I don't know. I struggle with like Gen
X cinema in general. I think I kind of struggle with.
But when I say that, sometimes I think I'm just
talking about John Hughes movies because he is sort of

(20:28):
like the name. And this to me is like the
worst of John Hughes where it's like, aggressively misogynist there's
not really much of a story it's very episodic and
all most of the episode most of the episodic pieces
have some sort of like very poorly aged either element
of racism or sexism.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Homophobia and it's boring it's a terrible screenplay boring and
that's the biggest crime of all i.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
Read online that he john hughes wrote this movie even
though he's known for writing quickly he wrote this very
quickly he wrote this screenplay in less than two days,
and I was like, yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
That checks out. That checks out. No trouble believing that.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Men need to stop bragging about how fast they write,
because it's like.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
We can tell.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Maybe we should have done a second pass, man. Like,
what do you mean? But yeah, anyways, this movie, I just...
I guess the nice thing I will say is there
were more interesting elements and, like, potential for it than
I thought.

Speaker 4 (21:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
I was surprised that Lisa... has so much power and
agency in theory i didn't think she would have basically
magical powers she's a wizard question she's kind of a
wizard she can freeze your grandparents in time i guess
i just wanted more of that but it's.

Speaker 5 (21:49):
Almost like she's a genie like it's almost getting into
like aladdin a little bit yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
So i was just i was surprised that even though
i like as we'll get into it like she doesn't
really get to do very much for herself we don't
know her she's basically a genie wizard and I like
that idea. Right. Yeah. Caitlin, what's your history with this movie?

Speaker 3 (22:09):
I saw it for the first time, I think like
six or seven years ago. It was after we started
the podcast, but not super recently. Like it was long
enough ago that most of the details were pretty foggy.
And I'm also wondering if I even finished it because
nothing about the back half of the movie was familiar

(22:29):
at all. I was like, what is this Bill Paxton
blob monster? What is this Mad Max motorcycle gang that
shows up? Like, I didn't remember any of that. So
I'm wondering if I just like started it, got like
40 minutes in and was like, well, this fucking is terrible.
I hate it.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Well, no one's paying me to do this.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
And then I just turned it off. But yeah, I
have no nostalgia for most John Hughes movies aside from
There are a select few. I like trains, planes, and automobiles.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I kind of like Uncle Buck. I've never watched it critically,
but I remember being like, I just like John Candy, maybe.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Sure, yeah. I mean, John Hughes has stuff that I like.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Especially things that he has written but not directed. You know,
Home Alone and Beethoven. Never forget. I forgot he wrote Beethoven.
Never forget he wrote the screenplay for Flubber.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Oh!

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Oh, there's his hit. There's his hit.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
Flubber Slaps is a good movie. I'll stand by that one. Wow.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
That totally actually, whoa. Do you remember how we got
really into, even though unfortunately a lot of negative stuff
has come up about him, how Danny Elfman wrote The
Flubber Mambo?

Speaker 3 (23:43):
I'll never forget.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Who could forget?

Speaker 2 (23:44):
And that their working relationship goes back to this movie
because Oingo Boingo wrote the theme to Weird Science. Right.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Right. Wow.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yes. Wow. So, you know, her web connects them all.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
So we wouldn't have the Flubber Mamba without this movie,
I guess. We sure wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
But yeah, I really struggled with this one. I am
sorry to fans of this movie, but.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
I don't think fans of this movie are really... I
don't know. Truly, listeners, reach out directly. Send us an
email if this is one of your favorite. Because it's just...
Is this anyone's favorite? Like one of... someone's favorite movies still.

Speaker 5 (24:20):
I will say i enjoyed it more than i expected
to enjoy it and i think there's i i went
back to see like what were the reviews of this
movie like and i think it was the roger ebert
review that i kind of agreed with that there's a
misdirect that i think is interesting where in the first
10 minutes of the movie you think oh they're gonna
make this robot sex slave who just does whatever they

(24:43):
say and that's gonna be their girlfriend they're gonna like
have sex with her and date her and.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
I think that that would be a much worse version
of the movie and that's.

Speaker 5 (24:51):
What I was expecting so I'm not saying it's a
good movie but I think they did make a they
zigged where I thought they were.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
Gonna zag which I will I will I will appreciate.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
That fair they did make her into that's I think
the most interesting choice in the movie and the biggest
missed opportunity is turning her into a wizard.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
Right.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Well, we'll talk more about it. But first, let's take
a quick break.

Speaker 4 (25:18):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Okay, so here's the recap for Weird Science 1985. We
meet two teen boys, Gary, played by Anthony Michael Hall,
and Wyatt, played by Elon Mitchell Smith. Two stars with
three names each.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Child star proxies, child star serial killers.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
And Gary and Wyatt are uncool and unpopular. They're in
gym class, ogling at all of the girls doing gymnastics.
They're fantasizing about showering with them. They're fantasizing about throwing
a huge party where everyone is invited and all of
their classmates come and they think they're so cool. And

(26:13):
they particularly have their eyes on two popular girls. named
deb and hilly though we will not know their names
for about 45.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Minutes no and don't don't let yourself be gaslit by
this movie they really make it seem like you should
have noticed earlier.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah totally so so these guys are looking at these
two girls but then the two like popular jock boyfriends
of these girls come up behind gary and wyatt This
is Max and Ian. Ian played by a young Robert
Downey Jr.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
He was just going by Robert Downey then.

Speaker 5 (26:47):
When I saw it in the cast, I thought, is
that the same Robert Downey as Robert Downey Jr.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
And it was.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah. I forget. He's Robert Downey with his original teeth.
He's so cute.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Prevenier's teeth.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Well, I do feel like Marvel stars, it's a similar
pipeline to Jerry Bruckheimer stars of the 90s and SNL
stars to this day. At some point, The boss makes
a call and you just get a new set of teeth.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Feige said, we're re-upping his contract. Change his mouth. Make
his mouth the right shape now.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:19):
Give us those chompers.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
A lot of teeth shaving in the industry.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Those same length chompers. This has been my beat for
many years. But yeah, it's nice to see someone's original
set featured.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Indeed.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
So these two popular boys come up behind Gary and Wyatt.
and pants them in front of everyone. So Gary and
Wyatt are humiliated. We cut to Gary is staying over
at Wyatt's for the weekend while his parents are out
of town and they're watching a Frankenstein movie. I don't

(27:54):
know which one. And mind you, this is about 30
years before I Frankenstein would come out. So I'm sure
otherwise they would have been watching that one.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
They would have been. Absolutely. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
But them watching Frankenstein gives Gary an idea. What if
they use Wyatt's computer and programming skills that, by the way,
have not been previously set up, which is bad screenwriting.
What if they use these things to create a woman,
to simulate a girl on the computer for them to

(28:30):
talk to and do sex things with?

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. I also, I mean, I feel like the reason
we don't learn why he's good at programming is because
John Hughes wrote this in two days and he doesn't
appear to know how that works because much like a
movie we're covering later in this week that is Much better.
2001 A Space Odyssey. Classic. This is, I will say,
one of the strengths of this movie is when it

(28:56):
randomly like very much loses the plot and it's like
hacking sequence. And it's just like kind of vintage screensavers.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
It's like, okay, so we're really not going to give
him a third day to write this? Fine.

Speaker 5 (29:13):
Nope. I do have a question of this whole time,
somebody that he knew, had the ability to conjure up
humanoids out of whole cloth using their computer.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
And he just sort of knew that he had this
ability the whole time.

Speaker 5 (29:29):
And it wasn't until watching Frankenstein that he was like,
oh yeah, we should make a babe.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
A shrug.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's very like
first draft logic that they're going on.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
I mean, I guess you could argue that they don't
know that they have that ability and it's not until
they do all of these like experiments slash like a
ritualistic seance with a barbie doll.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
And a bra bras on.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Their head right it's baffling it also reminded me did
caitlin i know you didn't grow up with dcoms but
bridget have you seen the movie pixel perfect it's the
disney movie It's a Disney Channel movie from the 2000s.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
I have seen it. That was the other. I was like,
what is another example of like a very, because obviously
there's a lot of like women's cyborg movies, but I'm
like a teen boy, like just goofing around and blah, blah, blah.
And Pixel Perfect feels like the closest thing. But I
think he created a pop star to help his friend.
He created like a cyborg pop star.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
So it wasn't just as this movie will lead you
to believe because they're horny. they're horny and bored right.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
Yeah and another disney channel classic smart house where i
don't know if y'all have seen that but yes the
the kid wins a house that comes with like a
essentially an ai mom who is running their smart house
and yeah it's like it's like he has lost his
mother so it's almost like a grieve like it's interesting
that that movies so often it's oh, I'm creating a woman,

(31:09):
a tech woman to help with some sort of issue.
Help my friend, help me grieve. But this one is like,
we're horny. That's the reason why.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
We're making a baby.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Help me jerk off. Help me squeeze one out.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
We really go down to the basis level. And as
we'll talk about, she takes on, of course, also this
maternal quality towards them that... Confuses everything. And anyways, let's
just keep going.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Okay, so Gary and Wyatt design her appearance and her
intelligence level. We will talk about this sequence in a
lot more detail. But they're designing her. They're hacking into
the mainframe. They hook up a Barbie to the computer somehow.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Are her boobs big? Are her boobs small? No, they're big.
Is she a fifth grader?

