I Saw What You Did - As Always, A F*cking Pleasure

For the final episode of I Saw What You Did, Millie and Danielle discuss FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965) and ALIEN (1979), their recent live show, the history of the podcast, and making beets.

To see a full ISWYD movie list, check out our Letterboxd here:

https://letterboxd.com/isawwhatyoudid/films/diary/

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the final episode of I Saw
What You Did. My name is Millie de Jericho.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I'm Daniel Henderson, and this is.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Gonna be the last time I'm gonna have to figure
something out to say in this part, right.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Is this?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Yeah, the last thing is I got to figure out
what to say.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I know, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Like this is uh the last episode, and uh, you know,
we're uh, I don't know, I don't even know what
to what to say. I'm feeling feelings, you know that.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, of course we are.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
And we're also we just did we did our live
show a couple of weeks ago, our first only live show.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Which said I think I said grand opening, grand closing.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Which like, on the one hand.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
What a move, Like it's a boss move, But on
the other.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Hand, what a weird move? What a weird move?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, No, it's it's good, right, Like I feel like
we talked about this on the episode when we announced
that we were leaving. You know, we've we've talked about
this in the subsequent episodes up until now. But like
we're in a good place. Yeah, you know, Like I
think it would be very sad if we were both

(01:41):
like depressed, uh, fighting, hating everything. You know, I I'm
really glad that, you know, you know, we're in a
good place for this to happen, because I think it
just makes it you know, it's it's always gonna be sad,
but I think it just makes it easier and more hopeful. Right,

(02:04):
we have stuff to look forward to, and you know, and.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Our listeners can still support us and be part of that.
That's also what's what's great is that you know, we
don't have to lose the community that we built, the
connections that we have to people, because we're not going anywhere.
We will, as friends do things in the future, of course,
And I think it's just it's a it was a
really beautiful thing that we've done to pat ourselves in

(02:31):
the back just a little bit. We entered a space
that is, you know, talking discussing films is predominantly academic, predominantly.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Siloed, and predominantly white.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Dudes, and we just kind of brought people to a
different just to realize there's a different way to enter
that space.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
So and we did like over two hundred.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Episodes, man, if you include the bonuses, Yeah, we did
a lot so I just I feel like we're ending
on a high note because we're proud of ourselves.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
And that's okay to be proud of yourself.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
If it's okay for us to just be happy with
what we've done. I know that it's easy to take
things for granted and to think nothing's going to ever change.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
But change is good. Yeah, change is really good.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
And I think we both always push forward in our
own lives knowing that we're just always trying to do
the best we can with everything that we do. So
sometimes that means things change, but it's not a bad feeling.
I think I feel bad if I was like, man,
we never got to talk about that movie or this movie,
or really doesn't like me or no, I don't feel

(03:33):
that at all. I feel like it brought us closer
as friends, as we've said when we ended the announce
that we were ending the show, and that's kind of
a cool thing to like, run a business with a
friend and everyone says, don't do it, but I say
the exact opposite. Do it, but just make sure you're
actually able to communicate to your friend, and you'll take
care of each other.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, I mean I feel the same way I mean,
it is so hard to that's my dog barking. By
the way, I think if you hear if you hear
my dog barking, it's because she's fourteen years old and
she's just staring out a window market at nothing. But uh,

(04:13):
you know, yes, I think going into business with friends,
even creatively collaborating with friends is ultimately like it's a
little bit of a gamble, not gonna lie. I mean,
look at all of the bands that have been created
and friendships and relationships that have been destroyed in the
wake of it, you know, and you know, I think

(04:34):
that it was for the most part. Again, we came
out of this pretty unscathed as friends. We were friends
before we came into it. You know, we're still friends.
I think we're better friends after going through this. But
I feel you feel like a little bit of a
war buddy now, which is great, definitely, But you know,
we we It wasn't always super easy. I mean there

(04:55):
were times we had rough going.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
I think there was sort of a learning process with
how this was going to work. Certainly it was a
lot of work. I mean that was I think the
most stressful part of it for us was that we
were usually working full time jobs while we did this
podcast and also doing creative projects and stuff for income.
So it was like both of us were juggling a

(05:20):
million trillion things. And especially during the period where you know,
you were show running, your grandmother was in the house
and you were doing you know, her care. I mean,
it was not easy for you to come to the
podcast and have to like, you know, basically watch two
movies a week, and you know, have to like be
on microphone and present a film. And I felt very

