April 19, 2023 • 41 mins
Romance across race and religion has been the focus of a bunch of movies – some comedies, some dramas. Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill are taking a swing at it now, with their new movie, ‘You People.’ Ben and Khalil talk about its attempts to address the intricacies of a relationship between a Black, Muslim woman and a white, Jewish man. Is this a successful update to the 1967 classic ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’?
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Push it. I'm khalil Ja Bron Muhammad.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
some of my best friends.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Are Some of my best friends are black, White, Jewish Muslim.
In this show, we wrestle with.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
The challenges and the absurdities of a deeply.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Divided and unequal country. And today we're talking about inter
racial and inter religious love on the big screen.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I don't know about you, Ben, but so many people
have asked me over the past several weeks. Are we
going to talk about the Netflix movie you people?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh, my gosh, so many. It's a movie that came
out earlier this year. It's starring Jonah Hill and Eddie
Murphy among many great actors, and it's written by Jonah
Hill and Kenya Barris of Blackish fame.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's right, and this is a movie that is I mean,
the opening line in this movie could not be more
appropriate for.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
You and me.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yo, yo yo, Welcome to the Mowing Easy Show. I'm
mow into my left is my favorite jew with nothing
to do, My boy easy.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
All right, man. So, Jonah Hill's character Ezra he does
a podcast. Two hosts, a gem doing a podcast with
one white. It's about race and culture in America. And listen,
as we speak, Pushkin lawyers are out there. They are
going after Netflix to make sure that we get paid.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
That's right, because they stole our idea. They built a
whole show, a whole movie around I knew it.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I knew they would steal that.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
But no, seriously, this movie comes at a really interesting
time in the country. I mean, we're somewhere in between
the Trump era, the Biden era and what comes next.
And as so often is the case, you know, this
is a movie with a plaud It's an interracial rom com,
but it's a rom com within this bigger social moment.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And so of course you said, you said it's an
interracial rom com, and I just want to say, there's
a white man and a black woman they fall in love.
But even more than that, or in addition to that,
the white dude, Ezra is Jewish, the black woman is Muslim,
so it's an inter religious rom com.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Also, it's like an interracial inter religious rom com.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
How about that man last ensue.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, So, as I was saying, and good point. As
I was saying like, here is this mashup of relationships
that are meant to show the boundaries of our existing society,
to show the segregation that we still all live with,
even for people like you and me, Even our communities
here are represented as being sort of narrow and parochio
(03:29):
and not really able to see the fullness of the
other side.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And this is where movies are really powerful because they
show us ourselves and sometimes we even laugh at ourselves,
but they're these cultural artifacts, these touchstones. We're able to
understand all those boundaries and how to cross them by
seeing versions of it on the screen or on our televisions.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
That's right, So guess what we're going to talk about.
We're going to talk about how well to some degree
this movie helps us see ourselves, and to what degree
there are these antecedents and other movie stories that unpack
a similar topic.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
How are we going to do this today, Khalil, So in.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The first half, we're going to talk about white black romance.
We're going to talk about two people falling in love
and basically how American history and society and most especially
their parents get in the way, like all the racial
baggage that gums up the true love story at the
heart of you people.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Let's call lets what should we call that first half?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Well, let's call it Guess Who's coming to dinner?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
All right?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
All right, all right? And then the second part. I mean,
I have a lot of experience with that first part
that you're describing. But the second part, let's explore the
black say more, in the second part, let's explore the
black and Jewish dynamics. All right, let's look at the
black and Jewish thing. So this movie comes out just
a little bit or almost at the exact same time
(04:53):
as Kanye West is saying he's about to go deaf
con three on the Jewish people, after Kyrie Irving gets
suspended from the NBA for tweeting about a movie.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Net's player.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's right, he's on the Dallas Mavericks now because you know,
Brooklyn was way too Jewish for him, Like he tweets about,
you know, endorsing a movie that makes these claims about
the Holocaust now not happening, and about Jews being involved
in the slave trade. And listen, also amid like twenty twenty,
this this last year was the highest ever on record,
(05:26):
you know, record being going back to nineteen seventy nine
of hate crimes against Jewish people, which you know, we
could say is still like a fragment of say, what's
going on in terms of racism towards blacks? But this
is at this heightened moment. That's right, it's so interesting
to explore this. And since you got a name for
your part, I'm gonna call this what's what's your name?
(05:47):
A rabbi and an e mom walk into a bar?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Oh oy oy OOI all right?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So, like even the title you People is is like
coded kind of racism and often like unintentional bigoted phrase
like hey you people. It's a lot like some of
my best friends are. It's perfect movie for us to
talk about right here, here is the breakdown of what
happens in You People. And there're gonna be a few
spoiler alerts, but you need to know some of the
(06:14):
plot and what happens in it for us to talk
about it for this to make sense.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, Jonah Hill's Ezra and Lauren London's Emrah they meet
cute in Los Angeles?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What does me cute mean?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Now?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
You know what's yes, you do, man, that's every that's
every rom com you meet in a funny way, and
you know, you get connected. And then they go on
this date and the date, you know, there's a montage.
You know, it lasts for hours, they talk into the night,
and then it jumps ahead six months and they're living together.
(06:46):
And you know, in my opinion about this movie, these
two actors, Jonah Hill and Lauren London, they have zero chemistry.
This is my opinion. They have nothing. They have nothing together.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
But can I say something about this just for a second.
There is an important thing that brings them together, right,
which is quote unquote the culture. The culture, and in
that way, the culture being you know euphemism for black
culture hip hop. Yeah, they share this in common. So
they both hit kind of hip hop heads. They're both
in the sneaker culture. And as we've already said, Zara
(07:18):
is a co host with a black co host who
is non gender conforming mo who is an actual comedian,
and so he's he's like got his real bona fides.
He's not just some some Jewish dude from lam.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
See. See you're already like codd on me. He's not
just some Jewish dude. This is already messed up. We're
already like you're black and Jewish from Chicago. So more plot.
It's all going, well, they're living together. Then Ezra's like,
I want to take this another step further. I'm in love.
I want to marry her. But two people white and black,
(07:50):
they don't exist in a cultural irracial bubble. They have
to meet one another's parents. You know, parents are they
stand in as like all of the rest of society
the past, and really like who the children are? That's right,
and it's you know, these are the things that are
going to keep people apart.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yes, you're right, these are the things that are going
to keep people apart. So much so that this whole
story around what the parents are capable of. Hearkens back
to a film over fifty years ago called Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner. It is, in many ways the precedent
for this story. This is a film with a bang
(08:29):
up cast of character. Sidney Potier, that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You're like, you're like out here, like I am the
Hollywood reporter, a bang up cast.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yes, your auditioning, oh man whatever, Spencer, Tracy, Sidney Poitier,
Catherine Hepburn as the mother of the white daughter who
who they're worried about marrying Sidney Poitier. Isabelle Sanford appears
here as Tilly the maid, and then introducing a woman
named Catherine Houlton, who is the main character, who is
the white woman who is gonna marry Sidney Poitier. This
(09:01):
movie comes out in late nineteen sixty seven. It's just
six months after the Loving versus Virginia Supreme Court case.
You remember what that case was.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
That is so amazing to think about. So a movie
about interracial marriage comes out right after the Supreme Court
says it's now legal for black and white people to
get married.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
That's right, which had been banned across the South and
most particularly. The film says in the film, in the
writing of the script says, sixteen or seventeen states would
object to you guys getting married.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So that on that movie.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, man, it's amazing the pressing issue, like the weight
of the world, is happening in the context of this film.
So here's a quick story. These two fall in love,
as they say, in twenty minutes. They both happen to
be in Hawaii. Sidney Poitier plays this epidemiologist. He's a
world renowned public health doctor. And it's not clear what
(09:57):
the character Joey is actually doing for a living. But
she's twenty three years old. She's young, she's exploring the world.
These two fall in love, they meet cute, and they
fall in love instantly. So the big idea here is
that they want to get married immediately, and they have
to convince Joey's parents, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, that
(10:18):
they should get married, but they wanted to do it
the old fashioned way to get permission. At the end
of the day, this is what the story turns on.
