CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Vampires Are On Our Side: Antifascism in Film

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Caitlin Durante about the antifascist filmmaking in Germany and Hollywood that laid much of the foundations for modern cinema.

Original Air Date: 10.19.22

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Another rerun? Why are there so many reruns?

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Well, I told you each one made sense for different reasons,
and this one is because Cool Zone Media takes off
for the holidays sometimes, And so we're going to run
a rerun about anti fascism and film. Why because I
like it and I want you to hear it again
or for the first time, but also because I think

(00:30):
it's really important that we understand about how culture can
shape things and also specifically how we can use culture
to resist. And also I just think it's cool that
all the original vampires are on our side. Anyway, I
hope you all are well, and here's an episode. Hello

(00:50):
and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. I'm
your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week I talk about
rebels and revolutionaries and weirdos and I guess people who
passed the basic I'm a bumbar of not liking Nazis
and people I find interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
And with me today is Shrek. Shrek.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
How are you doing? Oh? Oh, I was I was
gonna try to do a terrible Scottish accent and then
so I thought you were gonna do I don't know
what I was gonna say. It was gonna be bad,
so I decided against it. I'm great, Donkey's great, Fiona's grey.

(01:32):
We're just chilling in the swamp.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, And I believe you. Most people might know you
by your previous name, which is I'm under the impression
not a dead name, but just not your current name,
which is Caitlin Derante.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Is that that's true. I go in and out of identities,
and all of those identities are fictional movie characters. So
right now I'm Shrek.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Excellent, and I'm the dictator of people's identities with me
today is Sophie. How are you, Sophie?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Ah? No, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
I won't to do it again.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
I want to, I really, I really want to rewatch
Shrek to see if it holds. Have we have we
done a Shrek on? Have we done any of the
Shreks on Bechdo cast?

Speaker 4 (02:18):
We've done Shrek one and two, although I don't know
if you were present for either, but I don't think
I was one.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
I would have had I would have been I would
have been annoying. But did they pass the Bechdel test?

Speaker 4 (02:32):
You know what?

Speaker 1 (02:33):
I don't remember listeners, you'll have to go back and
listen to the episode.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Okay, yeah, there's no way you could just watch the
movies and find out if they passed the Bechdel test
that way.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
I do really want to rewatch the movies because I
want to see if they hold up at all or
if they are an absolute nightmare.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Well, you can also listen to our episodes about them.
The Shrek one episode sucks because mostly my fault it was.
It was just like one of our earlier episodes. Within
the first like I don't know, a few months of
doing the show, and before we really to watch the wedding,
Jamie did watch this Wow called out.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Bernie has been dropping completely cold. Caitlin has a podcast
called Bechdel Cast where they could talk about movies, and
you should listen.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Thank you so much. I agree you should listen, but
not to the Shrek one episode. The Shrek two episode, however,
is what we did to celebrate I think the podcast's
five year anniversary. It was some celebratory episode, and so
Jamie and I.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
There's no better way than to, you know, celebrate with
some puss in boots.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
Oh my gosh, he and isn't we supposed to be
having a fiesta, as Puss in Boots says at the
end of Shrek two.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Caylin and I could do this banterer for probably several hours.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
So Margaret, so no, no, no, please continue? Uh well
this will be a three part Okay, So Ian does
our audio editing, and our theme music was written for
us by unwoman. One person said, you keep saying your
music is done by a woman. And while that is
true as a as a performer named unwoman like non woman,

(04:22):
who ironically is a woman. But so and you can
check out her music much like the music that you
already listened to. Anyway. On Monday, we talked about German
expressionist horror who and the people who fought Nazis, And
today we're going to talk about Hollywood. It's a sleepy
little town. Have you ever heard of Hollywood?

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Caitlin heard of it? I have?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
I mean Shrek.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
It's okay, I'm back to Caitlin for now. Oh okay,
I have heard of Hollywood. I live adjacent to the
neighborhood in fact, and yeah, I would say I I'm
very very peripherally working in Hollywood. Oh okay, in that

(05:08):
I have a movie podcast that analyzes film, and therefore
I work in Hollywood. That's how that works, right, Does
that mean I temporarily work in Hollywood?

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah for this?

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well did you know that there was a homegrown anti
Nazi league in Hollywood?

Speaker 4 (05:30):
I don't know if I knew about this.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
What do you think that the anti Nazi league in
Hollywood was called?

Speaker 4 (05:36):
Was it called the Hollywood Anti Anti Nazi League?

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Why did you read my script ahead of me? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (05:43):
Is that really correct?

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, it's called the Hollywood Anti Nazi League.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Okay, Well, I mean you set me up for it.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
So yeah, I do still appreciate that, probably more than
anything else. The actual long term sponsor the show is
naming things. All of your groups have to have a
league in the name, because I think there was a
period between eighteen eighty and nineteen thirty where there was
not a social movement organization, both right wing or left wing,
that did not have league in the name.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
So and we don't use league anymore.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
I know.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
It's all like people are like, I don't know, organization or.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Association, association group?

Speaker 4 (06:27):
Yeah, whatever happened to a league?

Speaker 2 (06:30):
I suspect, And I'm just gonna go ahead and claim
this is truth. Tell you the truth, which is that
in the nineteen thirties, with the fall of the cloak
as a fashion item, also fell the leagues. Because I
think that the leagues and the cloaks were inexcricably tied together. Okay,
like a cloak pin holding the two concepts together. Wow

(06:54):
makes you think, I know, I don't know sure what
it makes me think. But so the Hollywood Anti Nazi
they actually started out really cool. It was probably the
first American anti Nazi organization that wasn't specifically Jewish. Other
organizations had started earlier, and a lot of the Hollywood
Anti Nazi League was Communist like members of the Communist Party,

(07:15):
but notably a lot of it wasn't. It was sort
of a popular front against fascist influence in filmmaking. Practically
who's who of Hollywood, including communist, liberal and conservative members actually,
and including a bunch of refugees from the Nazis like
Fritz Lang, who we talked about last time. Chico Marx,
the oldest Marx brother, was in it. M john Ford,