Speaker 4 (32:05):
No, she's a genius.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Um, I, I do appreciate it. It doesn't really follow
through in Gary's character at all, but he's like, no,
she has to be a genius. We have to hack
the government or something. And you're like, why does he
think that? Like, cause it doesn't really, he doesn't seem
to appreciate intelligence and women outside of this one scene.
But I think maybe he's like, Oh, this is my side.

(32:28):
Like more thinking like I need a super smart cyborg
versus smart women are more interesting to be around.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah, that's the impression I got.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
Same.

Speaker 5 (32:37):
He does mention that if they make her smart, they
can play chess with her. Yes.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Which I would have liked to see. I would have
liked to see it.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
There's a lot of Chekhov's robot specifications where they give
her Beethoven's hands and there's a piano in the house.
And I kind of was like, where's the scene where
she plays piano good or plays chess good?

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Nothing pays off.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
No.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
She doesn't do... Einstein, well.
You know, I hear a pretty smart guy that was
not a wizard who could freeze grandparents. Who could just
conjure cars out of nowhere and change your outfit with
the snap of a finger. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, I don't know. Well, that's the weird science of
it all, I guess. And speaking of weird science, they
do that like. thing with the bras on their head.
And this like turns the sky red. There's lightning striking.
All of the electronics in the house are going haywire,
which I will say there are some cool effects in

(33:37):
that sequence.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Cool practical effects.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
Dog walking on the ceiling.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Kind of cool.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Pretty cool. And then the next thing they know, the
Barbie doll has transformed into a quote unquote real woman.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
And she is played by Kelly LeBrock, who I wasn't
super familiar with. And I kept thinking she was Elizabeth Hurley,
but she is in fact not.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
No, she has been in a few things, but I
think she was primarily... She popularized the phrase. Wait, I
wrote this down because I thought it was interesting. She
was the spokesmodel who said the line, don't hate me
because I'm beautiful. That was her. So cultural impact felt.

Speaker 5 (34:27):
I looked her up after watching the movie because I thought,
you know, it seemed like she was poised to have
a big career. And all the reviews I read of
Weird Science, they all praised her for Her in this movie.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (34:39):
I will say, I looked her up on Instagram, posted
some pretty intense stuff around the COVID times. I will
say that about her. Her current digital footprint. I was like, okay,
that's what's going on.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yikes.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Wait. A woman in her 60s having some questionable ideas
around technology. Oh, well, that's unfortunate. Yeah, I think this
is the only thing I've seen her in. And I
do agree. She gives, I think, an interesting performance for
a character that could not be more all over the place.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Oh my, so all over the place. I also wonder
if the reason she reminds me of Elizabeth Hurley is
that I feel like her character is quite similar to
Elizabeth Hurley's character in bedazzled is that.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
The name of that movie yeah brendan frasier.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
I was thinking the same thing okay well she's playing
the devil though jesus i'm like what is going on
with lisa is she a wizard does she like is
she where is she from right well they both have
magical powers that allow them to manipulate different things in
their environment so that's true i'm like basically same character.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Well, it's so silly, yeah, because this movie and others
suggest that the most... Because this movie conflates magic and
science so thoroughly, I feel like the movie would sort
of lead you to believe that the most powerful source
of energy in the world is a horny teenage boy,
which I really hope is not the case. That would

(36:11):
be very upsetting. Mm-hmm. As we know, the greatest source
of energy available in the world is children's screams. There's
a documentary about it.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
Oh, a documentary called Monsters Incorporated.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yes. Yes. Yes, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Anyway, so Gary and Wyatt have created this woman and
they will eventually think to give her a name and
that name will be Lisa, but it takes a while.
She asks them what the boys would like to do first,
which is showering with her. while she is fully naked

(36:45):
and the boys still have on their pants and shoes.
Then Lisa takes them out for a night on the town.
She changes their outfits. She has a pink convertible now
and takes them to a place called the candy bar
where the boys feel very out of place. But eventually

(37:07):
Gary gets super drunk. And what follows is.
Another scene we'll talk about, but.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
It's absurd how long this racist pit continues. It continues
like three scenes after.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (37:24):
Like when they leave the club and they're like driving
back and they're transitioning into the next scene and you're thinking,
surely this is, we're abandoning this little bit. It's still
going on.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
It's still going on when he goes home. Like, He
has to be fully unconscious before we can be freed
of this horrendous bit. I don't know. I know that
both of the guys are, I don't know, Anthony Michael Hall,
he's a teenager in this. Tell him to knock that
shit off. But it seems like John Hughes perhaps wanted it.

Speaker 5 (37:55):
Yeah, Anthony Michael Hall is going for it. I feel
like someone was like, really? Give it your all with this.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
Because he's really going for it.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
He's really going for it.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yeah. And if you're not familiar with the movie slash
don't remember, here's what we're talking about. Gary is talking
to a group of mostly older black men and he's
putting on a black scent and telling them a story
about a girl that he had a crush on last year.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
And then you're like, surely this isn't going to get worse.
And then it immediately does.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
It keeps getting worse.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Lisa says a slur. Lisa says a homophobic slur. And
moments later, you're just like, ah, get me out of here.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
Yeah. Everything about this scene is horrendous. Then they head
back to Wyatt's house where Wyatt's older brother, Chet, played
by Bill Paxton of Titanic Brock Lovett fame has arrived
home from military school. And as we were alluding to earlier,
Chet is this like very unstable aggro dude with a

(39:00):
terrible haircut. He torments Wyatt and Gary. He's like blackmailing
and extorting them for money. Gary drunkenly tells Chet about
a woman they made. But he doesn't believe them. You
also keep thinking that something's going to happen with like
Chet finding out about Lisa and that's going to have
consequences and bearing on the plot of this story. But

(39:23):
kind of never because Chet just disappears for a while.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
This movie leaves you with such narrative blue ball. where
every time they seem to stumble upon potential stakes for
a scene, they will just get rid of them as
quickly as possible. I think the sequence that made me
most frustrated was like, It takes them an hour, but
they're like, oh, someone's going to come to the house
during the party. It's the grandparents. Steaks, steaks, steaks. And

(39:50):
then the second they get there, you're like, oh, actually,
Lisa's a wizard, so there's no problem. I was like,
this was the first problem we've seen presented.

Speaker 5 (39:59):
Yeah, and it's like, the build-ups, the grandparent scene is
a great example because they build it up so much
where they show you, the grandparents don't just happen to
stop by. The movie takes you to the grandparents having
dinner and being like, you know what we should do
after dinner is go pay a visit to our grandson
because grandkids love when their grandparents visit.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
They really spend a lot.

Speaker 5 (40:22):
Of time building up these things I don't even think
we see the grandparents get unfrozen.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
After they're frozen.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
We don't know if Lisa shows them mercy in the end,
I guess. I know we're getting a little ahead of ourselves,
but I think that even though the grandparents are a
very stereotypical presentation of older people, their camp, to me,
those performances were so... funny it seemed like those actors

(40:52):
were having a fun time being like my grandson what
do you mean like this is my daughter's house right
the way john hughes writes parents i'm like you know
your parent age right um but.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Whatever yeah didn't he do something similar with the grandparent
characters in 16 candles i want to say.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Oh i don't let myself think about 16 candles so i'm.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Not sure understandable Okay, so then we cut to a
random scene where Lisa approaches Wyatt. She is standing directly
behind him. He does not notice for a while. He's like, Lisa,
where are you? And then she's like, I'm right here.
Hey stud, I'm right here. Let's kiss. And then we

(41:41):
see an adult woman who was 24 in real life
kissing a teen boy who was 15 in real life.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Which is something that john hughes does all the time
like it's like yeah it's like you couldn't be less
surprised to see it unfortunately like this is his it
happens in i would say most of his movies what's
going on there I mean, we'll refer back to it
because we talked about it in our, probably our 16
Candles episode and definitely our Pretty in Pink episode, but

(42:12):
that Molly Ringwald has written pretty extensively about just like
how she feels about the experience of working on John
Hughes movies, how she feels they've all aged rather poorly.
She feels weird showing them to her own children. I
don't think we covered Pretty in Pink. Did we? I don't.