Will the parents consent, will the parents go along? But
there's a wrinkle here. Instead of this being like some
story about some throwback Alabama parents you know who would
of course object, Spencer Tracy, the father, is presented as
(10:39):
this San Francisco liberal, you know. He when he first
meets John, who is played by Sidney Poortier, he is
all in. He's like, Hey, who's this guy? Oh my god,
what an accomplished gentleman you are. He pays no attention
to the possibility that this guy wants to marry his daughter.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm all into this because I've seen this at some point,
but I've totally forgotten it.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
So I'm down, yes, And the mother, Katherine Hepburn, shows
all of these faces of consternation and concern, but in
the end it is clear that she's okay with this.
And so the story is about getting on board at.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Some nineteen sixties white liberals they want to you know,
this is in the civil rights moment. They want to
embrace this idea of interracial marriage, that it's okay, that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And so at some point the dad is being called
out by this priest who's like one of his best friends.
Monsignor Ryan shows up and he has this really powerful line.
He says, you know something, I'm surprised at you. Says,
you know what, You're just some broken down, phony liberal
who has to come face to face with your own principles.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
He says, there is some reactionary bigot trying to get
out in you. And I'm like, oh snap, that is
such a powerful resident line, right. That is the line
that in many ways you people plays with. It's like
this notion that liberals are all cool with everything until
it's their own kid. This movie reserves, though the most
strident critiques of this relationship, for the black character played
(12:03):
by Isabel Sandford. The maid Tilly, She is the one
who has given the responsibility in this film for our
tiulating black people's perspectives on interracial marriage. In this clip,
she's challenging Sidney Poitier because she's like, Hey, I have
raised this girl my whole life, and I'm not going
to let you mess up her life.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
You may think you're fooling Miss Joy and her folks,
but you ain't fooling me for a minute. You think
I don't see what you are. You're one of those
smooth talking, smart ass niggas just out of all you
can get with your black power and all that other
trouble making nonsense. You bring any troubling in and you
just like to find out what black power really mean.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So that is a really powerful statement. And in many ways,
Sidney Poitier's black parents, who are eventually invited to dinner,
never really articulate their objections they're placed on this maid.
But in the end, this story resolves itself with the
father coming around because he's ultimately challenged by his wife
who's like, I've never been more disappointed in you. And
(13:00):
the moral of this story is that while he has
to come to terms with this, he basically says that
you guys will have to survive in a world full
of prejudices, bigotries, blind hatreds, and stupid fears, and you
will have to cling to each other and to quote unquote,
screw all those people.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
That's so interesting. It sounds like a lot of the
movie is focused on the parents rather than on the
young people and their dynamics. What we were saying before
about society being represented by the parents.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
That's right, all right, we're going to take a break.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
All right, all right, so we are we are fifty
years later. Now we're you know, nineteen sixty seven. Guess
who's coming to dinner? And now we're at you people.
You know, interracial love has been legal for more than
half a century. What does you people have to say
about this story about interracial love that's different.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Well, first thing, it's like a world made by Lewis
far Kahan and the Black power movement.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Well you meant, well.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
The signpost in this film of like what blackness is
is embodied in the character of Eddie Murphy. The father
of the main character. Eddie Murphy's name is ackbar Amira's father.
That's right, Eddie Murphy's name is Akbar, and of course
he's changed his name like so many radicals in the
nineteen sixties and seventies, from Woody from Woody.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
The first time we see him, he's walking in. He's
wearing a Fred Hampton was murdered t shirt. That's right,
former Black Panther leader. And so he's coming and he
is all of the signifiers of being a black radical,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And to my mind, he's the closest thing as importing
the voice of Tilly played by Isabelle Sandford into this story.
He's the most unreasonable person in this story, so much
so that he actually blames his wife's white grandfather, who
apparently was some light scanned dude, for like polluting the
bloodstock of his light scanned daughter. Let's listen to this
(15:02):
clip where Akbar is leaning over to his wife to
blame her for this whole fiasco.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
There's your white granddaddy, come back and haunt me.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
What that nigga never liked me?
Speaker 5 (15:14):
And it started off by him putting them strong ass
jeans in you that lighten up the coffee, and my
babies are you?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Then he planted a poison pill in my little baby girl, and.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
It has grown into this white boy that invited us
to lunch at Roscoe Man. All right, Eddie Murphy, h
what's interesting you're saying that he sort of is voicing
Tilly from guess Who's coming to dinner? But he's also
the white dad because in this movie, he's the one
that's opposed to this marriage. He's the one that's opposed
to the union of black and white. And we get
(15:44):
Ezra's parents embodied by Julia Luis Dreyfus, you know, from
Veep and from Seinfeld. She plays Shelley Khane, and she
is like genuinely thrilled. She's giddy that she's going to
have this black daughter. That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
There's this early moment where she says something like, you know,
we're going to become a family of color. We are
going to be a family of the future.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah. And her races is, you know, showing white people
as oblivious they're inadvertently racist. And you know the first
time that she has the kids come to their house
to dinner, the white family's house, she says apropos of
absolutely nothing the first time meeting her. You know, the
police are and always have been fucked up they're really
(16:27):
terrible to black people. I hate it, you know. She
just announces this out of nothing, total awkward, a different
kind of racism than opposing this marriage.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, but can I say something to you about that.
There's a kind of virtue signaling in that. And that's
what I was trying to say with Spencer Tracy's character,
like he's the San Francisco liberal who gets it, like
there's nothing weird about this black dude in my apartment.
I am down with that. So yes, this is the
updated version of that kind of liberal virtue signaling. So
you people, in some ways, given that point imagines racism
(16:59):
is only really about bigoted individuals. It's not really a
social commentary and structural racism, even as it gestures to
police violence or as an other line that the character
Shelley Cohen articulates is that everyone should bow to the
national anthem. These really aren't the issues that motivate like kneeling.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Kneeling, Yeah, she's trying to She's like a Colin Kaepernick,
She's trying to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So these really aren't the issues that carry. The more
weight to the film, the more way of the film
really falls on stereotypes, you know, the sort of bigoted
ideas that people still hold when they think, you know
you people. That's the kind of conceit of this film.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's super interesting. And I agree with you completely that
that the movie to me like shows wacky characters being
wacky and it's there, you know, there isn't some deeper
analysis and you know, like a lot of these types
of movies, the way this one functions is it's sort
of an excuse to get mostly men to hang out
(18:00):
with one another and to do something. So we get
Jonahill and Eddie Murphy's character. They're going to go off
and like explore one another.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And like there's actually funny montage of moments, right, there's.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
A montage of moments when they go out and like
Eddie Murphy is testing him of like how much does
he really know about the culture? And here black culture
and so like what constitute black culture in the movie
in this moment, is he's going to take him to
a basketball court in the hood or a barber shop
that's actually like a gang barbershop. You know, they never
actually go to Achbar's house. Akbar is Muslim. They don't
(18:34):
go to a mosque you know, this is the whole
extent of it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, so some of our listeners might be thinking, Okay, Benicola,
you guys are beating up on this film a little
bit too much. You're imposing too much ectation.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I'm going to beat up on him more, man, I'm
going to beat up on him more, because like Eddie
Murphy's working at like thirty percent here.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
You know, it is like it is one of the
most low key performances in all of cinematic history. But
there's a there's a counterpoint to this film, and it's
the film, for example, that Jordan Peele makes about white
liberals and the way they literally commodify black bodies. Get Out.
Get Out is a story of inner ration, romance turned
(19:10):
into a horror story.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, when you were talking about Guess Who's coming to Dinner?
I was thinking about how that how get Out is
a total response to that. It is like taking that
and turning it into a horror film. That when you
go to this house and these these well meaning liberals, Uh,
there is something so much deeper and structural that is,
it's so dangerous that it's going to fucking kill you.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's right, And the metaphor of being lobottomized and having
your bolly stolen is just the horror spin on it.