(07:35):
who directed The Grapes of Wrath and basically like every
movie at the time, was in it.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
Very popular director.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, and so I looked more into him and he
was never a communist, but he made it clear that
if being in an anti Nazi league and I'm smeared as
a communist, then like fucking bring it on. Specifically, as
quote was, may I express my wholehearted desire to cooperate
to the utmost of my ability with Hollywood Anti Nazi League.
If this be communism, count me.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
In pretty cool, John, Yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Basically the whole pro Nazi press, because there's this whole
pro Nazi press was like, this is a Jewish Communist conspiracy,
which is always funny because anti Semitism either accused the
Jews of being communists or capitalists, depending on which ideology
they want to demonize. And I love how it's like
doesn't even hit a cognitive dissonance in the anti Semitic
mind that like you're like, which ever want to hate

(08:26):
or I'm mad at right now? That's what you know
people are doing or whatever, And it's like worth knowing
because when you're like, oh, an anti Nazi league, well,
threo was a whole league dedicated to being mad at
like the Germans. Like in the nineteen thirties, if you
were a right wing person in the United States, you
were probably a fascist. You were probably at least sympathetic
to fascism. And there was this huge pro fascist movement

(08:48):
in the US by people who once the US enters
the war, people immediately drop off that Some people stay Nazis,
but most people are like, Okay, well, we want to
be American right wing people, not you know, our enemy
right wing people or whatever. Right anyway. John Ford during
World War Two, he joins the military as a filmmaker.

(09:08):
He gets wounded twice filming battles. He lands at D Day,
he films, and he got less cool as he got older.
He goes from fighting against McCarthyism to supporting Nixon and
Reagan later but more important to the anti Nazi league
and more personally. Really, it's actually not more important. It's
just personal to me. My great grandfather was this tin

(09:29):
pan alley songwriter who used to write songs in the
nineteen twenties for this guy named Eddie Cantor. And Eddie
Cantor was like this big vaudeville singer guy right, and
he gave us be Eddie Cantor, not my great whatever
great grandfather, great great grandfather. He gave a speech at
the inaugural party, and I just got really excited whenever
I see his name, because I'm like, oh, maybe my

(09:50):
great granddad was really cool. I don't know shit about
my great granddad, and I'm not even gonna tell you
his name because Nazis have already worked hard enough figure
out who my family is anyway. Uh Okay. So they
published not that there's like a through line to the
modern world or anything like that. So they published two papers,
the Hollywood Anti Nazi News and Hollywood Now, which I

(10:14):
feel like Hollywood Now is probably like a cleverer way
to name your paper.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
Because it's very just like it just makes it seem like,
and here's what's happening in the movie industry. Yeah, totally,
without which any sort of like other objective. Yeah, which
one would you have worked for? Like if you're like,
which one have you put your weight behind? The Hollywood
Anti Nazi News or just Hollywood Now, both with the

(10:39):
same purpose?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Just which, right?

Speaker 4 (10:43):
I mean? I've I feel based on the names alone,
I would say the first one because why you know,
I like transparency. Yeah, so the first one has a
way more transparent name.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I think I think I would have too, just and
also you get to be like part of Hollywood anti
Nazi news. Get all your anti Nazi news about Hollywood.

Speaker 4 (11:09):
Yep, read all about it.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah exactly. They had two LA radio shows, they sponsored
lectures and rallies, they organized boycotts of Nazi products, and
they fucked with all the American Nazis, mostly the German
American boond as well as the Silver Shirts. And they
fucked with visiting European Nazis, at least one of whom
stayed with Walt Disney because Walt Disney was a piece

(11:34):
of shit. Oh yeah, yeah, and now let's talk about
Walt Disney, the piece of shit.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
A little little mini reverse, a little bastard.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
Yeah, it was like I was.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Like, uh, just a little mini bastards, just like a
little taste, Like.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
You know, I'm gonna start like atonal shrieking. Are you
no right? Just making sure?

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yep, no.

Speaker 4 (12:01):
It you definitely I.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Did think about it. Yeah, yeah, no, I know. But
that's in that same way that like when someone tells
you not to do something, it just you instinctively want
to do it, even if it's and then you realize
you don't want to do it anyway. Disney he gives
a Nazi propaganda filmmaker a tour of his studio a
month after Crystal Knocked while she's there to promote her
Nazi propaganda film. He later claims that he didn't know

(12:25):
like that she was a Nazi or whatever. My argument
is why this is obviously a lie, is that the
Anti Nazi League was like boycotting him over it and
making it really clear ahead of time and doing all
of this press being like, don't host the Nazi lady
with her Nazi propaganda, And he's like, oh, I just well,
as an a political filmmaker, I'll just show you around
this space. You know, I don't know why he is

(12:47):
that accent. He does not know that accent. So a
Disney animator the main evidence of Disney as a Nazi.
There's a lot of weird rumors and complicated things around it,
but the like main single thing that I can point
to and be like, no, he was a fucking Nazi.
A Disney animator named Art Babbitt said quote, in the

(13:08):
immediate years before we entered World War Two, there was
a small but fiercely loyal I suppose legal following of
the Nazi Party. There were open meetings anyone could attend,
and I wanted to see what was going on myself.
On more than one occasion, I observed Walt Disney and
his lawyer there, along with a lot of prominent Nazi
afflicted Hollywood personalities. Disney was going to these meetings all
the time. So my argument with that he was a

(13:31):
Nazi is that he went to Nazi organized Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
You know, not hard to connect those dots.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, because people are like, oh, is a Nazi because
like this is that? And like, no, no, because he was
because he went to the Nazi.

Speaker 4 (13:42):
Actively participating in Nazi meetings. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, And there's this thing happening. And I'm kind of
curious if you've caught this where there's like this whole
big like backlash, like there's like a Disney wasn't a
Nazi discourse that the internet's trying to have.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
I haven't been paying attention to that. Why what are
they saying?