Speaker 5 (42:31):
I'm.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Who can say? No answer would surprise me. But yeah,
that like this is this is very much. And it's
like John Hughes. It's easy to like single him out
as like the culprit. But it's just like the culture
of the time was so permissive of this. I mean,
you think of like any of the raunchy comedies of
the 80s, 90s into the 2000s. I mean, even there's

(42:53):
like a running bit about that in Booksmart, which is
like a five or six year old movie about, I
think it's like a teacher played by maybe Jessica Williams,
like a cool older teacher who comes to the kids party.
And like, this is a trope that like, you know,
adults hitting on children exists in raunchy comedies to this day.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
And being played as either funny and hilarious and a
joke or... Romantic and sexy.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
It's not tricky. Like, nothing in this movie is particularly
tricky or subtle. But, like, I think because of... In story,
it's tricky because the question of, like, well, who is Lisa? Like,
what is Lisa? Is kind of confusing. Is she... Because
she's not... a person that she's a, she's a wizard. Like,

(43:43):
I don't know. I agree with you that the optics
of an adult woman kissing a teenage boy is gross,
regardless of the Turing test of it all. But like
in story, it's also very bizarre and off-putting, I thought.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
Definitely. And we'll talk more about that later as well.
But they're kissing. It's framed as romantic. And then Off screen,
they apparently try to have sex, but we'll learn that
Wyatt passed out like 10 seconds into it. So they
don't keep going with that.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Another John Hughes classic is suggesting things. Yes. Another John
Hughes classic is the sexual assault, usually of a minor.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Yes, while they are unconscious. Yeah. We cut to the
next morning. Wyatt and Gary wake up and they think
that maybe this whole thing with Lisa was a dream.
The theme music from The Exorcist is playing for some reason.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
That was weird. And also never explained, really.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
I was not understanding.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
I'm glad that you both said that because I was like,
I've seen The Exorcist many times and I'm not understanding
the reference here.

Speaker 3 (44:54):
Because it makes no sense.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Okay. But then Wyatt gets out of bed and he's
wearing Lisa's underwear. And Lisa is downstairs wearing making the
boys breakfast because in addition to fulfilling their sexual fantasies,
she's also doing domestic labor for them.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
She's also their mommy, of course. Yes, of course. She's
also their mommy and sexual tutor. Nothing weird about that.
No strange precedents set there. Nope.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
And then Chet comes in and bullies Wyatt some more.
This happens every few scenes. And Chet freaks out about
the panties that Wyatt is wearing.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
There's a whole transphobic runner there.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
You do get Bill Paxton showing his butt cheeks.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
This is true.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
It's cold comfort. It's cold comfort. But yeah, there is
like that transphobic runner that I also like, this is
not the point of it, but I also was like,
it took me a second to figure out what was
going on because I They're very, I thought, gender neutral underwear.

Speaker 4 (45:59):
Yeah. They're just briefs.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (46:01):
But his brother is like, those are women's underpants.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
There's no amount of money you could ever pay me
to not make a huge deal about this.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
And you're like, I honestly wasn't. I didn't realize that
at first because they seem kind of like anyone could
wear them. Which is not even the point because there's
also I think a very how did this make the
final cut of the movie? Why are we still watching it?
Like close up of an underage boy's crotch leading into

(46:31):
that scene too which you're also like that's just fucking disgusting.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
Okay so then we cut to Wyatt and Gary at
the mall buying perfume for Lisa but their bullies Max
and Ian are there and they dump slushies onto the boys' heads.
And then the bully's girlfriends, Deb and Hilly, whose names
we still don't know, contemplate dumping their boyfriends for being jerks,

(47:02):
but they decide against it because dumping them would hurt
the girls' social status. Then Max and Ian see Lisa
at the mall, and they're like hubba hubba awooga cartoonish
like they're chasing after her they're.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
Going up the down escalator to get.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
To her it's very hijinks yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:26):
And then they watch her get into an expensive sports
car i don't know if this is the porsche or
whatever but gary is driving it and she gets in
and she's like hey babe and so max and ian
are like what the hell how does this fucking nerd
get this girl, blah, blah, blah. And then Lisa invites

(47:50):
Max and Ian to a party at Wyatt's house that
night because she's trying to help the boys seem cool
and to get more popular. That is her mission objective
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Which we never see fully outlined. Again, it's kind of like,
and after a while you sort of like say, okay,
I guess that it is Lisa's programmed like because it's
so unclear what they're making her for and it just
seems for strictly perverted reasons but her understanding of what
her purpose is her function is is to make the

(48:27):
boys cool not to listen to them and that becomes
like a back and forth throughout the middle chunk of
the movie and like everything with this movie it goes
nowhere but it's another interesting question that has kind of
dropped where there's a series of scenes where Where Lisa
has quite a bit of agency. She's not listening to them.

(48:48):
She's not being servile. she's acting to what I guess
her mission is, which is to make them cool, whether
they like it or not. And like doing whatever she
knows how to do, which is like includes, but it's
not limited to being a wizard to make this happen
for them. And there's like a few scenes where the
boys are like, this doesn't make any sense. We made her,

(49:10):
she's ours. Why isn't she listening to us? Which is
an interesting thing to explore if you were capable as
a writer of doing so.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
Right.

Speaker 5 (49:19):
This, reminded me, I mean, not that I think that
John Hughes was thinking about this back in 1980, whatever,
when this movie was written, but this bit of it
actually quite reminded me of what it actually feels like
to use technology like AI, where, you know, you're told
that you're sold this promise that it's going to make,
it's going to listen to you and make everything.

Speaker 4 (49:40):
Easier and better. And then in the end, you're like, why?
It's not listening.

Speaker 5 (49:43):
It's not doing, I asked it to do X and
now it's doing Y. That I actually thought that they
actually captured the experience of using AI actually quite well.
It doesn't actually do what it is you're expecting it
to do or want it to do even.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
I mean, it's like, that's an interesting, and I feel
like that sets up, I don't know. I mean, like,
I don't know where I wanted this story to land
because I am so like it's so all over the place.
But like that stands to introduce some like interesting stakes
and consequences for the boys. Like, will they regret having
done so if all of a sudden not a person,

(50:20):
a being that, or not even a being. What do I, Bridget,
what do I call her? What do we call her?
What is Lisa?

Speaker 4 (50:28):
It?

Speaker 3 (50:28):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
That sounds dehumanizing, but she's not a human. So, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
So like they're like, okay, we made this thing and
I'm not making women objects, but Lisa's not a person.
Like we made this thing and it's more powerful than
we realize. And it's now outside of our control. What
are we going to do? This movie seems like so
unwilling to really think about that question crucially and like

(50:54):
and i am not a fan of the movie her
at all i think it has done kind of quite
a bit of net harm intended or not but at
least that movie is willing to explore like you know
an ai is sort of designed to move past you
but that is not you know i'm sure it has
to do with just like the technology was not nowhere

(51:15):
near where it was even when her existed but like
but lisa we have no insight into where lisa will
go from here once her mission is accomplished it seems
like she gets a part-time job as a gym teacher
at the end like i don't know if there is
like an opportunity that has since been explored it's not

(51:37):
like this is net this thread has been totally dropped
but like what is lisa What does Lisa do when
this task is like, why would Lisa have any loyalty
to these boys if she has we know she has
the intelligence due to the whatever scans of Beethoven she has?

Speaker 3 (51:58):
To advance past them pretty easily. Albert Einstein's face equals
genius level intelligence.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Thought is where it's.

Speaker 4 (52:05):
Just his face.

Speaker 5 (52:06):
I do think there's a better, even for the kind
of movie that it is, there's a better version of
that movie hiding in this movie.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
Maybe if it wasn't written in 48 hours, we would
see it.

Speaker 5 (52:16):
But that question that you just posed is the thing
that I was left with, which is the boys start
out by saying, we want to get laid, we want
a babe, this and that.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
I understand that.

Speaker 5 (52:27):
What is happening with Lisa that she interprets that the
way that she does? And it's like, oh, they hardly
ever have much sexual connection with her. They kiss and
they shower. But it's not like Lisa becomes their girlfriend.
So my question is, what is going on with Lisa
that Lisa interprets that is, I need to make them confident.