But the point is that you're still being consumed, that
black culture is being consumed, that blackness is being consumed,
even by so called friends.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, there's something that irked me about you people. I
got to admit. It's like, so, Ezra is supposed to
be this guy who is He says, I was raised
by hip hop, you know. But he's talking to his
fiance his girlfriend's parents, and you know, he can't even
talk about uh, Malcolm X clearly, and he's got one
of his boys, and one of the jokes is that
(20:06):
one of his boys stormed the Capitol on January And
come on, man, you can't have both, you know, like
like as a joke, it just doesn't even work. It's
this idea that you just said of like quirky you know,
individual racism and having no like larger implications. That's right,
all right, man, So spoiler alert, Like, you know, the
(20:29):
movie moves forward and this couple, Emra and Ezra they
decide that they just can't do it. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
The pressure that the failures of the family, the friends,
the network, the whole social community that they're part of
just is not evolved enough to handle this relationship.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Ezra is on his podcast and he laments that race
in America conquers love, but at the end of the day,
when it comes to black and white people, I don't
think love is enough.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
There's too many other outside factors.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
He says, whether friends or family. People can't accept what
they don't understand. That's a really good podcast. Huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You know, thinking about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? In
this film, there is something that feels like it didn't evolve,
like it didn't feel the promise of Guess Who's coming
to dinner, which ultimately was the cautionary note of a
generation two generations ago, and in this film is basically saying,
not only are we no further along, but we don't
(21:34):
even have the guts to talk about what's happening in
our states. I mean, you think about Guess Who's coming
to dinner? Talking about sixteen or seventeen states that had
outlawed marriage. We've got sixteen or seventeen states that outlawed
even talking about structural racism, So you know, we're going
to take a break and when we come back, we're
going to look at the inter religious part of this
(21:55):
rom com story.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
We'll be right back, all right, all right, Khalil, we
are back on the Mow and Easy Show.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And I got my jew with nothing to do, hang
it out with me this afternoon.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
That is so true, so true, all right, man, about
Jewish stuff. Every Jewish person I know who saw this
movie doesn't like it. They're angered by it, they're frustrated
by it. And let me tell you, Jewish people are
on like high alert for stuff like this. They want
stuff like this to be like meaningful. They want to
like for it to get into like, you know, the
(22:44):
good stuff about Jewish and Black history of working together.
They wanted to do something progressive and listen, I did
tons of research, really really, oh man. I went to
Jewish Twitter, you know, I searched it. I read the foreword.
I mean I was looking around.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
And to an editorial.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Man, to be very serious. There are editorials all over
like Jewish publications. For real, they are talking about this
and for Jewish people something like this. You know, I'm
going to quote a Philip Roth short story. They want
to know, is you people? Is it good for the
Jews or no good for the Jews.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Well, I was maybe not quite in that line. I
was curious if they felt like the film was a
touchstone for evoking the historic relationship of progressive Jews and
black civil rights activists from the nineteen sixties, Like saw
this film as kind of a way to jump start
or re energize that relationship because I know a few
(23:47):
conversations I've had with some of my Jewish friends, my
other Jewish friends, that's a topic that often comes up.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Man, they wanted it, they wanted it to do. There's
actually a joke in there when Amira's brother first learns
that his sister is dating a guy named Ezra. He's
hopeful because he's like, is that a third generation civil
rights leader? You know, like everyone was named sort of
like you know, they had these old Testament.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Names, right that he's not actually white, but he's a
black dude with a Jewish Jewish first name. Yeah, that
is a funny joke.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
So so I want to say that this movie in
terms of Black and Jewish relationships, to me, it started promising.
And I watched this with my family, so my two
black Jewish children and my black wife and the first
scene is set in a synagogue on Joam Kapoor, the
holiest day of holy days. And you know, so already
(24:42):
we have a sense that, yes, these are white people,
but there are certain kind of white people.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
They're Jewish, And can I ask a question about that
as a non Jew? By that you mean because because
they were obviously Jews that don't go to synagogue or
Yam Kapur, So you're saying that it's also religiously meaningful
self identified Jews. That you mean or does everybody go
to synagogue on ya.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It's like the one day when people if you're Jewish, yes,
it's the one day we're going to do something. So
like like people are going to synagogue one day a year.
That's the one day a year. And it actually Ezra
is signaled right away as one of those guys, like
he's wearing high tops in there, his legs are shaken,
he's totally uninterested in this. He is told he is
related to us as somebody who is a secular Jew
(25:25):
in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Got it well. I was like both curious about how
you responded to the engagement ring moment because there's this
joke in the film about the size of Ezra's engagement
ring that he's purchased for Mirah. It's tiny, and first
teases him about it, but then there's this like setup
for how he's going to present it to a mirror,
(25:48):
and I was like, oh, oh, is that like a
bridge too far?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Let's listen to that.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
So what's the story here? That's your grandmother, Yes, my
grandmother's and it's her she got into Holocaust or whatever,
Like how old is she?
Speaker 4 (26:04):
It's from the Holocaust?
Speaker 5 (26:07):
Been a minute. I think she got catering.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
She was like three or four years old.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
It's a different time from them.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, you know, so so jokes about the Holocaust,
you know, they could be a little dangerous, you know.
But uh but even that joke is like being tasteless
or controversial. Like that's where a lot of humor lize
and even a lot of truth. I was still with
the movie at that point, Okay, right, I like that.
I liked that I was there, But from for me,
from there, the movie sort of falls off the cliff,
(26:37):
like why why? What so?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Because because I have to admit, first time I saw
the film, I was a little bit less impressed. Second time,
I thought it grew on me.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Ah, I had a different like, I was like okay
with it because I watched it with my family. The
first time, they were willing to laugh at anything, and
then the second time, I was like, oh man, I
was also.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Half asleep the first time, so I'll admit that.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Okay, all right. So to me, that the character's jewishness,
that that how they are, how they are Jewish, is
sort of invisible. It's not really a part of the film.
And even from those first moments and from those first jokes,
it starts to disappear. And even if they are secular
Jews in Los Angeles, still sort of like what that means.
(27:18):
And since you used another movie to make an explanation,
since you use some guess who's coming to dinner, I'm
going to bring up another Jewish movie, a recent Jewish movie.
So last year, this movie Armageddon Time came out and
did you see that movie?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I did not. I didn't even know it came out.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
It was too Jewish.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
It was like only shown in synagogues and in Jewish
community centers.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
No, no, no, it's a big release movie. So it's
about and you know, it's kind of relevant to us
because it's about two middle school kids in the nineteen eighties,
one black, one white, and it definitely focuses on the
Jewish family, all right, And so this Jewish middle school
boy is trying to figure out the world and his
friendship with this black kid, and he goes to his
grandfather who's played by Anthony Hopkins, which is kind of funny.
(28:02):
Anthony Hopkins is not Jewish. He's playing this Jewish guy.
But the thing about this movie is that the Jewish
is so omnipresent. So the grandfather who's still you know,
all the grandparents, they still have their European accents because
they've come there from the Holocaust. They're talking about the Holocaust,
they're talking about being Jewish. And really what's presented to
(28:23):
the characters is a kind of choice in the face
of racism in America. They have to make a choice
between coming across as Jewish or white, and the two
are different. They could lean into the privilege that, you know,
the whiteness gives them access to a kind of privilege
and they can lean up to it, or they can
(28:43):
sort of say we're going to stand up against injustice
and risk that.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And so here, justice in this context has to do
with whom.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
With racism that the Jewish grandson is hearing anti black racism.
And so here's the grandfather played by Anthony Hopkins, talking
about his experiences from the Holocaust, and he's schooling his
grandson on what to do.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
You run the mom thing next time those schmuck say
anything better about those black kids or those stans. You'd
be a mens to those kids. Okay, they never had
your advantage.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yo, Man, what's deep about this is at no. But
later in the movie the father his father gives the
exact opposite advice. He's like, you got to save yourself
whatever leg up you can get. You know, we face
so much anti semitism and oppression. We need to like,
if you've got an advantage, take it. But in New People, Man,
and New People, there is no choice, all right. The
(29:36):
characters aren't wrestling with being white and Jewish. You know,
Jewish Jewishness comes up in a couple jokes, but it's
mostly not there. And I'm like, I'll give one example,
and you could probably think of others too when you
start thinking of the movie this way. So all of
the female characters are incredibly underwritten in New People. But
there's this scene where Shelley and Emira, you know, so
(29:57):
they're going to go off in the same way that
the men have gone off, and they don't. There's nothing
Jewish about what they do. They go to a spa.