Speaker 2 (14:02):
It's like, I think what's happening is that people are
conflating like personal bigotry with supporting fascism, because basically what
people are saying is that they're like they're like literally
listing out all of his black friends or all of
his Jewish friends or whatever, and being like and like,
it seems to me that most of his like most

(14:23):
of the bigotry that's expressed in the old Disney films
actually is kind of in line with all of the
other bigotry happening in Hollywood films at the time. Like,
I think it wasn't particularly exemplary, I mean, or like
particularly standoutish, right, But but yeah, so people are like, oh,
it wasn't a Nazi because he like didn't have personal

(14:43):
bigotry against Jews necessarily his entire life. But my argument
is that I literally am not thinking about that one
way or the other because I don't have enough information.
I'm just saying he went to fucking Nazi medians and
he was like super right wing, so I don't know,
it's not hard right, And and some of his films

(15:04):
were the last ones to be he was like trying
to be buzz of the Nazis, and some of his
films were the last American films to get banned in
Germany during the war, and Gobels and all the rest.
They actually put together a plan to try and figure
out if they could claim that Walt Disney was German
so that they could get it, get his films to
be allowed to continue to be played because they liked
his film so much, because they were kind of right wing,

(15:25):
you know, and so they were like put together this
thing about whether or not they could get away with
claiming he was born Walter Distler instead of Walt Disney.
And that's not Disney's fault, like he didn't make sure
Goebels do that once the war started. And this is
the other reason that people claim that he wasn't a Nazi.
He absolutely like the rest of these fucking Nazis. As

(15:46):
soon as the US entered the war against Germany. He
was like, no, no, no, I'm an American right wing
person and so now I'm anti Nazi. He was just
a social conservative capitalist, and he made a whole bunch
of anti Nazis during the war because everyone did. But

(16:06):
very few of the Hollywood studios were willing to stick
their necks out in critique fascism at the time, like
very very few. Foreign films made up about forty percent
of movie revenue before World War two. This is like
before America entered the war. Basically, okay, and so they
didn't want to rock the boat, right, because they're like, well,
we want the foreign market and we want all the
Nazi controlled areas to still show her movies and give

(16:29):
us money. With one exception, the Warner Brothers okay, the
most based Hollywood studio of the nineteen thirties. Harry and
Jack Warner were the sons of a Jewish cobbler who
had fled pogroms in Poland, and they didn't forget their roots.
Theirs was the first studio to criticize Hitler in a

(16:51):
nineteen thirty three Looney Tunes cartoon called Bosco's Picture Show,
in which Hitler is chasing someone around with a meat cleaver.
The person they're chasing around is play by someone whose
last name is Drante. But I forgot to write down
his first.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
Name, Jimmy, Jimmy Duranty, Oh, Durante, Yeah, which is also
how my family pronounces my last name. But I was like, I'm.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Also how Robert consistently mispronounces your last name.

Speaker 4 (17:17):
Yes, so in a way, I do change my identity
around because I lived the first eighteen years of my
life is Caitlin Duranty. And then I was like, I
hate the way that sounds Caitlyn Durrante.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Because that's like the anglicization of it is Durante.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
Is that yeah? Okay, which like I don't I mean,
Drante is an Italian name, so uh, it's yeah, slightly
more correct pronunciation wise to say Durrante. But anyway, Jimmy
Duranty was a famous person in Hollywood at one time.

(18:00):
But no relation. I'm not related to him.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Okay, so he was your great grandfather.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
He's my husband.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Oh that actually makes sense. You took his name, he
took my name. Oh oh good, Okay, I'm sorry. I'm
sorry to have accused you of such a thing.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, feminism, hello, yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
Yeah, he used to be His maiden name was like
Jimmy Jimmy Smith.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, well you all made that film together, So I
made Have Married a vampire.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
Exactly, starring the same actor who plays Shrek.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, whose name is Shrek? Oh you mean the ogre Shrek? Okay? Yeah, yeah,
count Overlock.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
Mike Myers?

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Is that who that is?

Speaker 4 (18:43):
Mike Myers? Well he was in that movie something something
married an axe murderer, that's what you were referring to.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, absolutely, I actually have seen that movie. I okay,
So Warner Brothers, they those their German offices entirely. In
nineteen thirty four, when the Nazis told them to fire
all the Jewish employees, they were like, nope, you get
nothing from us ever again. Fuck all of you. They
stopped working with the Nazi regime. It took five more years.

(19:13):
It took till nineteen thirty nine for the other major
studios to follow suit, and the heads of many of
these other major studios were Jewish too. It's almost like
an ethnic heritage doesn't make you a good or bad person. Instead,
it's your own actions that do that.

Speaker 4 (19:28):
It's almost as if capitalism really just warps your braininess
of who you are and kind of what your background is.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, and if you want your brain warped, you can
purchase goods and services from done. Yeah, thank you. I
really retard on that one, such as the following advertisers,
who we support in every way with our entire hearts
or entire Golden Onion hearts.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Especially the it was weird as for gold that keep
popping up. Oh yeah, that nobody should buy.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Okay, but hear me out. If you bury gold, don't
do it.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Don't do it cold onions only.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Okay, if anyone well, okay, but if the sponsors sent
me gold, I'd probably tell people that, oh, that's the
problem with capitalism.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Now I understand you've been capitalismed. I got owned by
my need to eat food every day. Here's some ads
and we are back and we are talking about how
MGM Studios, which had a Jewish head in nineteen thirty nine,

(20:49):
the Jewish head Adolf Zukor said, I don't think Hollywood
should deal with anything but entertainment. The newsreels take care
of current events. In fucking nineteen thirty nine, the Warner
Brothers had to fight anti Semitism at home as well.
Hollywood had a self censorship board called the Production Code Administration,
which was led by this anti Semite named Joseph Breen.

(21:10):
And when I say anti Semite, I'm not, once again
not trying to be like subtle here, because he wasn't
very subtle. What he said what's wrong with Hollywood was
all the quote lousy Jews and that ninety five percent
of Jews were Eastern Jews, the scum of the earth.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yes, that's who was in charge. And then that's funny too, right,
because everyone's always like anti Semitic shit's always like, ah,
the Jews controlling Hollywood and whatever, and you're like the
fucking Censorship Board was like run by this guy who whatever. Yeah,
regardless of the PCA, the Warner Brothers went ahead as
best they could. In nineteen thirty seven, they made a
Humphrey Bogart film called Black Legion about domestic fascism that

(21:50):
compared the KKK to the Nazis. They made a nineteen
thirty eight version of the Adventures of Robinhood that was
like really transparently about the need to fight Nazis. And
then they made a film that I had never heard
of but made a big fucking we'll talk about what
a big deal it was. They made a film called
Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Either of you ever heard of.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
This, I've not heard of Maybe I've heard of it,
but I know nothing else.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Well, and that's what's so interesting me is kind of
like how these things can be like cultural moments, right,
and then not become classics.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Kind of have no legacy after that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, Confessions of a Nazi Spy was directed by a
Jewish refugee, and it brings us the Hollywood Nazi the like,
here's a caricature of a shitty fucking Nazi, right, And
this is way before the US was involved in the war.
And it was based on the true story of an
American detective who uncovered Nazi spies in the US. And
since it was a true story, it could kind of

(22:51):
get around PCA censorship barely. The Reich did not like
this film. The Reich declared it would ban all films
ever made by any of the actors in the film.
Other studios wanted it to not come out because they
were afraid the Nazis would ban all American films if
this movie came out, which eventually the Nazis did ban
all American films. A PCA official wrote, are we ready

(23:14):
to depart from the pleasant and profitable course of entertainment
to engage in propaganda, to produce screen portrayals arousing controversy, conflict, racial, religious,
and nationalistic antagonism, and outright human hatred?