(52:49):
I need to set up all these... Situations where they
can feel confident and powerful and like, you know, talk
sternly to motorcycle mutants and stuff. That's the question that
I have. And then again, at the end, I know
we're going to get there, but so it's just her
directive to just be around teenage boys forever, like shepherding

(53:11):
them into... more confident adolescents or what?

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Right.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
And why?

Speaker 3 (53:17):
I mean, I wonder, I wonder if the movie is implying,
and I don't necessarily think this is true, but maybe
it's saying that she's imbued with so much intelligence that
she very quickly realizes that these boys having some sort
of like romantic or sexual relationship with her is unsustainable

(53:40):
and not good for them. So she's like, okay, how
can I turn this around and help them get girlfriends
and be in relationships that are sustainable? Again, I don't
think the movie is necessarily... Smart enough to be suggesting
that that's what's happening, but maybe. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
If I'm underthinking it or overthinking it, if that makes
sense with this movie.

Speaker 4 (54:07):
Maybe it's both.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
Because nothing's clear enough in the movie.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yeah, I mean, it is interesting. I don't know. There's
a lot of interesting questions that are posed, especially in
the framing of... Now, I mean, I know we're about
to get into a sequence that is really just like
bigoted hijink after bigoted hijink. Like we're entering that phase
of the movie at this point. But I was, I mean,
I'm just going to say it before it like leaves

(54:31):
my brain. But the way this movie ends, which we'll
talk about in more detail, but sort of leaves Lisa
in kind of, it seems like they don't know what
to do with her after she's outlived her use to
the boys. She's just kind of put somewhere as a
visual gag more than anything else. And I think about AI...
if Lisa is a fem bot, I don't really know
how to classify her. But like, when I think about

(54:53):
how AI movies that have feminine presences coded now, they
so often end on like a good for her note.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah. Ex machina companion.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
Her, I would argue as well.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Her, yes. And that these stories are crucially all written
by men. And I feel like that gets so messy,
including in the way that I'm sure that Caitlin, like
you and I have talked about it in the past,
because it's hard not to be like good for her,
but then you're rooting for an AI. And I just
find it interesting that all these stories are written by men,
I guess they're I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (55:27):
See, I find the ending of this movie the opposite
of good for her because.

Speaker 4 (55:33):
Yes, for sure.

Speaker 5 (55:33):
You know, at the end of the movie, her, Samantha
and the other AIs, I guess they find enlightenment and they.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
They fuck off to some other plane of existence.

Speaker 5 (55:43):
Yeah, they evolve to a new plane that humans can't
get to or whatever.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:47):
Companion, we're left feeling like, okay, she's on the road.
Ex Machina, all of these kind of good-for-her endings. Lisa,
it seems to be trapped in perpetual servitude to teenage boys.
It's very much the opposite of good for her, bad
for her in my book.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I just think it's interesting
that that's how the ending to this story has evolved
over time because it seems, I'm sure that there's other
I haven't seen all AI. I'm sure you've seen more
than we have, Bridget. But it's like the big ones
from the last 10 years sort of seem to have

(56:24):
this repeating beat that... Definitely. wants you to root for
an AI sort of under the guise of feminism. It's
also impossible not... I can't not root for Sophie Thatcher
at the end of Companion. Are you kidding me? But
what are the implications? I just... I would be so
curious to see anyone but a cis man try, like

(56:48):
take that premise and find a new ending for it.

Speaker 3 (56:52):
For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (56:53):
And I never really put together until you said that,
that oftentimes the bots are feminized. The bots usually have
to go up against some sort of masculine threat or
masculine power structure. And a lot of the movies do
have this sort of like rah-rah sisterhood feminism kind of undercurrent.

(57:16):
What are they saying about women? You know what I mean?
I've never really thought about this before, but what are
they saying about women? That feminism is being sold through
these ladybots that aren't real.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
Right, because these movies, if there are human women characters
in them, they're like secondary or tertiary characters. They're not
the focus.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
And they're often presented as direct foils to the fembot
who we're rooting for. I'm thinking of the... I don't
remember the character's name. I'm going to pull up Scarlet
Journal Wikipedia, but the secondary... character in companion is presented
as a direct foil to our hero fembot okay character
named cat.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
Or the olivia wild character in her Who is like, sure.

Speaker 4 (58:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the ex-wife character in her.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Every other woman in her.

Speaker 5 (58:04):
The human women in her are like, who would want
to deal with this irrationality?

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Am I right?

Speaker 4 (58:10):
Bitches be crazy. Look at this human woman, all her
hang up.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
All divorcing.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
You know how human women be divorcing?

Speaker 2 (58:21):
And then also at the end, I mean, ultimately her
is about a man who can't not get divorced because
even Samantha divorces him. And what does that say about you?
What does that say about you if your AI divorces you?
But yeah, I'm like, maybe this is a totally different
podcast because you're totally right, Bridget. Lisa's ending is very

(58:42):
kind of ghoulish in a very different way. But that
in those stories around AI, women coded characters from the
last 10 to 15 years, we're not generally given a
human woman to root for. It's really just the AI
that we're rooting for. And how does that shape our view?

(59:03):
And how does that shape the public view of AI?
I'm sure quite a bit bleak.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
Very bleak.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
In any case here's what happens in the rest of
weird science so it's been vaguely established that Lisa's goal
is or objective or whatever is to try to get
these boys to seem cool and to get more popular.
So she throws a party more or less. Lisa goes

(59:34):
to Gary's house to pick him up for the party
and has a conversation with his parents who were like, Um,
who is this adult woman you're hanging out.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
With, Gary? This scene goes off the rails.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
This scene is absolutely nuts. They try to forbid Gary
from going to the party. An argument breaks out and
then Lisa pulls a gun on Gary's father. It's later
revealed that this is just a squirt gun, but no
one knows that because it looks like a real pistol.
And then also apparently Lisa erases Gary's parents' memory of

(01:00:11):
this interaction and But now Gary's dad doesn't remember his
son at all. So she also has like mind erasing powers.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I kind of love that Lisa can do these things,
but it's just deployed completely at random.

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
I mean, I think the performance in that scene is good. Also,
the way that John Hughes writes parents in his like
broad comedy specifically, he does have that. That's what's so
frustrating about him is like we know he can't write
a more nuanced parent. So when he doesn't, he's choosing
not to. Yeah, whatever. The way that the mom reacts
when she finds out her 17-year-old son has jerked off

(01:00:51):
before pissed me right off. Where she's like, you what?
I was like, look, if you know the parents of
a teenage boy, they're aware. They're aware. If you've had
a brother, you're aware.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
I know.

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
I fully did not understand this scene.

Speaker 5 (01:01:07):
I had to rewind it because I was like, did
I miss something here? I fully did not understand what
was going on with this part.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Of the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
No, it's just, yeah, character, parent characters being written as
caricatures and it's baffling. But anyway, Gary is now able
to go to the party. So we cut back to
Wyatt's house. People show up for the party. It seems
like hundreds of their classmates are there, including... the bullies,

(01:01:37):
Max and Ian, as well as their girlfriends, Deb and Hilly.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Which is, I think, here is where we learn what
their names are.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Yeah, there's a scene where Wyatt and Gary are in
the bathroom, kind of hiding, because they're like, we don't
know how to be at a party. And then the
two girls come in, and then Wyatt and Gary have
a little sidebar where they're like, Lisa's great and everything,

(01:02:04):
but these girls... Are awesome. And we want them to
be our girlfriends.

Speaker 5 (01:02:10):
Are they?

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Because I guess I was confused. Do they know each
other and the girls just forget? Or do they genuinely
all not know each other? Because to speak to the
writing of this movie, the boys are still introducing themselves
at the end of the movie to them. So I'm like,
don't they go to school together? I'm confused.

Speaker 5 (01:02:30):
Aren't these the girls they watch at the beginning of
the movie in gymnastics class?

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
So it seems like the boys know the girls, but
the girls don't know the boys. Like these boys are
too loserish, quote unquote, and nerdy or whatever. For them
to be on the girls' radar.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
But they also saw an IC get dumped on them, like, yesterday. Right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Obviously, like, these characters are not written out or thought about. They're, like, random. They're, like,
sentient trophies that wander the plot. But, like, yeah, because
it keeps happening, I was like, no, you guys go
to school together. How big is this school? Anyways.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
There was a scene with the girls in the bathroom
that I– wanted to ask about because I genuinely don't
feel like I understood what I watched where the girls
are like, they come into the bathroom, the boys go
into the shower and there they make, they make, there's
like a kind of a cute scene where they make
the game plan of like, we're going to talk to
these girls, but we still like Lisa. And then they
look out of the shower and it's two completely different girls.