There's no like explanation of like, there's nothing that Emirah
has to do to try to understand who they are.
It's just like eh, and the same thing like like
Akbar doesn't take Ezra to a mosque or anything religious.
You know, there's just like some at some point, there's
(30:19):
just like some you know, silly joke. You know, Ezra
has to date other women, Jewish women, and there's like,
you know, you what do you know about black culture?
Maybe you know about bagel culture. That's like the extent
of like the Jewishness.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
So what you're saying is that religion here is treated
almost like a caricature.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, and a wink at different moments. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
In fact, I thought it was interesting that part of
the way to show Akbar's bigotry, his own anti whiteness,
so to speak, is that he is a big fan
of Far Khan and goes through this long, elaborate story
of how he received a koofi from Far Khan as
kind of a special ceremonial rites of passage for him,
(30:57):
and so far Khan stands in as this kind of
both acknowledgment of his Muslim identity, which is very controversial
in terms of most Muslims who are Sunni Muslims, even
a black people, and also as this political controversy that
makes him even more unlikable in some ways as a character,
as really a setup for the moral arc of the film.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, and so Lewis Fowerkunt also has this history of
anti Semitism, He's made comments before, and so Ezra has
zero stake in this, like he doesn't there, Like what
do you think about Lewis Fowerkun. He's like, I love him,
He's great, He's got nothing. The parents are a little
more uncomfortable, but this seemed like an opportunity to explore things.
You put these two parents together, the Muslim parents and
(31:41):
the Jewish parents, something could have happened. And actually, let's
stay with that scene a little bit more because it's
it takes place. There's a dinner at the children's house
and they invite both sets of parents to bring them together.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And this is the guests who's coming to dinner moment
for this film. This is the filmic homage to that
earlier film when everyone is in the room and we
are set up for fireworks.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And so the parents start talking and their differences around
race and religion start to emerge, and they're all sort
of like you know, hot button issues that come up.
Listen to this moment.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
All I'm saying is that our people came here with
nothing like everybody else.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Actually, you kind of sort of came here with the
money that you made from the slave trade. Like everyone preach,
preach mother, preach mother. It's very I would like to
see your sources on Maybe go.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Get my purse.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I've got my slave receipts in my purse.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Go get my purse. Because I don't turn on the
news every day and see people in Yamaka's getting shot
by police just because they was out minding their business. Okay, wow, yeah,
I want you to just talk about this and get
in trouble. Yeah. So, so there's like there are different
(33:00):
pieces of this, and there's like the last thing that
Eddie Murphy's Achbar says is really interesting, right, like like
Jewish people who is white are not being killed by
police officers right, that's like a conversation about privilege, about whiteness,
what is anti Semitism, what's anti blackness? Like it's all
kind of there, but man, it's caked up in this
(33:22):
other stuff, you know, Like that that thing that the
mother says Nea Long's character, Fatima Achbar's wife, she's saying
the exact sort of racist, anti Semitic trope. That is
what got Kyrie Irving in trouble. So, like what to
make of it? That scene, Like it's just like throwing
(33:43):
out a laundry list of stuff and it's not owning
any of the any of the material.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, no, I agree with you there, And it did
feel like, again it positioned in this case, and this
might explain why so many of your Jewish friends and
so many within the larger Jewish community in the United
States felt like the film wasn't a good film because
it was an unnecessary provocation. It's also generally within the
(34:10):
main of the black community, a talking point even among
black people who identify as Muslims, whether their nation of
Islam Muslims or Sunni Muslims. So in that way, the
film traffics in a stereotype that has this kind of
both sidesism to it, meaning it's you know, like the
white privilege has to be set against this black list
(34:31):
nationalism that is extreme and anti semitic, and that's not
really how most people aren't engaging into what is already
a difficult relationship.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
And you know, so what was what was so problematic
or troubling about those moments when you know, Kyrie Irving
endorsed that film, or when Kanye West spoke out against
Jewish people, is that you know, you said that most
most black people aren't trafficking in this kind of like
anti semitic language, but a lot of people don't know
what's what's in the mainstream, and you know, to suddenly
(35:03):
hear it in in famous black people talking about it
and hearing it even coming from the right, and then
to be in kind of a mainstream Netflix movie like this,
it does have this kind of you know, danger of
even feeling like, oh no, this must be okay. And
as you said, it's like set up against something like
police brutality.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
They're like equivalents, right right, Well, I think you've convinced
me now that we've had a full work up of
the failures of this film to deal with inter religious
components of this relationship that actually the film isn't as good.
My first impression is probably the more accurate one. That
all being said, I have a final idea. There's a
(35:44):
lot of meat on the bones left, you know what
this movie attempts to do. And so many of our
listeners know that you are a talented writer, and I'm
just thinking, I don't know. I mean, call me a dreamer,
but I'm just wondering, you know, like, after seeing this film,
did it occur to you to think about writing the
(36:04):
story your love story of you and Danielle has high
school sweethearts and you have this fabulously handsome best friend
you know, who is there along the way to coax
you and to give you an extra dolca Black culture
and legitimacy so that you can woo this beautiful black
woman you know, who will one day gone to be
your bride. And you all have a few amazing interracial children.
(36:27):
I mean, come on, this is an amazing story.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I hope that they're like, you know, Hollywood people are
listening to this, you know, at least the Netflix people,
you know. And one of the first scenes is you
might remember this that when when we're going off to
college and we're having our final dinner together.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Do you mean our story and our Ben Danielle and
Khalil story.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, in real life. Do you remember where we went?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Did we go to Red Lobster?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
So Danielle and I are going to Red Lobster because
that was like fancy for us. And you just no
cell phones or whatever. You just happened to show up
like the quirky best friend.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Like you just happen to show up. I held like
forty five minutes.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
But me like, imail you to cover anything. But you know,
so I actually I actually have a happy ending in
a way.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
I have one too.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
You go through all of this that that just coincidentally.
Kanye tweeted this weekend that he now loves Jewish people again.
Oh my goodness, and the reason is Jonah Hill.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Wow, he bore some Jewish therapy.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Like, but what's funny? It was seeing Jonah Hill in
a movie. But it wasn't this movie. It wasn't It
wasn't you people. It was twenty one Jump Street.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Oh my goodness. I don't know if that actually that's true.
I don't know if that means good things no bad
things on the horizon for Kanye.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't put a lot of my sedaka
in his in him.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Well, my happy ending is this. You guys got married
how many years ago?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Now? Twenty almost twenty almost.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Twenty years ago, And just so our listeners know that
that crash date at Red Lobster led to me being
the only person who was invited to their wedding in
New York City at City Hall on a random I believe,
November day, beautiful Chili day. I was the best man.
(38:29):
I was the matron of honor because I was married
at that time. I was the photographer, the witness. I
was your only reception date.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
When you showed up were I said, meet us at
the foot of Brooklyn Bridge because we were going to
get you know, we were going to get married at
City Hall, but I didn't tell you. I tell you.
I said that I want you to take some holiday photographs.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And then you showed up with all your cameras because
you know, you're the son of a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer,
you'd like twelve cameras. And you looked at us and
you were like, they're a little bit more dressed up
and Ben is carrying a bouquet and like all this
other stuff and your hands started to shake and you
just started to cry.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, it was a special moment.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
So it was a great moment.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, well man, this was This was a really great conversation.
We touched on some important themes, not only in cinematic history,
but also in how much more work needs to be
done in trying to capture what it means to do
interracial love in a rom com or a drama or
anything else on the big screen. All right, all right,
(39:28):
love you.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Man, Love you too.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil,
Jabron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by
Sarah Nix with help from Keshel Williams. Our engineer is
Amanda Kwang, and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo at Pushkin.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Thanks to Leitol Molad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Migliori,
John schnarz Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan The
brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong
dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods,
and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
And if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen. Even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, and new people. There's definitely no passover Sata, but
here's a little taste of my family sat this year.
Speaker 5 (41:07):
Our story begins with degreation, our telling ends with glory.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
We are slaves in Egypt and were gods from where
lad struct our ancestors out of Egypt. We are our children, children, children,
Push it. I'm khalil Ja Bron Muhammad.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm Ben Austen. We're two best friends, one black, one white.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I'm a historian and I'm a journalist. And this is
some of my best friends.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Are Some of my best friends are black, White, Jewish Muslim.