Speaker 4 (23:28):
Yeah, they're saying that about a film that criticizes fascism
and Nazism. That reminds me of the time when what
the fuck is that Loser's name D. W. Griffith, after
making Birth of a Nation, which was so racist that

(23:49):
at the time in nineteen fifteen, people were like, this
is really racist. So when something when people when like
critics and the general public in nineteen fifteen, thinks something
is really racist, you know, it was very, very racist. Yeah,
and he didn't like. Griffith didn't like how many people
were calling his movie racist and we're being quote unquote

(24:12):
intolerant towards his Yeah movie that he then made a
movie a couple of years later called Intolerance because he
didn't like that people were so intolerant of his work.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Those so, anyway, real Nazis were the anti Nazis all along.
I'm so glad that this is a twentieth century relic.
That is not a pattern that we've ever seen again.
M Yeah, So the Warner Brothers they released Confessions of
a Nazi Spy. Anyway, When asked why they were doing it,

(24:48):
Jack Warner said, the Silver Shirts and the Bundists, the
two American fascist organizations, and the rest of these hoods
are marching in Los Angeles right now. There are high
school kids with swastikas on their sleeves. A few crummy
blocks from our studio, Is that what you want in
exchange for some crummy film royalties from Germany?

Speaker 4 (25:06):
And a good point.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, and shout out for just using the word crummy
twice in a very intense yeah. And there was one
concession that they had to make in order to get
the PCA to release the film at all. They couldn't
outright talk about the fact that the Jews were the
people who are being fucked with the most by the Nazis.
And we'll talk about in a moment the first film

(25:30):
that did center Jews in an anti Nazi film, but
Confessions of a Nazi Spy. They received more than one
hundred threatening letters and they have to hire extra security.
They didn't do any publicity for it. The cast and
cruise names were kept secret until like right before release,
and they were hard to recruit casting crew in the
first place. And it was like almost entirely made by
German refugees and like committed anti fascists from the US.

(25:55):
And this movie was controversial. And when I say controversial,
I'm going to quote from an article by Stephen J. Ross.
Not everyone was enamored with the film. Nazi sympathizers in
Milwaukee burned down the local Warner Brothers theater shortly after
the movie opened. Angry citizens in other cities picketed theaters,
slashed seats, and threatened exhibitors. In Poland, anti Semitic audiences

(26:17):
hanged several theater owners in their movie houses for exhibiting
the films. Film Nazis burned the film everywhere they could
exert pressure. Wow, so people like literally died for showing
this anti fascist film, which is like the stakes that
I think sometimes gets forgotten about. You know, the film

(26:38):
was carried to its premiere in an armored car and
all the chicken shit celebrities didn't show up because not
many of them did, but many of the like A
list celebrities didn't show up because they were afraid of
being seen as quote political, and their like excuse that
they came up with MGM Studios through a birthday party
for someone that night, like a surprise birthday party, like
all of a sudden to give all their stars an

(27:01):
excuse to miss it. And there's some kind of like
one of the most interesting parallels to me about this
as everything in the world compares to the Spanish Civil
War in my head, which is not true. But you
know whatever, my brain fixates on things. And the Americans
who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War were
called premature anti fascists and they were mistrusted and they

(27:22):
had had trouble, like they would like later go and
sign up for the army because being like, well, we
fought not fascist before and we want to fight him again.
And the army was like holding them at arm's length,
being like, we don't trust you because you're too anti fascist,
because you were prematurely anti fascist. And this happens to
the filmmakers and shit right, they're now under suspicion because
they were anti fascist before the US government was officially

(27:46):
anti fascist. And it was basically seen as as big
of a deal as the birth of the nation. But
from the opposite point of view. A Jewish film producer,
Lou Edelman wrote to his bossy last night the motion picture,
like the concept of the motion picture had a bar mitzvah.

(28:06):
It came of age. It said today I am a man,
so big fucking deal. I've never heard of it. I
kind of want to go watch.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
It now, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
I have no idea. It like holds up like as
like entertainment, but it was fucking important that they made it.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
Yeah, I'm curious and like you said that the steaks
surrounding something like that, Yeah, we kind of we can
forget how hot like literally life and death steaks in
some cases. Yeah, yeah, or making something like that. Wow. Yeah,
I'm going to go check it out. Yeah, if it's accessible,

(28:48):
even I wonder.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, I think it is. I like didn't specifically look
it up to be like it's It's kind of my
plan over the next couple of nights to watch some
of these movies that I didn't have a chance to
watch before I recorded to a podcast about them, because
that is the nature of podcasting. And now you all
know it's true. I do a lot of research.

Speaker 4 (29:07):
I never watch any of the movies that I cover
on the beckdal Gast. That's not true. I watched them twice,
sometimes three times.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
No, I thought, you just read the Wikipedia entry out Yeah, exactly. Okay,
let's go back to the Anti Nazi League, and there's
a big Popular Front group made up of all the
various people opposed to fascism. But they had another there's
another comparison I can make against with the Popular Front
of Spain because the people fighting the Popular Front fighting

(29:36):
fascism in Spain had a problem, and that problem was Stalin,
because Stalin, you know, went around and like started shooting
everyone else who didn't agree with him in the middle
of the war and caused all this terrible shit. The
Hollywood Popular Front also had a problem. You want to
guess what that problem was.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
I would guess that. I mean, what problems don't they have.
I mean, it's probably having something to do with capitalism
and or they I don't know, the studio system, something

(30:17):
something you tell me.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Nope, okay, yeah, it kind of was a kind of
a terrible riddle that I'm like, it was Stalin. Their
problem was Stalin.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Okay, Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, the parallels okay, because Okay. So the group
was made up of a wide variety of anti fascists,
including even conservative members, and its political aims were purely
anti Nazi, but it was controlled from behind the scenes
by the Communist Party through the Communist Party of America
and the American League for Peace and Democracy, which was

(30:53):
controlled by the Soviet Union, which had the goal of
getting the US into a defensive alliance with the USSR
in case of Nazi aggression. So the Hollywood Anti Nazi
League was created in that context in which the USSR
wanted Americans to be anti Nazi. But have you ever
heard of them? I keep asking I need to stop

(31:13):
asking you questions. Have you ever heard of it? I
don't like putting you on the spot like that.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
I'm just going to tell you about it, like okay,
because if I have heard of it, I get to
feel so freaking cool. Okay, and be like, yeah, I've
heard of it and I've seen it. Yeah, try me.
And then if I haven't, then I exposed myself as
once again a fraud. But I'm willing to take that risk.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Okay. Have you ever heard of the Molotov Ribbon trop Pact?