Speaker 4 (01:03:31):
Oh yes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Here's my read of that scene.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
I think it's implied that the boys have just been
in there so long, like in the shower deliberating and,
that the other girls have left and two new people
have come in. And, and the joke is that these
girls are gross and ugly simply because they're fat. And
so it's just like casual fat phobia.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Right. And they're also, and, and they're like wearing different,
like they're people who don't exist. Like they're a car,
a cartoonish, there's more caricatures.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Of like, quote unquote, women were not attracted to, which
is like, Again, a John Hughes staple indeed.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:04:12):
Fat phobic, also hacky, very hacky joke and like a
little muddled.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
It's not even clear.

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
Confusing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
Especially because Lisa is a wizard and she is able
to change anything.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:04:27):
So I thought there was Lisa. When I first saw
that scene, I was like, oh, maybe Lisa turned them into, quote,
like the ugly girls because she wants to keep them
from connecting with these. When there's a wizard in the plot,
John Hughes, you got to be aware that stuff's going
to happen. And the audience is like, oh, this is
like wizard shit. And it's like, no, no, it's just

(01:04:47):
a confusing half-baked joke that doesn't really make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
For sure.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Yeah, it's more bad writing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
It's confusing, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
Anyway, so the boys are now interested in these girls,
Deb and Hilly. Meanwhile, Lisa is talking to Max and Ian,
the bullies, telling them that she belongs to Gary and
Wyatt and she does whatever they say. So Ian and
Max go to Gary and Wyatt and ask them if

(01:05:16):
they can borrow Lisa... And if they agree to that,
they will let Wyatt and Gary have their girlfriends, Deb
and Hilly, talking about these two girls as if they
are objects that can just be traded around.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
This is so wild. Like, yeah, we're truly like movie.
You don't need to even be like, they're acting as
if women are like, they're just saying they're just doing
women are property and whatever. This movie is never like,
because of the time it comes out, this movie can't
have the conversation of like, lisa is not a real
person but like so if we're to view lisa as

(01:05:53):
a woman which this movie does women are property and
let's trade these and consent is whatever um we do
get one interest again one of the like interesting like
huh what's that that goes away is because there's so
much in this like jocks versus nerds dynamic that John

(01:06:15):
Hughes also loves that is really entrenched in masculinity. And
women are always pawns in this exchange of like, you know,
you have to beat down on somebody you view as
less weak to prove your masculinity. And if you're how

(01:06:35):
women view each other. And we get one exchange that
if we're viewing Lisa as a woman, or I mean,
these characters are perceiving Lisa as a woman, that they're
like talking about how they're both kind of threatened by her,
but they're also fascinated by her. And she's so glamorous
and she's so cool. And like, oh my God, whoa,
how can we compare to her?

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Her British accent.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
Her burps are charming even. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
And you're like, okay, it's very of its time, but
it's like, to be like, oh, that's unfortunately kind of
the most personality you see out of these two characters
is how they're kind of enchanted by this older woman.
But it doesn't go anywhere. So, nope.

Speaker 5 (01:07:14):
Yeah, that's the seed of the more interesting movie that
I think is in there somewhere. If John Hughes had
just given it another 24 hours, that might have come out.

Speaker 4 (01:07:25):
But yeah, the way.

Speaker 5 (01:07:26):
That these characters young girls see lisa they're like oh
she doesn't have a zit on her body like oh
my god they're threatened by her but also enchanted that
would be an interesting plot point of how does how
do the young women in this community and in this
school react to lisa not just the horny boys.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Yeah yes but that is unfortunately not.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
What the movie's about god damn it So the bullies
pitch this idea of like, if you let us have Lisa,
we'll let you guys have our girlfriends. But Gary and
Wyatt have a better idea. They're just going to make
a whole new woman for Max and Ian. So they

(01:08:09):
design another woman on the computer and they do the
same thing. ritual thing with the bras on their heads.
And all the weird science stuff happens again with the
sky turning red and a bunch of furniture goes flying
out of the house. The whole kitchen turns blue for
some reason. And they create something. But oh no, the

(01:08:33):
boys forgot to hook up a Barbie doll. And instead
the wires were laying on like a time magazine or
something with a nuclear warhead on the cover so they
accidentally create a giant missile that crashes through the middle
of the house and if you're wondering does this pay
off in any way are there any consequences here nope

(01:08:57):
none whatsoever yes.

Speaker 5 (01:09:00):
Again it's like a long sequence where the bully guys
are like we want her to have these kinds of
boobs and this and that and the sequence when the
weird science bit happens and the sky turns colors is
so long the furniture goes out the chimney and there's
There's a woman who is stripped.

Speaker 4 (01:09:17):
Naked and thrown into a lake for some reason.

Speaker 5 (01:09:20):
It's such an extended scene for this to just result
in a missile that later just disappears.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Has no payoff at all.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
No, none.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
And it's so expensive because you're like, it's practical. You
know it's practical. You're like, this is such an expensive
thing to not think all the way through. And throwing
a woman off the top of a building was... you know,
that was something. Well, thank you. No, I mean, Bridget,
going back to something you said a while back, that

(01:09:49):
was where I was like, cause she's a unnamed character
who is plot stripped by the wizarding strength of horny
men and then tossed off a building. We have no
idea who this character is. Not that I wanted this
to happen to Lisa, but when I saw her sitting
at a piano, I was like, wait, doesn't Lisa know Beethoven?
But instead we just invented a new character. Like, It

(01:10:10):
just is so, what the fuck is going on in
this movie? There's a few things that I'm just like,
men are so powerful because they can get a budget
for fucking anything. They can turn Bill Paxton into a
poo-poo monster and they don't even need to write a
script that makes sense to get a.

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):
Poo-poo monster budget.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
What the hell?

Speaker 3 (01:10:29):
John Hughes was so preoccupied with whether or not he
could that he didn't stop to think if he should.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
To quote Jurassic Park.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
And one of his other kind of main things, again,
that we like know that John Hughes is like equipped
to handle, but not doesn't seem to want to in
the scope of this movie is the idea of class
because we're in the. herbo up or we're dealing with
very privileged nerds this house it has like a fucking
moat um yeah yes.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Um okay so the the nuclear missile appears and rather
than it having any consequences lisa comes in and is
just like when are you boys going to learn that
people are going to like you for who you are
not for what you can give them and we're like
okay is that the is that the theme of the
movie is that the less i don't what and then

(01:11:21):
there's the part where wyatt's grandparents decide to stop by
so lisa makes them catatonic and puts them in the
pantry and then lisa is like hmm i should do
something to boost the boy's confidence and Let them demonstrate
that they have strength and courage. So she summons a

(01:11:44):
Mad Max-style motorcycle gang that crashes the party, terrorizes everyone,
mocks Wyatt and Gary, who are hiding in the closet
for a little while, but then they... rise to the
occasion and face the motorcycle gang especially after they damsel

(01:12:05):
the girls that they like.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
And then we're still like at the at this point
you're like what's happening what are these girls names right
um what's.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
One detail about these girls yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):
And the the boys are still like hey i'm chet.

Speaker 5 (01:12:17):
I'm carrie you've had both scenes with each other by this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Point they're like they're like i love you that's coming
soon but you're like no you don't you don't Whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
You've known them for two hours.

Speaker 4 (01:12:29):
One plot question, and maybe this is unanswerable.

Speaker 5 (01:12:33):
Am I to understand that Lisa, like, genie conjured up
these Mad Max motorcycle mutants and that there is no
real danger that she has just sort of, like, created
this fake emergency for them to rise to the occasion
so that they can be confident and get the girls
to like them, but they are not in any real

(01:12:54):
danger because she's taking care of it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:57):
Is that sort of the vibe? Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
I don't know. Because she sometimes, like, mutters to herself.
She does it after the stakes of the grandparents are,
after the grandparents are, like, frozen. She, like, says to herself,
I think the boys need a little challenge. And then
moments later, the motorcyclists show up. So I think that she's, like,
conjuring them. I don't know. I want to spend an

(01:13:20):
hour inside of Lisa's mind. Because I'm just, like, how
she gets from A to B is sometimes kind of
beyond me. I'm interested. Yeah. But what is going on?
What's going on? And I guess a real Mad Max
guy is in this sequence, right? I'm not a Mad
Max head, but I read it.