In this show, we wrestle with.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
The challenges and the absurdities of a deeply.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Divided and unequal country. And today we're talking about inter
racial and inter religious love on the big screen.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I don't know about you, Ben, but so many people
have asked me over the past several weeks. Are we
going to talk about the Netflix movie you people?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh, my gosh, so many. It's a movie that came
out earlier this year. It's starring Jonah Hill and Eddie
Murphy among many great actors, and it's written by Jonah
Hill and Kenya Barris of Blackish fame.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's right, and this is a movie that is I mean,
the opening line in this movie could not be more
appropriate for.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
You and me.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yo, yo yo, Welcome to the Mowing Easy Show. I'm
mow into my left is my favorite jew with nothing
to do, My boy easy.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
All right, man. So, Jonah Hill's character Ezra he does
a podcast. Two hosts, a gem doing a podcast with
one white. It's about race and culture in America. And listen,
as we speak, Pushkin lawyers are out there. They are
going after Netflix to make sure that we get paid.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
That's right, because they stole our idea. They built a
whole show, a whole movie around I knew it.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I knew they would steal that.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
But no, seriously, this movie comes at a really interesting
time in the country. I mean, we're somewhere in between
the Trump era, the Biden era and what comes next.
And as so often is the case, you know, this
is a movie with a plaud It's an interracial rom com,
but it's a rom com within this bigger social moment.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And so of course you said, you said it's an
interracial rom com, and I just want to say, there's
a white man and a black woman they fall in love.
But even more than that, or in addition to that,
the white dude, Ezra is Jewish, the black woman is Muslim,
so it's an inter religious rom com.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Also, it's like an interracial inter religious rom com.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
How about that man last ensue.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, So, as I was saying, and good point. As
I was saying like, here is this mashup of relationships
that are meant to show the boundaries of our existing society,
to show the segregation that we still all live with,
even for people like you and me, Even our communities
here are represented as being sort of narrow and parochio
(03:29):
and not really able to see the fullness of the
other side.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And this is where movies are really powerful because they
show us ourselves and sometimes we even laugh at ourselves,
but they're these cultural artifacts, these touchstones. We're able to
understand all those boundaries and how to cross them by
seeing versions of it on the screen or on our televisions.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
That's right, So guess what we're going to talk about.
We're going to talk about how well to some degree
this movie helps us see ourselves, and to what degree
there are these antecedents and other movie stories that unpack
a similar topic.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
How are we going to do this today, Khalil, So in.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The first half, we're going to talk about white black romance.
We're going to talk about two people falling in love
and basically how American history and society and most especially
their parents get in the way, like all the racial
baggage that gums up the true love story at the
heart of you people.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Let's call lets what should we call that first half?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Well, let's call it Guess Who's coming to dinner?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
All right?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
All right, all right? And then the second part. I mean,
I have a lot of experience with that first part
that you're describing. But the second part, let's explore the
black say more, in the second part, let's explore the
black and Jewish dynamics. All right, let's look at the
black and Jewish thing. So this movie comes out just
a little bit or almost at the exact same time
(04:53):
as Kanye West is saying he's about to go deaf
con three on the Jewish people, after Kyrie Irving gets
suspended from the NBA for tweeting about a movie.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Net's player.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's right, he's on the Dallas Mavericks now because you know,
Brooklyn was way too Jewish for him, Like he tweets about,
you know, endorsing a movie that makes these claims about
the Holocaust now not happening, and about Jews being involved
in the slave trade. And listen, also amid like twenty twenty,
this this last year was the highest ever on record,
(05:26):
you know, record being going back to nineteen seventy nine
of hate crimes against Jewish people, which you know, we
could say is still like a fragment of say, what's
going on in terms of racism towards blacks? But this
is at this heightened moment. That's right, it's so interesting
to explore this. And since you got a name for
your part, I'm gonna call this what's what's your name?
(05:47):
A rabbi and an e mom walk into a bar?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Oh oy oy OOI all right?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So, like even the title you People is is like
coded kind of racism and often like unintentional bigoted phrase
like hey you people. It's a lot like some of
my best friends are. It's perfect movie for us to
talk about right here, here is the breakdown of what
happens in You People. And there're gonna be a few
spoiler alerts, but you need to know some of the
(06:14):
plot and what happens in it for us to talk
about it for this to make sense.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, Jonah Hill's Ezra and Lauren London's Emrah they meet
cute in Los Angeles?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What does me cute mean?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Now?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
You know what's yes, you do, man, that's every that's
every rom com you meet in a funny way, and
you know, you get connected. And then they go on
this date and the date, you know, there's a montage.
You know, it lasts for hours, they talk into the night,
and then it jumps ahead six months and they're living together.
(06:46):
And you know, in my opinion about this movie, these
two actors, Jonah Hill and Lauren London, they have zero chemistry.
This is my opinion. They have nothing. They have nothing together.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
But can I say something about this just for a second.
There is an important thing that brings them together, right,
which is quote unquote the culture. The culture, and in
that way, the culture being you know euphemism for black
culture hip hop. Yeah, they share this in common. So
they both hit kind of hip hop heads. They're both
in the sneaker culture. And as we've already said, Zara
(07:18):
is a co host with a black co host who
is non gender conforming mo who is an actual comedian,
and so he's he's like got his real bona fides.
He's not just some some Jewish dude from lam.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
See. See you're already like codd on me. He's not
just some Jewish dude. This is already messed up. We're
already like you're black and Jewish from Chicago. So more plot.
It's all going, well, they're living together. Then Ezra's like,
I want to take this another step further. I'm in love.
I want to marry her. But two people white and black,
(07:50):
they don't exist in a cultural irracial bubble. They have
to meet one another's parents. You know, parents are they
stand in as like all of the rest of society
the past, and really like who the children are? That's right,
and it's you know, these are the things that are
going to keep people apart.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yes, you're right, these are the things that are going
to keep people apart. So much so that this whole
story around what the parents are capable of. Hearkens back
to a film over fifty years ago called Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner. It is, in many ways the precedent
for this story. This is a film with a bang
(08:29):
up cast of character. Sidney Potier, that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You're like, you're like out here, like I am the
Hollywood reporter, a bang up cast.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yes, your auditioning, oh man whatever, Spencer, Tracy, Sidney Poitier,
Catherine Hepburn as the mother of the white daughter who
who they're worried about marrying Sidney Poitier. Isabelle Sanford appears
here as Tilly the maid, and then introducing a woman
named Catherine Houlton, who is the main character, who is
the white woman who is gonna marry Sidney Poitier. This
(09:01):
movie comes out in late nineteen sixty seven. It's just
six months after the Loving versus Virginia Supreme Court case.
You remember what that case was.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
That is so amazing to think about. So a movie
about interracial marriage comes out right after the Supreme Court
says it's now legal for black and white people to
get married.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
That's right, which had been banned across the South and
most particularly. The film says in the film, in the
writing of the script says, sixteen or seventeen states would
object to you guys getting married.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So that on that movie.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, man, it's amazing the pressing issue, like the weight
of the world, is happening in the context of this film.
So here's a quick story. These two fall in love,
as they say, in twenty minutes. They both happen to
be in Hawaii. Sidney Poitier plays this epidemiologist. He's a
world renowned public health doctor. And it's not clear what
(09:57):
the character Joey is actually doing for a living. But
she's twenty three years old. She's young, she's exploring the world.
These two fall in love, they meet cute, and they
fall in love instantly. So the big idea here is
that they want to get married immediately, and they have
to convince Joey's parents, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, that
(10:18):
they should get married, but they wanted to do it
the old fashioned way to get permission. At the end
of the day, this is what the story turns on.
Will the parents consent, will the parents go along? But
there's a wrinkle here. Instead of this being like some
story about some throwback Alabama parents you know who would
of course object, Spencer Tracy, the father, is presented as
(10:39):
this San Francisco liberal, you know. He when he first
meets John, who is played by Sidney Poortier, he is
all in. He's like, Hey, who's this guy? Oh my god,
what an accomplished gentleman you are. He pays no attention
to the possibility that this guy wants to marry his daughter.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I'm all into this because I've seen this at some point,
but I've totally forgotten it.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
So I'm down, yes, And the mother, Katherine Hepburn, shows
all of these faces of consternation and concern, but in
the end it is clear that she's okay with this.