Speaker 4 (31:38):
No, it's okay. And then I burst into tears.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, yeah, actually is literally crying. Shrek right now on
camera is crying. So on August twenty third, nineteen thirty nine,
it's the eve of World War two and the USSR
decides to be buds with Hitler, so they sign a
treaty called the Molotov Ribbon trp Packed with Hitler. And

(32:02):
it's two things first, and this part's public at the time.
It's a non aggression pact. Second, and this part's the
secret part of it, the secret protocol that we find
out decades later. It carved up chunks of Eastern Europe
and the Baltic states in Finland and said, okay, we
can invade this, you can invade that. They just like
split up the spoils of war with Nazi Germany. And

(32:27):
the most dramatic effects of this, of course, is that
Germany and the USSR both invaded Poland. And then they
held like common parades where the Red Army and the
weimarcht or whatever would like march around together and be like,
we are friends. You know, people don't like talking about
this as much. And then the USSR conquered finn tried
to conquer Finland, which gets called the Winter War, and

(32:50):
the Finns put up a surprising resistance and the USSR
seals about nine percent of the country instead of all
of the country. And you know how the USSR. The
the way that they got the USSR got that packed
with Hitler is Stalin gave an order to quote purge
the Foreign Ministry.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Of Jews.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
In order to be friends with the Nazis. USSR Nazi
relations only fell apart when the two countries couldn't agree
about how to split the spoils of war. Basically, they
were in talks with I didn't know this shit until
fucking way recently, like five years ago or something, and
I've been politically engaged for a long time. They were
in talks with the USSR to formally join the Axis

(33:33):
Powers until eventually, at some point Hitler was like, Nah,
we're just going to invade the USSR and take it all.
But the USSR tried to join Hitler basicallyops, yeah, exactly.
Doesn't look great in retrospect. The biggest deal, of course,
was how the USSR invaded a bunch of places and
then sent millions of tons of food to Hitler, because

(33:56):
there was the Western Powers had a blockade on Germany,
you know, and so they would like send shit all
the way from the eastern part of Russia. But there's
another thing that mattered at all of this too. All
the communist parties in the West were forced to become
anti anti fascist because now anti fascism so so communists

(34:16):
in Parliament in France, like a few weeks earlier, had
voted unanimously for war against Germany, but then they were
like suddenly against the war and called it imperialist. It
would be imperialist for France to attack Nazi Germany, m
because the Soviet Union was suddenly friends. Yeah, I guess

(34:41):
there's always a bit of bastards in every episode about
good people. And all the anti fascist organizations that were
just communist front groups got dissolved, or sometimes they did
worse than dissolve. The Hollywood Anti Nazi League didn't just dissolve,
It joined the American Peace Mobilization, an organization dedicated to
keeping the US from helping written in France, and they're
fight against the fucking Nazis.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Okay, And how does one thing become the other?

Speaker 2 (35:10):
So I think I think what happened was all of
the like regular anti fascists get out of the group,
right because the group dissolves officially and becomes this other group.
And then all of the people who were there because
they were like communists loyal to the USSR stay and
become anti anti fascists, got it, and they start fighting

(35:32):
against military recruitment until of course the Nazis invade the USSR,
and then they became the American People's Mobilization, and then
they tried to get the US into the war, and
then after the war, during the Cold War, they decide
now they're pacifists and they become the National Committee to
win the peace. Mm hmm, which is I guess like
my takeaway from this is it's cool to be a
coalition with other anti fascists, but maybe don't trust the

(35:54):
people who are only into it for some weird, other
shady reason.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
Yeah, and that's why again, transparency is nice. You gotta
have these conversations, right, similar to the conversation that what
was his name Fritz Lang should have had with about
how she was a Nazi. You know, maybe be like, hey,
why are you in this group? Totally and you pick

(36:22):
out your friends based on that.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Are you trying to say that Fritz Lang could have
become a stand up comedian with my wife jokes?

Speaker 4 (36:31):
Yes, he'd be like, get a load of my wife.
He's a Nazi and that's and that's a perfect joke
that I just wrote. Believe it or not.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, Okay, it's part of Shrek for whatever whatever your
next movie is after Shrek. I don't know how many
Shreks there are.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
There's I've starred in four Shreks. Okay, this is material
for this is Shrek five exactly. Okay, hence forth coming
what my brain. It's not the best today.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Okay. Well, I will say that the liberalish, the not
actual anti Nazis in Hollywood, they did come together in
a not controlled by Stalin way, and they pushed for
progressive themes in film during the war and after the war,
and most famous among these is the progressive Orson Welles.
But we've got to talk more about the lead up

(37:31):
to the war. Megan Feenie, in an article for the
site Movie, described Hollywood once the US was involved in
the war, and said the war represented a pivotal moment
in Hollywood history, one in which the US film industry
came to take itself seriously as a significant socio political force.
Hollywood's left liberal filmmakers ascended during the war, and in
close collaboration with the Roosevelt administration, used fascism as a

(37:53):
foil to redefine the so called American War on their
own terms, emphasizing popular democracy. Civil liberties were just tolerance,
ethnic pluralism, and liberal internationalism. And so the anti war
movies that were happening during the war weren't just we
hate the Nazis from like kind of a right wing
point of view. They were being made by the people
who are like mostly being made by the people who

(38:15):
are the most versed in being actually anti Nazi, being leftists,
you know. And this is in contrast to how later
during the Cold War, starting the late forties, conservatives take
control of Hollywood and bring Hollywood back to it's like
so called a political past of being conservative, and you
get the Red Scare, you get the Hollywood Blacklist. And

(38:38):
at this point, at that point, the like leftists in
Hollywood or even just the like anti censorship people in
Hollywood kind of pivot to just being First Amendment groups.
Instead of being like fighting for liberal ideas in Hollywood,
they're literally fighting for like, please just let us have
fucking free speech.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
What the fuck right?