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
It's true.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
So the girls have been damseled by this motorcycle gang.
So Gary pulls the gun that Lisa had earlier on
them and the gang leaves. But haha, it turns out
to be a real gun. this time because I guess
Lisa has the wizard powers to make a squirt gun
a real gun who knows but Deb and Hilly are

(01:14:04):
now like wow you boys are so strong and brave
so they just get together with the boys Wyatt goes
off with Hilly Gary goes off with Deb so the
brunettes together and the blondes together of course I know.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
And I'm just like, if we're if we're doing something
this like obvious, can we at least swap hair colors?
It's looking sibling. It's looking very sibling to me.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
It's creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
And at least one of the girls expresses feelings of
self-consciousness about the boys connection to Lisa. But the tune
has sort of changed here. And the boys are like, nah,
she's more of a sister to us.

Speaker 5 (01:14:47):
Which is why you wanted to shower with her, why
she was grabbing your ass earlier.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Right, like why, yeah, that you've both had extensive sexual
contact with her.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
Right, right, right, right, right. Right, right, right, right. So
then we cut to the next day. Chet comes home.
Who knows where he was, but he just disappears from
the plot from time to time. But he comes home
and he's yelling at everyone. He threatens to shoot Gary
and Deb with his shotgun or whatever. And Lisa is like,

(01:15:18):
don't worry, I'll handle this. So the boys leave with
their girlfriends and Lisa turns Chet into a like gooey
blob poop monster.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Kind of like a, is it an actual Henson prosthetic?
It looks like it. It could be.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
It reminded me of Pizza the Hut from Spaceballs.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
Yeah, that's what it was. I was trying to put
my finger on what it was. It's familiar. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
Yeah, but it's slimy and gross. And she does this
as punishment for Chet treating Wyatt and Gary so badly.
So Chet learns his lesson because I guess Lisa's job
is just to like teach boys the lessons.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
And Well, and she also around this point confidently states
what I think the movie thinks its own thesis is,
but makes no sense in any world. What are you
going to learn that people like you for what you
are and not for what you can give them? I'm like,
what about anything we've seen would suggest that these boys
are a likable or... Or like that message is like

(01:16:28):
not really present in the movie at all, but it
stated so confidently at the end because we need the
girls to end up with the boys and Lisa to
sort of be the fairy godmother stewarding all of this.
It's so confusing.

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
It's like that bit in The Simpsons.

Speaker 4 (01:16:46):
Lisa, the point of Moby Dick is be yourself. Right.
That's the moral we're going with after all of this.
That's where we've landed.

Speaker 5 (01:16:54):
OK.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
OK, movie.

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
OK.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Whatever. Like, sure. But it was. Yeah, it's just such
a mess where I don't know, even the way that
Kelly LeBrock is delivering that line, like whatever. we all
know that's not what the message of the movie is.
The message of the movie is no one knows. It's
really unclear.

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
It's nothing. Well, cause the next thing that happens, we,
we cut to Gary and Wyatt are driving around their
new girlfriends in the various expensive sport cars that Lisa
has conjured out of thin air. There's a random car
chase for no fucking reason. But then with all of

(01:17:32):
the confidence that Lisa has given them, The boys give
their girlfriends a smooch. And then Gary admits that he's
not even cool, but he wants Deb to like him
for who he is. And she's like, don't worry, I do.
Which would be a good message if he wasn't also
a despicable misogynist piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
A despicable misogynist.

Speaker 3 (01:17:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:59):
It is just like nonsense. Yes. And then.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
Gary and Wyatt come back to Wyatt's house and approach
Lisa to be like, hey, we got to talk. And
she's like, oh, you guys found girlfriends. Don't worry. That's
all I ever wanted for you. I'm so happy you
guys learned all these lessons. And she's like crying. And
then she's just like, okay, got to go.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
She leaves.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
And it seems like she kind of disappeared from whence
she came. And then the house transforms back to normal.
The nuclear missile disappears. Everything returns to the way it
was just in time for Wyatt's parents to arrive back home.
And the boys are like, haha, no, we didn't get
into anything wacky this weekend. It was a very normal

(01:18:48):
time for us. And then the button on the movie
is we cut to the school. Lisa has not disappeared.
She's there and she's a gym teacher now. And all
the boys, all the teen boys are ogling at her.

Speaker 4 (01:19:00):
They all faint. They're so surprised.

Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
It's a hot gym teacher in a hot gym teacher's outfit.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
It's simply so confusing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
So that's the end of the movie. Let's take another
quick break and then we'll come back to discuss.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
And we're back.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
Bridget, we've talked a lot already about many things, but
What next? What would you like to dive into next?

Speaker 5 (01:19:34):
You know, this is going to be a weird comparison,
but it almost kind of reminds me of a lot
of Judd Apatow movies where you've got the stoner guy
and the way that the audience is meant to understand
that he has gotten himself sorted out is he gets
a girlfriend or maybe a job or an apartment. And
in this movie, the way that Lisa can feel like

(01:19:56):
these guys are confident and have got themselves sorted out
is that they're able to get these these girlfriends, like
that's the only marker of some sort of character development
for them is like whether or not they're able to
express themselves to these, these young women.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
Which like, yeah, it's sort of, it feels like kind
of the cousin of like women are the prize to
be won after being men have learned their lesson or
defeated the big bad or whatever well i feel like.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
The plot only really works if we as an audience
believe i think what like at least my like cultural
osmosis takeaway about weird science prior to watching it was
that this is a movie about nerdy male entitlement. And
it's like one of the big movies about nerdy male entitlement,

(01:20:51):
which feels very in conversation with a lot of early
Judd Apatow speaking to your point, Bridget. Like if you
don't believe at a fundamental level that these boys, regardless
of how they behave, are socially entitled to have sexual
access to the women in the story, then none of
the story makes any sense. And a lot of it

(01:21:12):
doesn't make sense anyways, but I feel like that is
like the foundational... understanding that the movie assumes that you
have is like so these guys are dorks and they
are bullied by mostly other boys at their school therefore
they are owed sexual attention by women and like that
I don't know I mean I think that's like one

(01:21:32):
of the big things that this movie just like it
doesn't even like that that's sort of established in the
opening sequence where they're bullied while they're fantasizing about having
sexual access to girls that they don't know and the
rest of the movie is about they create a sexy
wizard to give them what the wizard believes and what

(01:21:55):
they believe is their God-given right, which is to have
sexual access to girls. And without, I don't know, I
feel like without that logic, this story truly makes no sense.

Speaker 5 (01:22:06):
And that's the foundation, not to keep bringing it back
to tech, but that's the foundation of so much of
our literal current tech landscape is, entitled men who feel
kind of like marginalized and oppressed because they're nerdy or
whatever perceived thing, feeling like they need to use technology

(01:22:26):
to build a world where they have access to the
commodity that is women, women's attentions, women's bodies, and women's
sexual selves. You know, in this movie, I do think
they make a one-to-one thing where in the beginning of
the movie, when they're watching these girls do gymnastics in
their class, They're talking about how in their fantasy, they
don't just have like hot babes. They also are really popular.

(01:22:49):
They're also like ladies' men. And how women and feeling
entitled to the commodity that they see women as, that
also comes along with a kind of lifestyle where they
are in power. They are on top of the, you know,
they're the top guys in the social stratus of their school.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
It just.

Speaker 5 (01:23:08):
It really comes down to women and girls as this
commodity and using technology to build a world where that
is what's going on.

Speaker 3 (01:23:17):
Which the movie and movies like it, such as Revenge
of the Nerds, utterly fails to acknowledge because, as we've
talked about many times before, both these nerd boys and
the jock bullies are vehement misogynists. but the movie frames

(01:23:39):
the misogyny of the boys. Well, it doesn't even, it's,
you're not even supposed to notice it. And if you do, well,
it's endearing actually. It's not the evil misogyny that the
jocks are doing.

Speaker 4 (01:23:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:23:50):
It's the cute misogyny that the nerds are doing.

Speaker 4 (01:23:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
It's like they're made out to seem harmless in a
way that we're also seeing in the same scene is
just actively untrue. And I think that like all, you know,
unsafe presentations of masculinity are harmful, but I think we
can see, and I hope I'm not overstating this, hashtag
not all men. However, I feel like we really see

(01:24:15):
the legacy that you were, I mean, going back to
what you were talking about at the beginning of the episode, Bridget,
in the attitudes that a lot of men in tech
have are reflected by, I think are influenced by the
entitlement of that this subgenre of movie encourages. You are
owed something. You have been cheated by the world. And

(01:24:36):
I think what that creates that often results in cultural,
if not direct violence towards women is like, how dare
you not give me the attention and the relationship that
I deserve? And then, you know, there's I think in
the case of the AI cohort, it's like, I'll just
make my own woman. Fuck you. Or, you know, as

(01:24:57):
the case may be, like, I'm going to punish you physically, emotionally, whatever,
because I didn't get what I was promised. And what
was promised to you was not promised by women. It
was promised by patriarchy.