And so the story is about getting on board at.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Some nineteen sixties white liberals they want to you know,
this is in the civil rights moment. They want to
embrace this idea of interracial marriage, that it's okay, that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And so at some point the dad is being called
out by this priest who's like one of his best friends.
Monsignor Ryan shows up and he has this really powerful line.
He says, you know something, I'm surprised at you. Says,
you know what, You're just some broken down, phony liberal
who has to come face to face with your own principles.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
He says, there is some reactionary bigot trying to get
out in you. And I'm like, oh snap, that is
such a powerful resident line, right. That is the line
that in many ways you people plays with. It's like
this notion that liberals are all cool with everything until
it's their own kid. This movie reserves, though the most
strident critiques of this relationship, for the black character played
(12:03):
by Isabel Sandford. The maid Tilly, She is the one
who has given the responsibility in this film for our
tiulating black people's perspectives on interracial marriage. In this clip,
she's challenging Sidney Poitier because she's like, Hey, I have
raised this girl my whole life, and I'm not going
to let you mess up her life.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
You may think you're fooling Miss Joy and her folks,
but you ain't fooling me for a minute. You think
I don't see what you are. You're one of those
smooth talking, smart ass niggas just out of all you
can get with your black power and all that other
trouble making nonsense. You bring any troubling in and you
just like to find out what black power really mean.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
So that is a really powerful statement. And in many ways,
Sidney Poitier's black parents, who are eventually invited to dinner,
never really articulate their objections they're placed on this maid.
But in the end, this story resolves itself with the
father coming around because he's ultimately challenged by his wife
who's like, I've never been more disappointed in you. And
(13:00):
the moral of this story is that while he has
to come to terms with this, he basically says that
you guys will have to survive in a world full
of prejudices, bigotries, blind hatreds, and stupid fears, and you
will have to cling to each other and to quote unquote,
screw all those people.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
That's so interesting. It sounds like a lot of the
movie is focused on the parents rather than on the
young people and their dynamics. What we were saying before
about society being represented by the parents.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
That's right, all right, we're going to take a break.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
All right, all right, so we are we are fifty
years later. Now we're you know, nineteen sixty seven. Guess
who's coming to dinner? And now we're at you people.
You know, interracial love has been legal for more than
half a century. What does you people have to say
about this story about interracial love that's different.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Well, first thing, it's like a world made by Lewis
far Kahan and the Black power movement.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Well you meant, well.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
The signpost in this film of like what blackness is
is embodied in the character of Eddie Murphy. The father
of the main character. Eddie Murphy's name is ackbar Amira's father.
That's right, Eddie Murphy's name is Akbar, and of course
he's changed his name like so many radicals in the
nineteen sixties and seventies, from Woody from Woody.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
The first time we see him, he's walking in. He's
wearing a Fred Hampton was murdered t shirt. That's right,
former Black Panther leader. And so he's coming and he
is all of the signifiers of being a black radical,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And to my mind, he's the closest thing as importing
the voice of Tilly played by Isabelle Sandford into this story.
He's the most unreasonable person in this story, so much
so that he actually blames his wife's white grandfather, who
apparently was some light scanned dude, for like polluting the
bloodstock of his light scanned daughter. Let's listen to this
(15:02):
clip where Akbar is leaning over to his wife to
blame her for this whole fiasco.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
There's your white granddaddy, come back and haunt me.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
What that nigga never liked me?
Speaker 5 (15:14):
And it started off by him putting them strong ass
jeans in you that lighten up the coffee, and my
babies are you?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Then he planted a poison pill in my little baby girl, and.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
It has grown into this white boy that invited us
to lunch at Roscoe Man. All right, Eddie Murphy, h
what's interesting you're saying that he sort of is voicing
Tilly from guess Who's coming to dinner? But he's also
the white dad because in this movie, he's the one
that's opposed to this marriage. He's the one that's opposed
to the union of black and white. And we get
(15:44):
Ezra's parents embodied by Julia Luis Dreyfus, you know, from
Veep and from Seinfeld. She plays Shelley Khane, and she
is like genuinely thrilled. She's giddy that she's going to
have this black daughter. That's right.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
There's this early moment where she says something like, you know,
we're going to become a family of color. We are
going to be a family of the future.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah. And her races is, you know, showing white people
as oblivious they're inadvertently racist. And you know the first
time that she has the kids come to their house
to dinner, the white family's house, she says apropos of
absolutely nothing the first time meeting her. You know, the
police are and always have been fucked up they're really
(16:27):
terrible to black people. I hate it, you know. She
just announces this out of nothing, total awkward, a different
kind of racism than opposing this marriage.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, but can I say something to you about that.
There's a kind of virtue signaling in that. And that's
what I was trying to say with Spencer Tracy's character,
like he's the San Francisco liberal who gets it, like
there's nothing weird about this black dude in my apartment.
I am down with that. So yes, this is the
updated version of that kind of liberal virtue signaling. So
you people, in some ways, given that point imagines racism
(16:59):
is only really about bigoted individuals. It's not really a
social commentary and structural racism, even as it gestures to
police violence or as an other line that the character
Shelley Cohen articulates is that everyone should bow to the
national anthem. These really aren't the issues that motivate like kneeling.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Kneeling, Yeah, she's trying to She's like a Colin Kaepernick,
She's trying to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So these really aren't the issues that carry. The more
weight to the film, the more way of the film
really falls on stereotypes, you know, the sort of bigoted
ideas that people still hold when they think, you know
you people. That's the kind of conceit of this film.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's super interesting. And I agree with you completely that
that the movie to me like shows wacky characters being
wacky and it's there, you know, there isn't some deeper
analysis and you know, like a lot of these types
of movies, the way this one functions is it's sort
of an excuse to get mostly men to hang out
(18:00):
with one another and to do something. So we get
Jonahill and Eddie Murphy's character. They're going to go off
and like explore one another.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And like there's actually funny montage of moments, right, there's.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
A montage of moments when they go out and like
Eddie Murphy is testing him of like how much does
he really know about the culture? And here black culture
and so like what constitute black culture in the movie
in this moment, is he's going to take him to
a basketball court in the hood or a barber shop
that's actually like a gang barbershop. You know, they never
actually go to Achbar's house. Akbar is Muslim. They don't
(18:34):
go to a mosque you know, this is the whole
extent of it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, so some of our listeners might be thinking, Okay, Benicola,
you guys are beating up on this film a little
bit too much. You're imposing too much ectation.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I'm going to beat up on him more, man, I'm
going to beat up on him more, because like Eddie
Murphy's working at like thirty percent here.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
You know, it is like it is one of the
most low key performances in all of cinematic history. But
there's a there's a counterpoint to this film, and it's
the film, for example, that Jordan Peele makes about white
liberals and the way they literally commodify black bodies. Get Out.
Get Out is a story of inner ration, romance turned
(19:10):
into a horror story.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, when you were talking about Guess Who's coming to Dinner?
I was thinking about how that how get Out is
a total response to that. It is like taking that
and turning it into a horror film. That when you
go to this house and these these well meaning liberals, Uh,
there is something so much deeper and structural that is,
it's so dangerous that it's going to fucking kill you.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's right, And the metaphor of being lobottomized and having
your bolly stolen is just the horror spin on it.