Speaker 2 (38:56):
And unfortunately, one of our previous heroes, the Warner brother,
Jack Warner, testified to the House of on American Activities
and fired the co writer of Confessions of a Nazi
Spy because that guy might have been like secretly communist
or whatever the fuck. But back to the golden age
of anti fascist filmmaking also known as World War Two,

(39:17):
I love accidentally saying positive things about one of the
worst things. Okay, anyway, it's this anti fascist era that
gives us the Nazis the ultimate villain, and it also
gives us the unfortunate like good war narrative and the
idea that like America is the savior of humanity. And
then I found it even more disturbing shit that even

(39:38):
the lefties and liberals were doing at this time, or
at least some of them were. So you know how
like Nazis are like the ultimate villain right in Hollywood,
they didn't start out that way because of racism. More
films with Nazis, like films with Nazis started off before
the war like really got in, were like usually Nazis

(40:00):
could be like redeemed right and like a lot of
like Nazi collaborators like come around to see the light.
The Japanese, however, were presented as monsters, and the Japanese
were to be fought in a similar way to other
like classic monsters of the screen, the indigenous people of
North America, who the US is, you know, continuing its
war of genocide and expansion against So basically everyone can

(40:23):
twist anti fascism into obnoxious propagandistic ends to do really
bad things. That's my that's actually turned into more of
a bastard's episode than I thought. Okay, actually that we're
about to get into the most complicated of them all.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
I'm ready okay.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
And the lead up to this anti fascist film era,
you get the Warner Brothers being pretty consistently cool, and
a few more people start coming on board. You've got
a producer, Walter Wanger, who puts Henry Fonda in a
Spanish Civil war movie in nineteen thirty eight called Blockade,
and gets Alfred Hitchcock to make an anti fascist film
in nineteen forty called Foreign Correspondent. Hitchcock made more movies

(41:00):
during the war. And then you get Charlie fucking.

Speaker 4 (41:04):
Chaplin, oh the Great Dictator.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, and Charlie Chaplin. He gets both Charlie fucking Chaplin
as in like hell yeah because of some of the
interesting shit he did, and he gets Charlie fucking Chaplin
because what the fuck is wrong with this guy? What
the fuck is wrong with this guy?

Speaker 4 (41:22):
He did some bad things.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
He did do some bad things. We're gonna talk about
some of them, and if you know more of them, please.
Charlie Chaplin is maybe the most dramatic rags to riches
entertainment story in history, not just filmmaking, just fucking all over.
He was born four days before Hitler. A lot of
people like make weird comparisons about the fact that he's
like just like Hitler because he was the same age

(41:45):
and also had a toothbrush mustache. He was born in
April sixteenth, eighteen eighty nine. He grew up dirt fucking
poor in South London to a probably Roma family in
a community of like sex workers and buskers and like
just like down and out folks coming up with the
creative means by which to survive. He might have been
born in Evardo the wagons that Roma folks would have,

(42:11):
and he grew up more or less orphaned. And he's
not even fucking seven years old when he's like clog
dancing on the streets outside bars for money. And you
know what he could have done with that money, Caitlin Durante.

Speaker 4 (42:25):
Yeah, I can imagine a few things. But why don't
you just let you out?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah? Yeah, he could have purchased products and services.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Oh I see what you were doing.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah, no, sorry, yeah, products and services much
like those that support the show the concept of potatoes
are perennial sponsor. Everyone should well know some people should
eat potatoes and some people shouldn't, but people should do
whatever they want. Food. Food is good. Okay, here's some ads,

(42:58):
and we are back and we're talking abot Charlie fucking chaplain. Yeah,
he's clogged dancing on the streets for money. He gets
discovered and on the streets he gets given a job
with a theater troop. At age seven, he learns physical comedy.
He moves to America to make films in the nineteen tens,
and by age twenty six, he's maybe the most famous
man in the world. People refer to it as like

(43:20):
the world was suffering from chaplain itis. He's like the
symbol of popular culture. And there's two stories to tell
about chaplain because and they're fucking messy to resolve with
each other. And I think that learning how to not
necessarily resolve with these with each other, but understand them both,
I think is like crucial. Sure, I'm gonna start with
the bad story, because before I say cool shit about

(43:43):
a guy, I want to say he sucks. He's a
fucking monster. He is an early example of why Hollywood
is a misogynist cesspool run by fucking predators. Yeah, he
bragged to have slept with two thousand women in his lifetime.
He never trusted women. He constantly married children. He always
waited until they were sixteen to marry them. His first wife,

(44:06):
Mildred Harris, was sixteen when they got married. The story
is that she feigned pregnancy to get married, but I
don't know. That's his story, and I don't fucking trust
anything he has to say. And once they got married,
she wound up institutionalized for weeks, and when she divorced him,
she cited cruelty as the reason for the divorce. He

(44:27):
was a literal groomer. His second wife, Lyda Gray, was
twelve when they met. At sixteen, he started assaulting her,
then married her while she was pregnant to avoid statutory
rape charges. He tried to pressure her into an abortion
and he also and she said no to that. And
then so he tried to pick a random man her

(44:48):
age to marry her to take the and then take
care of the kid, and offered, like the man like
two hundred thousand dollars to do this, Oh my god,
but she turned that down as well. So he married
her and a little horror and told her to kill
herself because Charlie Chaplin is the fucking worst. She was
around nineteen when he divorced her. His next wife was

(45:08):
a seventeen year old who he claims told him that
she was twenty two. His final wife was thirty six
years younger than him. He was fifty four, she was eighteen.
She was terrified of him and regularly locked herself in
her room to get away from him. He had tons
of children. He was constantly cruel to all of them.

(45:29):
He got sued over parentage, lost that suit in nineteen
twenty six. He described his ideal woman as I am
not exactly in love with her, but she is entirely
in love with me.

Speaker 4 (45:42):
Oh okay, so he's a narcissist. Yeah on top of
all that, Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, fuck that guy.
Yeah that was what I knew about. I didn't even
know most of those details. I just knew that he
was a sexual predator, child rapist.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, yep, he is absolutely those things. Well, fortunately now
he's just dead.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
I had a high school teacher who was obsessed with him,
and like, we had to watch so many of the
films and I was just like, just like, without knowing
any of this, it's just like the the unbelievable amount
of red flags you see even in his work, you
know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, Yeah, I've like the way that it's been a
long time since I watched Chaplin films. I used to
watch them a lot when I was younger. Yeah, no,
it's it's.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
I am going to tell you about anti fascism in film.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Please please tell us Magpie were yay?