Speaker 5 (01:25:11):
And when you look at some of the marketing language
around consumer AI products that are AI girlfriends or AI
companions that are specifically designed for erotic role play and
adult content and explicit content, in the marketing, that very
attitude is almost made explicit. They'll use slogans like, oh...

(01:25:32):
download this AI girlfriend, she'll never say no. Download this
AI girlfriend, she'll give you what your human girlfriend won't give.
This idea that it's all for the taking because it's
yours anyway. There's a point in the movie, I wrote
down the quote where they say something along the lines of,
she's ours and yet we can't get close to her.

(01:25:53):
And I feel like that kind of, at least to me,
kind of sums something up that they're like, she's supposed
to be ours and yet.

Speaker 4 (01:26:01):
you know, fill in the blank.

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
They made her too smart. They gave her Einstein-level intelligence,
so now she has autonomy, question mark?

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
Which is something that they, like, addressed directly in, like,
a movie like Companion, you know, like, 40 years later. But, yeah, like,
it's the idea of, like, entitlement and control. And that once...
I mean, I think part of what makes Lisa's fate
so kind of chilling is because... They get what they

(01:26:33):
feel they deserve, which is the relationships with the girls
that I think are so poorly written and so not
considered in terms of if this person were real, what
would they be feeling? Because I think that the girls
have also kind of been bullying them and passively watching
as they're aggressively bullied by their boyfriends. So in a

(01:26:55):
world where these characters are people, they actually kind of
have a little bit to answer for. and so do
the boys but like because their prizes and objects their
function is to be turned over right to the nerds
but that like Lisa at the end I think why
she ends up in this like weird gym teacher gag
is because she's outlived her function and they're like well

(01:27:16):
we got what we deserved so how do we talk
to you about the fact that we're discarding you we
don't like there's no question of like what do you want.

Speaker 5 (01:27:25):
I mean they don't even have to have the painful
breakup They don't even have to say like, listen, we've
got girlfriends now.

Speaker 4 (01:27:33):
We got what we feel we were entitled to. It's
not you. It's us. She just knows.

Speaker 5 (01:27:39):
She just says, oh, I'm no longer needed here. I guess,
you know, it's like the end of a movie with
a nanny where it's like, you kids don't need me anymore.
You know, she just is, I guess, designed to be
such that she never, it's like they never owe her anything.
She has no needs of her own that they don't
even have.

Speaker 4 (01:27:56):
To say, we no longer need you. You've outlived your usefulness.
Please go become a gym teacher now.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
And then they seem to be relieved that she, and
that's it. That's it. Not to mention the way that
the things end with the girls. I mean, it's like,
I don't even know how to talk about the human
girls in this story because it just makes no fucking sense.
Where he says, I love you. I'm like, I didn't
even know what this character's name was until 10 minutes ago.
What do you mean, I love you? Get a fucking grip.

Speaker 3 (01:28:23):
Like, they've been interacting for all of... 12 hours.

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
And then on the other side, with Anthony Michael Hall
dating a girl that looks like his sister, where he,
you know, he's like, I need to come clean. Like,
this is supposed to be the big arc, right? Even
though nothing about this story has indicated that he, his
problem is that he can't be accepted authentically. Like, what
the fuck are you talking about? But he's like, just

(01:28:48):
so you know, all that stuff, it's not real, except
the fact that he seems to be fabulously wealthy, which
is real.

Speaker 3 (01:28:54):
But I don't have my own Ferrari. The one I'm
driving around is fake. Do you still like me? And
she's like, yes, of course I do.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
I like you for you. And I'm like, you don't
know him. You don't know him.

Speaker 3 (01:29:05):
And if you did, you would know that he's a
piece of shit.

Speaker 4 (01:29:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
They're both kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
They're horrible. No, they're absolutely horrible.

Speaker 5 (01:29:12):
And I guess I just don't understand, nor do I
agree with this idea that they seem to be uncritically
presenting toward the end of the movie, that the movie
is about the boys learning that they don't need material
trappings to get people to like them.

Speaker 4 (01:29:26):
That seems to come out of nowhere.

Speaker 5 (01:29:28):
That does not seem to be a point of the
movie that is established or even hinted at until the end.

Speaker 3 (01:29:34):
Like everything else in this movie, it's random as hell.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
Well, and it's like, in and again, we know that
John Hughes can tell or has told class stories, but
like to suggest that material has anything to do, like
he is like intentionally set this story. I think like
a lot of teen hijinks comedies in a wealthy setting
so that you can do these big expensive set pieces.

(01:29:57):
So to add in like a little flourish like that
at the end, like it just doesn't make sense with
anything we've seen because yeah, maybe he doesn't have a Ferrari,
but he probably could. We have no reason to think
he couldn't have one. But then we're also told his
father was a plumber and I'm like, Do plumbers live
in mansions in the 80s? I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:13):
Oh, well, I guess we don't see much of Gary's house.
But Wyatt's house is the one that we spend most
of the movie in. And that is for sure a mansion.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:30:22):
But class isn't a thing that even crosses this movie's mind.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
No.

Speaker 5 (01:30:27):
I will say one bit about having done the research
for my audio book, Love at First Prompt, about how
people are using AI companions for intimacy and sex. One
thing that I think the movie gets right is that
one of the questions I get asked a lot is,
are you worried that people are going to be replacing
their human relationships and human connections with AI? And I'm

(01:30:49):
not worried about that for lots of reasons. I guess
the biggest one is that I just don't ultimately think
that humans can be replaced by technology, human labor, human intimacy,
human relationships or connections writ large. But also what we
actually see from the research is that oftentimes people who
experience intimacy with AI, they're doing so in service of

(01:31:11):
being brought closer to other humans in their lives. And
so if you look at subreddits like Beyond the Prompt
or My Boyfriend is AI, it's those are humans who
feel that they are in an intimate relationship with AI,
and they're going onto Reddit to talk to other humans
and connect with other humans about that intimacy with AI.
And so something that I did like about the movie
is that, you know, Lisa does not become their girlfriend, ultimately,

(01:31:37):
whatever Lisa is brings them in deeper connection with like others.
They're human peers. You know, I think there's a version
of this movie where they just team up with Lisa and,
you know, that's that. I like that it's ultimately, they're
not relying on Lisa as like a substitute for human
to human connection with the women in their class.

Speaker 3 (01:31:58):
Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I think all
of the movies that we've discussed on the podcast that
deal to some degree with people having an intimate connection
with AI or a fembot or something like that, it
never goes well for anyone involved. Like the relationship is

(01:32:18):
utterly unsustainable. And sometimes the men die at the end.
Sometimes the men realize, oh, I should be focusing on
the human girls in my life. So there are various outcomes,
which we were already talking about as far as like
the good for her endings versus whatever this movie does.

(01:32:39):
But the bottom line is, if any of these movies
get something right, it's that like, yeah, these relationships are
not sustainable.

Speaker 2 (01:32:49):
Certainly not. Yeah, that's so interesting to hear, Bridget, because
it's like that does seem to be sort of encoded
into all of these movies. And it sounds like in
these forums, they're like, but my relationship with an AI
is going to be the one to defy the odds.

Speaker 5 (01:33:06):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And I think,
you know, I just wish this movie was better. I
really feel like there was a better movie that kind
of teases out some of that complexity.

Speaker 4 (01:33:19):
Somewhere buried in this script.

Speaker 2 (01:33:22):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:33:23):
But unfortunately, that's not the case. And then there are
all these other problems with the movie, such as the
casual racism, the casual homophobia, you know, the casual ableism.
I wanted to talk briefly about one of the Mad
Max gang members. You never hear this character's name on

(01:33:46):
screen because I don't think they like They're not introducing
themselves as they're crashing the party. But one of the
characters is credited as Mutant Biker. He is played by
an actor named Michael Berryman, who was born with a
condition called hypohydratic ectodermal dysplasia. I recognize him from other things.

(01:34:08):
He has worked a lot, and he has a bunch
of film and TV credits. Unfortunately, a large number of
his roles were him playing some type of quote-unquote mutant
character or a creature or something like that. He's still
alive and still working in Hollywood. But yeah, for that

(01:34:28):
to be his character's name and the way that character
is framed by the story, although he says one of
the very few things in this entire movie that made
me laugh as he's leaving, as like the two boys
best this motorcycle gang and they've admitted defeat and so
they're leaving the house. That character says, don't tell anyone

(01:34:50):
about this. I could lose my teaching job.