But the point is that you're still being consumed, that
black culture is being consumed, that blackness is being consumed,
even by so called friends.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, there's something that irked me about you people. I
got to admit. It's like, so, Ezra is supposed to
be this guy who is He says, I was raised
by hip hop, you know. But he's talking to his
fiance his girlfriend's parents, and you know, he can't even
talk about uh, Malcolm X clearly, and he's got one
of his boys, and one of the jokes is that
(20:06):
one of his boys stormed the Capitol on January And
come on, man, you can't have both, you know, like
like as a joke, it just doesn't even work. It's
this idea that you just said of like quirky you know,
individual racism and having no like larger implications. That's right,
all right, man, So spoiler alert, Like, you know, the
(20:29):
movie moves forward and this couple, Emra and Ezra they
decide that they just can't do it. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
The pressure that the failures of the family, the friends,
the network, the whole social community that they're part of
just is not evolved enough to handle this relationship.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Ezra is on his podcast and he laments that race
in America conquers love, but at the end of the day,
when it comes to black and white people, I don't
think love is enough.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
There's too many other outside factors.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
He says, whether friends or family. People can't accept what
they don't understand. That's a really good podcast. Huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You know, thinking about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? In
this film, there is something that feels like it didn't evolve,
like it didn't feel the promise of Guess Who's coming
to dinner, which ultimately was the cautionary note of a
generation two generations ago, and in this film is basically saying,
not only are we no further along, but we don't
(21:34):
even have the guts to talk about what's happening in
our states. I mean, you think about Guess Who's coming
to dinner? Talking about sixteen or seventeen states that had
outlawed marriage. We've got sixteen or seventeen states that outlawed
even talking about structural racism, So you know, we're going
to take a break and when we come back, we're
going to look at the inter religious part of this
(21:55):
rom com story.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
We'll be right back, all right, all right, Khalil, we
are back on the Mow and Easy Show.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And I got my jew with nothing to do, hang
it out with me this afternoon.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
That is so true, so true, all right, man, about
Jewish stuff. Every Jewish person I know who saw this
movie doesn't like it. They're angered by it, they're frustrated
by it. And let me tell you, Jewish people are
on like high alert for stuff like this. They want
stuff like this to be like meaningful. They want to
like for it to get into like, you know, the
(22:44):
good stuff about Jewish and Black history of working together.
They wanted to do something progressive and listen, I did
tons of research, really really, oh man. I went to
Jewish Twitter, you know, I searched it. I read the foreword.
I mean I was looking around.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
And to an editorial.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Man, to be very serious. There are editorials all over
like Jewish publications. For real, they are talking about this
and for Jewish people something like this. You know, I'm
going to quote a Philip Roth short story. They want
to know, is you people? Is it good for the
Jews or no good for the Jews.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Well, I was maybe not quite in that line. I
was curious if they felt like the film was a
touchstone for evoking the historic relationship of progressive Jews and
black civil rights activists from the nineteen sixties, Like saw
this film as kind of a way to jump start
or re energize that relationship because I know a few
(23:47):
conversations I've had with some of my Jewish friends, my
other Jewish friends, that's a topic that often comes up.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Man, they wanted it, they wanted it to do. There's
actually a joke in there when Amira's brother first learns
that his sister is dating a guy named Ezra. He's
hopeful because he's like, is that a third generation civil
rights leader? You know, like everyone was named sort of
like you know, they had these old Testament.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Names, right that he's not actually white, but he's a
black dude with a Jewish Jewish first name. Yeah, that
is a funny joke.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
So so I want to say that this movie in
terms of Black and Jewish relationships, to me, it started promising.
And I watched this with my family, so my two
black Jewish children and my black wife and the first
scene is set in a synagogue on Joam Kapoor, the
holiest day of holy days. And you know, so already
(24:42):
we have a sense that, yes, these are white people,
but there are certain kind of white people.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
They're Jewish, And can I ask a question about that
as a non Jew? By that you mean because because
they were obviously Jews that don't go to synagogue or
Yam Kapur, So you're saying that it's also religiously meaningful
self identified Jews. That you mean or does everybody go
to synagogue on ya.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It's like the one day when people if you're Jewish, yes,
it's the one day we're going to do something. So
like like people are going to synagogue one day a year.
That's the one day a year. And it actually Ezra
is signaled right away as one of those guys, like
he's wearing high tops in there, his legs are shaken,
he's totally uninterested in this. He is told he is
related to us as somebody who is a secular Jew
(25:25):
in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Got it well. I was like both curious about how
you responded to the engagement ring moment because there's this
joke in the film about the size of Ezra's engagement
ring that he's purchased for Mirah. It's tiny, and first
teases him about it, but then there's this like setup
for how he's going to present it to a mirror,
(25:48):
and I was like, oh, oh, is that like a
bridge too far?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Let's listen to that.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
So what's the story here? That's your grandmother, Yes, my
grandmother's and it's her she got into Holocaust or whatever,
Like how old is she?
Speaker 4 (26:04):
It's from the Holocaust?
Speaker 5 (26:07):
Been a minute. I think she got catering.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
She was like three or four years old.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
It's a different time from them.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, you know, so so jokes about the Holocaust,
you know, they could be a little dangerous, you know.
But uh but even that joke is like being tasteless
or controversial. Like that's where a lot of humor lize
and even a lot of truth. I was still with
the movie at that point, Okay, right, I like that.
I liked that I was there, But from for me,
from there, the movie sort of falls off the cliff,
(26:37):
like why why? What so?
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Because because I have to admit, first time I saw
the film, I was a little bit less impressed. Second time,
I thought it grew on me.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Ah, I had a different like, I was like okay
with it because I watched it with my family. The
first time, they were willing to laugh at anything, and
then the second time, I was like, oh man, I
was also.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Half asleep the first time, so I'll admit that.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Okay, all right. So to me, that the character's jewishness,
that that how they are, how they are Jewish, is
sort of invisible. It's not really a part of the film.
And even from those first moments and from those first jokes,
it starts to disappear. And even if they are secular
Jews in Los Angeles, still sort of like what that means.
(27:18):
And since you used another movie to make an explanation,
since you use some guess who's coming to dinner, I'm
going to bring up another Jewish movie, a recent Jewish movie.
So last year, this movie Armageddon Time came out and
did you see that movie?
Speaker 1 (27:31):
I did not. I didn't even know it came out.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
It was too Jewish.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
It was like only shown in synagogues and in Jewish
community centers.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
No, no, no, it's a big release movie. So it's
about and you know, it's kind of relevant to us
because it's about two middle school kids in the nineteen eighties,
one black, one white, and it definitely focuses on the
Jewish family, all right, And so this Jewish middle school
boy is trying to figure out the world and his
friendship with this black kid, and he goes to his
grandfather who's played by Anthony Hopkins, which is kind of funny.
(28:02):
Anthony Hopkins is not Jewish. He's playing this Jewish guy.
But the thing about this movie is that the Jewish
is so omnipresent. So the grandfather who's still you know,
all the grandparents, they still have their European accents because
they've come there from the Holocaust. They're talking about the Holocaust,
they're talking about being Jewish. And really what's presented to
(28:23):
the characters is a kind of choice in the face
of racism in America. They have to make a choice
between coming across as Jewish or white, and the two
are different. They could lean into the privilege that, you know,
the whiteness gives them access to a kind of privilege
and they can lean up to it, or they can
(28:43):
sort of say we're going to stand up against injustice
and risk that.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
And so here, justice in this context has to do
with whom.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
With racism that the Jewish grandson is hearing anti black racism.
And so here's the grandfather played by Anthony Hopkins, talking
about his experiences from the Holocaust, and he's schooling his
grandson on what to do.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
You run the mom thing next time those schmuck say
anything better about those black kids or those stans. You'd
be a mens to those kids. Okay, they never had
your advantage.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yo, Man, what's deep about this is at no. But
later in the movie the father his father gives the
exact opposite advice. He's like, you got to save yourself
whatever leg up you can get. You know, we face
so much anti semitism and oppression. We need to like,
if you've got an advantage, take it. But in New People, Man,
and New People, there is no choice, all right. The
(29:36):
characters aren't wrestling with being white and Jewish. You know,
Jewish Jewishness comes up in a couple jokes, but it's
mostly not there. And I'm like, I'll give one example,
and you could probably think of others too when you
start thinking of the movie this way. So all of
the female characters are incredibly underwritten in New People. But
there's this scene where Shelley and Emira, you know, so
(29:57):
they're going to go off in the same way that
the men have gone off, and they don't. There's nothing
Jewish about what they do. They go to a spa.
There's no like explanation of like, there's nothing that Emirah
has to do to try to understand who they are.
It's just like eh, and the same thing like like
Akbar doesn't take Ezra to a mosque or anything religious.