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Okay? So the other story about Charlie Chaplin is it
a story about an anti fascist filmmaker who risks his
entire career, who tanks his entire career to try and
stop the Nazis. In this story, it is his unshakable
self confidence that one might call narcissism, that allowed him

(47:04):
to survive on the streets of Victoria in London as
a fucking like seven year old orphan. You know. It
offered him the self confident and he offered that self
confidence to his viewers and to the world. He described
how he survived in his youth by the exubriance that
comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go
down and defeat. And his main character the Little Tramp.

(47:25):
No matter what happens, he picks himself up and he
trots off jauntily into the sunset. It's also the story
of a person with an unshakable political moral compass with
the largest blind spot the world has ever seen, an
unshakable moral compass when it's applied on a geopolitical level
instead of an interpersonal level. In the nineteen thirties, he

(47:47):
did radio broadcast supporting the New Deal and his first talkie,
his first non silent movie. He was like one of
the last people to want to switch over to talkies
was The Great Dictator in nineteen forty. It came out
before the US entered the war. His Little Tramp character
is modified slightly into a Jewish barber, and he also
plays a like really obvious Hitler clone. And it's the

(48:10):
first and this is the first time that a Hollywood
film acknowledges that the Nazis were specifically after the Jews.
And I think it's interesting to me that also the
fact that he was roma like this is something that
affects him right right, and it brings us one of
the greatest moments in political Hollywood history. At the end
of the film, the Jewish barber is mistaken for the dictator,

(48:33):
and he goes up and he gives a speech, and
the film gets rid of the fourth wall, much as
Brecked and all the other people would have liked right
and specifically as a way to counter propaganda, look directly
at the camera and talk, which is interesting because I
feel like, now if you did that, it would kind
of read as propagandistic, and like this speech that he
gives is kind of propagandistic, but by breaking the fourth

(48:54):
wall it ties into this art movement at the time
of using that to get people to question shit. So
the Jewish barber goes up, pretending to be the dictator,
and he gives a speech about how we should destroy
national borders, how we should never listen to despots, how
soldiers should fight for democracy and against dictatorship, and I'm
I'm going to read part of it. I don't want

(49:14):
to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help
everyone if possible, jew, gentile, black man, white. We all
want to help one another. Human beings are like that.
We want to live by each other's happiness, not for
each by each other's misery. We don't want to hate
and despise one another. In this world, there is room
for everyone, and the good Earth is rich and can
provide for everyone. The way of life can be free

(49:35):
and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has
poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has
goose stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed,
but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery gives abundance. That
gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has
made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think
too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we

(49:56):
need humanity more than cleverness. We need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will
be lost. And he just goes on in this like
complete not what people are fucking doing in movies at
the time, And he spent two years making The Great Dictator,
and all the while the English and American censors because
England isn't at war at the start. England isn't at

(50:18):
war with Nazi Germany either, and they're like, don't fucking
make this movie. We're at peace with Hitler. You can't
make fun of Hitler. And he basically is like, all right, well,
I'm going to hire all the movie halls myself. I'm
the most famous man in the world, and I'm going
to fucking make this anti Nazi film mm hm, because
I fucking hate Hitler. And before he finishes it, war

(50:41):
was on and France was conquered and England was at
war with Germany and the US hadn't entered the war yet.
It winds up his highest grossing film up to that date,
but it's controversial. A lot of the critics of the
last speech was just him declaring communism, which is funny
because it's a speech about democracy, like literally uses the
word democracy over and over again. And the press starts

(51:02):
to hate him at this point, and he literally tanks
his career with this. All of his films afterwards play
to his existing fan base but fail to attract new
audiences because the press spends the rest of his life
attacking him. Sometimes the press gets it right and they
attack him for being a fucking child, raping piece of shit,
fucking absolute monster.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
Yeah, you will.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Be surprised to know that mostly they spend all of
their time calling him a communist, which he wasn't. But
even if he was, you know, right, and his films
start being picketed after The Great Dictator, and some other
filmmakers love the speech. At least one director puts the
whole text into like his Christmas card that year, which

(51:45):
is like the most like lefty Hollywood thing I can
imagine someone doing. He reads it to about sixty million
people on the radio. But while he's reading it, he's
in a hall and Nazis, American Nazis in the audience
are like jeering him and coughing really loudly and trying
to disrupt the whole thing. And he also in his autobiography,

(52:07):
he wrote about the film quote, had I known the
actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not
have made The Great Dictator. I could not have made
fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis. However, I
was determined to ridicule their mystic bilge about a pure
blooded race. And uh, it seems like you you can
react as this like tension or weirdness, like.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
I'm just over here processing. I'm like still no, keep
going and I'm still collecting my thoughts.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Okay, he doesn't stop his anti Nazi stuff with just
making a film, he fucks up his whole career by
going out on a limb over politics. Time and time again.
He gives speeches about how America needs to help England
open up a second front against the war while the
Nazis were busy fighting the USSR. He talked with Roosevelt
and with previous presidents, anyone who would listen about why
the US needed to join the war themselves with England

(53:01):
and Russia. And he makes no bones about being like, yes,
and Russia. I don't care that they're communists, right, I
hate Nazis. In the middle of his autobiography, while talking
about the speeches he was giving he like and all
the flaks he got, he stops and then spends like
a paragraph talking about the tits of some lady that
he saw. Because he's a piece of shit, there's no other.

(53:27):
He gets labeled a communist, which he denies his entire
life because he wasn't a communist. He called himself two
things instead. This part makes me sad. He called himself
a peacemonger, and he called himself an anarchist, and I
don't want him. In nineteen fifty seven, he put out
a king in New York and he's playing a king
and his own ten year old son plays a kid
who choose him out about how evil giant corporations are

(53:51):
and how national borders is like shitty and the whole
thing is this anti McCarthy film. And the same year
he says he's an anarchist, he says, as for politics,
an anarchist, I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can't
stand caged animals. People must be free, except obviously not
except teenage.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
The woman he was yeah married too, Yeah, the girl,
the little girls who was married too.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Who were hiding in their rooms from yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
So he wasn't American born. And one time in nineteen
fifty two, while he was out of the country, the
US sort of doesn't invite him back because he's a
filthy communist. They revoke his re entry permit and he
moves to Switzerland. Not you came here and sexually assaulted
uncountable numbers of people, but you are a communist even
though you're not. And this should be a story about