Speaker 5 (01:34:54):
I actually laughed. That got a laugh out of me.
That scene when the bikers are retreating, call me, we'll
do lunch. That was actually the scene that actually made
me genuinely laugh.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
But all this to say, there are all these just,
I mean, the whole scene with, we already touched on it,
but Wyatt doing the black scent and just like all
of the racist caricatures that are present in that scene.
I feel like.

Speaker 5 (01:35:22):
I haven't seen a ton of John Hughes movies. My
understanding is they all take place in Chicago. And I
do think that there is like a thing where, you know,
if you were in a suburb of Illinois or a
suburb of Chicago, the idea that just outside of the
suburbs is the city and there's black people there and
it's very urban. A lot of movies in the 80s,

(01:35:43):
I feel like, had some scene where kids from the
burbs go into the city and.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
Oh yeah adventures in babysitting also does this yes.

Speaker 5 (01:35:52):
Yes exactly don't they end up singing in a in
a in a blues club in that movie as well
it's like a thing yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:35:59):
It's oh it's a mess um yeah this is i
mean this is like such a period of and and
this continues but i think i i associate it strongly
with the 80s and 90s i'm just like the middle
class or above white teenage perspective is we're told like
the perspective and usually it's like men. Sometimes it's a

(01:36:19):
white woman or like a white girl. Like rarely are
we looking outside of this and that the way that
we look at the world and anyone who is not
middle class and white is through this other lens. For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:36:35):
Looking through my notes to see what else there is.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
I just, I bet. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm good
to call it. It's fucking hot.

Speaker 3 (01:36:45):
It's hot. And there's just so much. Um, well, uh,
this movie does pass the Bechdel test.

Speaker 4 (01:36:52):
Weirdly. It does.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
Weirdly. It does.

Speaker 4 (01:36:56):
Does that make it a feminist tax?

Speaker 2 (01:36:57):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:36:58):
It's a feminist masterpiece.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
No, it's kind of, it's kind of an offhand pass.
It isn't that like kind of, we talked about it.
It's kind of intriguing. Um, Where the girls are talking
about Lisa and how they're like fascinated by Lisa conceptually.
And I guess that that is predicated on the idea
that we believe Lisa is a woman and not a
robot type character. But For the sake of the way

(01:37:25):
this movie views Lisa, I would say that that's a pass.
And an interesting one at that, but it doesn't go anywhere.
So it's not a feminist movie, obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:37:34):
Right. Well, I guess if I had one last point,
and I'll make it quick because it is truly broiling outside.
I was like, what the hell is going on with Lisa?
From a characterization, sitting down to write a screenplay and
develop a character point of view, what is this? She's inconsistent.

(01:37:54):
nothing she does or says makes sense but then i
was like well maybe that's the point because she's such
an amalgamation of a bunch of just random shit that
these boys like feed into a computer which is again
like disembodied breasts and legs from playboy magazines it's a
photo of albert einstein it's An image of Harry Houdini

(01:38:18):
for some reason.

Speaker 4 (01:38:19):
Wait, is that why she knows how to conjure things?

Speaker 3 (01:38:22):
I guess maybe that's why she's a wizard.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
Oh, I didn't even think of that.

Speaker 3 (01:38:25):
Houdini was a magician, not a wizard.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
Right. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:38:30):
He wasn't supernatural.

Speaker 3 (01:38:32):
Right, exactly. So I'm just like, well, maybe that's the point.
That's maybe why she's such an all over the place
character because she's just this like weirdo, like amalgamation of
so many things. But then that doesn't lend itself to
an interesting or good movie character. So it's still bad writing.
But yeah, it's a mess. The girls do talk about her, though.

(01:38:54):
So it passes the Bechdel test. But we've got the
Bechdel cast nipple scale to think about. A scale where
we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on
examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I'm going to
go zero nipples on this one. for all the reasons
that we've already talked about. I think there's kind of

(01:39:17):
nothing redeeming about this movie. And anything that might be
kind of redeeming is just overshadowed by all of the
other horrible stuff. I'm going to give it a half.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
Because I think that Lisa has interesting aspects to her
character that are all ignored and But I was intrigued
and I guess I enjoyed the performance. But like the writing,
everything that men had to do was kind of a disaster.

(01:39:49):
But I think that there were a lot of missed
opportunities with Lisa and I felt the potential. That's fair.
But do not mistake this for a desire for a
reboot of any kind. Please let it die.

Speaker 3 (01:40:01):
Well, there have been talks about either remakes of this
movie or a sequel that would star Channing Tatum.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
Yeah, but that was like 10 years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):
Yeah, that was ages ago.

Speaker 4 (01:40:11):
What part would he even play?

Speaker 5 (01:40:13):
Yeah, would that have been like a gender flipped, like
Channing Tatum is the genie?

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
That sounds awful.

Speaker 3 (01:40:20):
I bet.

Speaker 2 (01:40:21):
I would watch a Channing Tatum genie movie.

Speaker 4 (01:40:24):
Oh, watch that.

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
Well, that is when they kept, like that era was
when they were gender flipping all those movies. Like what
men want instead of what women want and all of
those other terrible movies like it. So Jamie, you're giving
it a half nipple.

Speaker 2 (01:40:40):
A half nipple. And I'll give it to Lisa.

Speaker 3 (01:40:43):
Bridget, how about you?

Speaker 4 (01:40:44):
I'm going to give it one nipple.

Speaker 5 (01:40:46):
Although I will say, talking through this movie, I liked
it a lot less than I... When I finished it,
I was like, oh, that wasn't half bad. Talking through it,
I'm like, yeah, no.

Speaker 3 (01:40:57):
We have that effect.

Speaker 4 (01:40:58):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:40:59):
My one nipple goes to the one unsung hero of
the movie, In the mall scene when Lisa walks by
and all the teenage boys are like, whoa, she's so hot.
There's one lone new wave lesbian who also gives her
the eye and I love that character. My one nipple
goes out to that one lone 80s new wave lesbian

(01:41:20):
who checks out Lisa because I thought that was a
cool character.

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:41:23):
Even though she doesn't speak.

Speaker 2 (01:41:24):
God bless.

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
Well, is she the one who flicks her cigarette in
Lisa's direction?

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:41:29):
I almost interpreted that as like, who's this woman? bitch
who thinks she's so hot flick of the cigarette.

Speaker 5 (01:41:36):
Maybe I'm projecting like queer desire where there is none
I was like.

Speaker 3 (01:41:40):
I mean I like that read a lot better so
let's go.

Speaker 5 (01:41:44):
With that otherwise I'd have to remove my one nipple
and have to go down to zero.

Speaker 3 (01:41:48):
Let's keep it well Bridget thank you so much for
joining us once again come back anytime.

Speaker 5 (01:41:54):
Oh this was a blast and a half thank y'all
so much.

Speaker 3 (01:41:57):
Tell people where they can find your audiobook plug anything
else you want to plug.

Speaker 5 (01:42:02):
Yeah, if you are interested in conversations about what drives
humans to be interested in intimacy with robots like AI,
please check out my audio book, Love at First Prompt,
AI and the Future of Intimacy. You can check it
out at loveatfirstprompt.com.

Speaker 2 (01:42:18):
Amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:42:19):
You can check us out on Instagram at Bechtelcast. You
can also subscribe to our Patreon, aka Matreon. Best way
to support the show. We alluded to a bunch of
other episodes that we've covered on similar movies. So I'm
trying to think if any of those are on the
Matron specifically or if they're all main feed ones.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
They're all over the place. Yeah. We've talked about it
extensively and I'm so glad that we covered this with you, Bridget.
I feel like you've given us so much to chew
on and I'm so excited to listen to your book. Congratulations.

Speaker 4 (01:42:52):
Thank you so much. That means a lot coming from y'all.

Speaker 2 (01:42:55):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:42:57):
And with that, Wow, now we're sexy gym teachers. Drop
and give me 20.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
Wow. Bye. Bye. The Bechdelcast is a production of iHeartMedia,
hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 3 (01:43:15):
And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by
Sophie Lichterman.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them?

Speaker 3 (01:43:23):
That's me. And our logo and merch and all of
our artwork, in fact, are designed by Jamie Loftus. Ever
heard of her?

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):
Oh, my God. And our theme song, by the way,
was composed by Mike Kaplan.

Speaker 3 (01:43:35):
With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
Iconic. And a special thanks to the one and only
Aristotle Acevedo.

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

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