You know, there's just like some at some point, there's
(30:19):
just like some you know, silly joke. You know, Ezra
has to date other women, Jewish women, and there's like,
you know, you what do you know about black culture?
Maybe you know about bagel culture. That's like the extent
of like the Jewishness.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
So what you're saying is that religion here is treated
almost like a caricature.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, and a wink at different moments. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
In fact, I thought it was interesting that part of
the way to show Akbar's bigotry, his own anti whiteness,
so to speak, is that he is a big fan
of Far Khan and goes through this long, elaborate story
of how he received a koofi from Far Khan as
kind of a special ceremonial rites of passage for him,
(30:57):
and so far Khan stands in as this kind of
both acknowledgment of his Muslim identity, which is very controversial
in terms of most Muslims who are Sunni Muslims, even
a black people, and also as this political controversy that
makes him even more unlikable in some ways as a character,
as really a setup for the moral arc of the film.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, and so Lewis Fowerkunt also has this history of
anti Semitism, He's made comments before, and so Ezra has
zero stake in this, like he doesn't there, Like what
do you think about Lewis Fowerkun. He's like, I love him,
He's great, He's got nothing. The parents are a little
more uncomfortable, but this seemed like an opportunity to explore things.
You put these two parents together, the Muslim parents and
(31:41):
the Jewish parents, something could have happened. And actually, let's
stay with that scene a little bit more because it's
it takes place. There's a dinner at the children's house
and they invite both sets of parents to bring them together.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
And this is the guests who's coming to dinner moment
for this film. This is the filmic homage to that
earlier film when everyone is in the room and we
are set up for fireworks.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And so the parents start talking and their differences around
race and religion start to emerge, and they're all sort
of like you know, hot button issues that come up.
Listen to this moment.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
All I'm saying is that our people came here with
nothing like everybody else.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Actually, you kind of sort of came here with the
money that you made from the slave trade. Like everyone preach,
preach mother, preach mother. It's very I would like to
see your sources on Maybe go.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Get my purse.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
I've got my slave receipts in my purse.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Go get my purse. Because I don't turn on the
news every day and see people in Yamaka's getting shot
by police just because they was out minding their business. Okay, wow, yeah,
I want you to just talk about this and get
in trouble. Yeah. So, so there's like there are different
(33:00):
pieces of this, and there's like the last thing that
Eddie Murphy's Achbar says is really interesting, right, like like
Jewish people who is white are not being killed by
police officers right, that's like a conversation about privilege, about whiteness,
what is anti Semitism, what's anti blackness? Like it's all
kind of there, but man, it's caked up in this
(33:22):
other stuff, you know, Like that that thing that the
mother says Nea Long's character, Fatima Achbar's wife, she's saying
the exact sort of racist, anti Semitic trope. That is
what got Kyrie Irving in trouble. So, like what to
make of it? That scene, Like it's just like throwing
(33:43):
out a laundry list of stuff and it's not owning
any of the any of the material.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, no, I agree with you there, And it did
feel like, again it positioned in this case, and this
might explain why so many of your Jewish friends and
so many within the larger Jewish community in the United
States felt like the film wasn't a good film because
it was an unnecessary provocation. It's also generally within the
(34:10):
main of the black community, a talking point even among
black people who identify as Muslims, whether their nation of
Islam Muslims or Sunni Muslims. So in that way, the
film traffics in a stereotype that has this kind of
both sidesism to it, meaning it's you know, like the
white privilege has to be set against this black list
(34:31):
nationalism that is extreme and anti semitic, and that's not
really how most people aren't engaging into what is already
a difficult relationship.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
And you know, so what was what was so problematic
or troubling about those moments when you know, Kyrie Irving
endorsed that film, or when Kanye West spoke out against
Jewish people, is that you know, you said that most
most black people aren't trafficking in this kind of like
anti semitic language, but a lot of people don't know
what's what's in the mainstream, and you know, to suddenly
(35:03):
hear it in in famous black people talking about it
and hearing it even coming from the right, and then
to be in kind of a mainstream Netflix movie like this,
it does have this kind of you know, danger of
even feeling like, oh no, this must be okay. And
as you said, it's like set up against something like
police brutality.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
They're like equivalents, right right, Well, I think you've convinced
me now that we've had a full work up of
the failures of this film to deal with inter religious
components of this relationship that actually the film isn't as good.
My first impression is probably the more accurate one. That
all being said, I have a final idea. There's a
(35:44):
lot of meat on the bones left, you know what
this movie attempts to do. And so many of our
listeners know that you are a talented writer, and I'm
just thinking, I don't know. I mean, call me a dreamer,
but I'm just wondering, you know, like, after seeing this film,
did it occur to you to think about writing the
(36:04):
story your love story of you and Danielle has high
school sweethearts and you have this fabulously handsome best friend
you know, who is there along the way to coax
you and to give you an extra dolca Black culture
and legitimacy so that you can woo this beautiful black
woman you know, who will one day gone to be
your bride. And you all have a few amazing interracial children.
(36:27):
I mean, come on, this is an amazing story.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
I hope that they're like, you know, Hollywood people are
listening to this, you know, at least the Netflix people,
you know. And one of the first scenes is you
might remember this that when when we're going off to
college and we're having our final dinner together.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Do you mean our story and our Ben Danielle and
Khalil story.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, in real life. Do you remember where we went?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Did we go to Red Lobster?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
So Danielle and I are going to Red Lobster because
that was like fancy for us. And you just no
cell phones or whatever. You just happened to show up
like the quirky best friend.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Like you just happen to show up. I held like
forty five minutes.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
But me like, imail you to cover anything. But you know,
so I actually I actually have a happy ending in
a way.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
I have one too.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
You go through all of this that that just coincidentally.
Kanye tweeted this weekend that he now loves Jewish people again.
Oh my goodness, and the reason is Jonah Hill.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Wow, he bore some Jewish therapy.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Like, but what's funny? It was seeing Jonah Hill in
a movie. But it wasn't this movie. It wasn't It
wasn't you people. It was twenty one Jump Street.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Oh my goodness. I don't know if that actually that's true.
I don't know if that means good things no bad
things on the horizon for Kanye.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't put a lot of my sedaka
in his in him.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Well, my happy ending is this. You guys got married
how many years ago?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Now? Twenty almost twenty almost.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Twenty years ago, And just so our listeners know that
that crash date at Red Lobster led to me being
the only person who was invited to their wedding in
New York City at City Hall on a random I believe,
November day, beautiful Chili day. I was the best man.
(38:29):
I was the matron of honor because I was married
at that time. I was the photographer, the witness. I
was your only reception date.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
When you showed up were I said, meet us at
the foot of Brooklyn Bridge because we were going to
get you know, we were going to get married at
City Hall, but I didn't tell you. I tell you.
I said that I want you to take some holiday photographs.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And then you showed up with all your cameras because
you know, you're the son of a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer,
you'd like twelve cameras. And you looked at us and
you were like, they're a little bit more dressed up
and Ben is carrying a bouquet and like all this
other stuff and your hands started to shake and you
just started to cry.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, it was a special moment.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
So it was a great moment.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, well man, this was This was a really great conversation.
We touched on some important themes, not only in cinematic history,
but also in how much more work needs to be
done in trying to capture what it means to do
interracial love in a rom com or a drama or
anything else on the big screen. All right, all right,
(39:28):
love you.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Man, Love you too.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil,
Jabron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's edited by
Sarah Nix with help from Keshel Williams. Our engineer is
Amanda Kwang, and our managing producer is Constanza Gallardo at Pushkin.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Thanks to Leitol Molad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Migliori,
John schnarz Retta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan The
brilliant Avery R. Young from his album Tubman. You definitely
want to check out his music at his website Averyaryong
dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods,
and you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
And if you like our show, please give us a
five star rating and a review and listen. Even if
you don't like it, give it a five star rating
and a review, and please tell all of your best
friends about it.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Yeah, and new people. There's definitely no passover Sata, but
here's a little taste of my family sat this year.
Speaker 5 (41:07):
Our story begins with degreation, our telling ends with glory.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
We are slaves in Egypt and were gods from where
lad struct our ancestors out of Egypt. We are our children, children, children,
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