(54:38):
a Roma born anarchist filmmaker makes himself into the greatest
star in the world, gambles at all to pressure the
US government publican too go into war against the Nazi empire,
and instead it's a story about a gross fucking man
who ripped teenagers who went to parties, and his way
of entertaining people at parties was to mimic a woman
having an orgasm. So fuck you, Charlie Chaplin for fucking
all that up. When Chaplain died, some grave robbers still

(55:02):
his body and they held it for ransom. They called
up one of his ex wives and was like, we've
got Chaplain. She says, so what and hangs up the phone.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
There should be a whole episode of your podcast on
just that, and even.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yeah, yeah, so what click click I love that I see.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
And Marlon Brando described Charlie Chaplin as the most sadistic
man I have ever met. All right, Brando, All right, Brando,
And this is this is not how I usually end
an episode, But that's what I've got about anti fasion
and leftism that flows through filmmaking. So what we've learned

(55:51):
here today is that Shrek uh, not the ogre with
the donkey friend, but Max Shrek, as far as we know, Yeah,
it wasn't a real life monster slash predatory vampire literally
like but yeah, there's I mean, I'm glad there were

(56:16):
people I never quite understand. I don't know, I've complicated
feelings about this because on one hand, Hollywood and many,
many of not most film industries around the world are
I mean, they're all for sure capitalists, and they are
you know, priority number one is to make entertainment, is

(56:40):
you know, to entertain and some of that. But but
I think a lot of people conflate that entertainment has
to be completely escapist and cannot also be informative or
you know, getting behind a particular movement or like political
ideology or like, I don't know, the people who are like, no,

(57:04):
entertainment should just be strictly entertainment all the time, one
hundred percent and not anything that has any sort of
like political message, I don't trust those people. Yeah, because
while a lot of the entertainment I like is very
strictly you know, like silly, mindless, escapist media, a lot

(57:24):
of it is also very political or like, you know,
has some kind of message that could be perceived as political.
So anyone who's like entertainment should never be political, I
don't Again, I don't, I just don't agree. So for

(57:46):
the people who are willing to with their platform and
with their art form and entertainment also push a political agenda,
especially if that political agenda is anti fascist. That's rock
and roll. So good for them, and fuck Charlie Chaplin and.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
My tirade.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah yeah, Caitlyn, do you have anything you would like
to plug.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
Give?

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Hey?

Speaker 4 (58:18):
Speaking of anti fascist media, the Bechdel cast is anti.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Fascist coming out with a bold stand.

Speaker 4 (58:26):
Yeah right, and uh, not only that, Jamie and I
are good people who in our private lives Cita, are
still good and not scary or just needed.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
That's the funny.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
I co sign for Jamie and Kitlyn.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
Okay, thank you so much. It's really good.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
They're really really good friends to me. Yeah, yeah, I've
got I've got receipts. How good of a person I am.
I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Kaitlyn has talked to me while I cried before, okay forever?

Speaker 4 (59:14):
Yeah, I believe to quote Paddington too. Okay, if we
are kind and polite, the world will be right. And
I behave that way in my public life and in
my private life. Excuse me, someone who has something to
prove had a very loud engine that just drove by. Anyway,

(59:36):
I can be followed. I was like, what as I say?
You can follow me on social media at Caitlyn Dante
on Twitter and Instagram. Hey, if you want to follow
me on TikTok, I have exactly two posts on there
and they're both Titanic related. So really just filling out
the trifecta of my personality. We've got Titanic, Paddington, and

(01:00:00):
now are r R.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
So I'm so glad we filled that out to a trifecta.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
As as was stated earlier, the triangle is the strongest
shape that might have been in the first episode. But
I was stated on the record. It's on the record
and you can you cannot remove it. So what am
I saying? And listen to the Bechdel Cast. Please, Oh
that's where this all started. And we are publicly and

(01:00:29):
privately anti fascist. On the Bechdel Cast, it's a and
it's a podcast about movies and examining those movies from
an intersectional feminist lens. And uh, that's yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
That's so listen to that episode that I did on
the cast.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Wait, which what did you do?

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
We did nine to five?

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Oh, ship, that's cool.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
Five and and once again the Shrek two episode A banger.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, when are you gonna do? No saratu?

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Oh do you want to come on for it?

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Because yeah, I'll rewatch.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
What if it doesn't hold up, I'll be so disappointed.
I'll be like I went through all this work to
be like, yeah, this guy rules, and then I'm gonna
be like this portrayal is different. I mean, actually I don't.
It doesn't make someone a bad person. They played it.
I'm pretty sure he praise on women. I think that's
his thing in the in the movie is kind.

Speaker 4 (01:01:28):
Of the whole thing about Vampire Lord.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
He's actually just playing Charlie Chaplin in it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:34):
I think, dude, Charlie Chaplin real life vampire.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Yeah, and you know, listeners stay tuned. After we forced
one to watch the Toilight series, She's team Edward or
team Jacob.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
I'm team Charlie Swan.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie Swan. Oh oh okay, good to know.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
Bella, Bella's dad, Bella's Wow, he's a cop. He is
a cop. Never mind, never mind, I forgot.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
I was like, I was like, Charlie, sorry, Charlie, a
cab includes you.

Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
Yeah, there's truly no one on the team Anna Kendrick
and wonderful in those films.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Margaret, you have a book that's not that people can
purchase and they can see you on book tour which
they can find from your Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy is
that guy?

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
That's true? That is correct? I am also a good person.

Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
Probably, I agree. I hope to be you are.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Aspiring good person. Yeah, and you can also check me
out kidding. You can find me on the backdel cast.
I will be talking about no s Faratu. This is
just literally the whole thing was a long con to
get myself back on backdel cast.

Speaker 4 (01:02:53):
And also we'd love to have you back anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
We Are the Best, which is a movie about me
and Jamie and Caitlin when we started a punk band
as teenagers in Sweden.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
In nineteen eighty.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, it's a biopic about us that we actually directed ourselves.
And this is a funny joke that I am making
and it's really good to point that out. And you
can follow Sophie on the internet at rub Salting.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Can find men. You can find me on Twitter. Sometimes
you can't find me on Instagram because they banned my
account all the time. But you can't find me. It
happens often, but you can find me on Twitter at
Why Underscore Sophie Underscore Why, and you can follow at
cool Zone Media at fool zone Media. Is that correct, Margaret,
I do it?

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
I think so. I wasn't paying enough attention to the specifics,
Oh cool?

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
I mean, if you're not paying attention, I guess the
episode has to be over what it's over?

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Oh Cool?

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit
our website foolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.