(05:44):
sensitive towards that because I know how it feels to
be just like completely inundated with stuff and you just
handled it. We got through it. We handled it well.
You handled it well, and you know, we just I think, yeah,
I mean, it was truly a journey in that way
for us.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
It really it really I thank you for saying that,
because it really was, and it's and it's I respect
what I learned from.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
From that and from you.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
You know, I really think that that's something I try
not to take for granted, is that you know, yeah,
things get hard, But what am I learning after this
or what you know, kind of in retrospect, what was
good about this? What got me through and I learned
a lot. I learned a lot about myself. I learned
a lot about what I'm capable of. I learned a
lot about, you know, how to communicate my needs, which

(06:32):
doesn't come easy for people who you know, I wasn't
raised to do that, so it doesn't come easy.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
And yeah, I just like, I think we have a
lot to be proud of. I think we.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
I do feel like I'm a better person for having
done this podcast.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
I do too.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
I feel that way as well. I really, I mean
I said this at the live show, so if you
were there, you're going to hear it again. Sorry, but
you know, I this was like, this podcast was my
first time that I was that I was doing anything
on my own in that way, right, Because the story

(07:07):
is that, you know, Karen Kilgariff, obviously one of our
uh one of our stem queens, our boss here at
exactly right, you know, she approached me and asked me
if I wanted to pitch a film podcast, and I was,
I mean, honestly, I was shocked because I just thought, oh,
can I do that? Like, do I have the authority

(07:28):
to do something on my own? Because I had been
affiliated with TCM for so long, right, and in that
in that structure you feel. And I started at TCM
when I was in my early twenties, like you know,
I was there. I started when I was twenty three.
You know, I had been at a film school for
a couple of years and I was doing things, but

(07:50):
I wasn't you know, this was my first job. And
you know, in a way you sometimes people feel like, oh, well,
they made me, they made me who I am, and
everything that I do has to be kind of in
service to this peron. You know, this place, the structure,
and can I do things on my own? Can I
go out side of it? Do I own what I know?

(08:13):
Do I own you know, my thoughts and my feelings
about film? And so it was this moment where you know,
I was having imposter syndrome, and that's something that I
struggle with even to this day. I do, you know,
have a problem with it, and I know we both
do and have. I'm just so thankful that you were
able and willing to do that with me, to jump

(08:34):
with me, because you know, I couldn't have thought of
anybody else but you to do it. You know, we
had had such a you know, we had such a vibe.
When we were both living in LA when we pitched
the podcast, we were going to movies all the time
and everything, so we had already had that almost kind
of like a podcast that wasn't being recorded.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right absolutely like this for hours after every movie either
a sitting in an l coyote or at a restaurant
or somewhere or a bar and just or in the
car and just talking for like an hour and a half.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Which is our podcast.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, oh of course. And and it was like that
thing where I knew you were so busy because you
were living and working in LA and you know, you
didn't have to do it, Like you didn't have to
do it. You could have been like, I'm too busy

(09:31):
for this, this is you know whatever, Like I don't
really have the time or the interest. And because it
was going to be a big endeavor, and it was
also going to put us both like in like forward
facing in a way that they think we hadn't been
really in a specific way. We hadn't been like a
you know, like we didn't you know, we had to

(09:53):
basically come on mic and talk about ourselves every week,
multiple times a week sometimes, and that's that's a big
ask for on one, especially if they're more introverted or
more you know, less, sort of willing to talk about
their personal lives or whatever. So I'm just very thankful
that you were there because I don't think I would

(10:13):
have been able to do it without you.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Well, this was a no brainer to me.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
It was a no brainer to me, and I'm glad
you asked, and I was honored to be asked, and
I thought we could really do something cool, and we did.
We did exactly what I thought we could do, which
is just be ourselves and be brilliant and smart and
funny and cool and have wide reaching conversations about things
that we are interested in. And so I'm glad that
I was able to do that with you, or that

(10:40):
we were able to do that at all. It didn't
feel like work in that way. Anytime we sit down
to record that part is not does not feel like work.
It just feels like, how fun and great is this
that I get to just cut up with a friend
about things that are that matter to me? And yeah, no, no,

(11:00):
I just I just really loved that we got to
do that. So I don't want anyone to think like
the work of this was a bad thing because I
think I was I was up to the challenge. I
definitely said yes because I wanted to do this, and
I'm glad that we did because I think that, you know,
we didn't really even.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Know what it could be or where we were really headed,
but we found our groove.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
And I think again, just showing up and being able
to be yourself is a gift that a lot of
places don't offer.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Two people. You don't get that in work or in
life very often. So yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
You're right in that. I feel like when we first started,
like I felt like there there has been an evolution
of the show and maybe what people got from the
show over time, and I think it has everything to
do with the way in which you and I had
decided that we were going to talk about these movies.

(11:55):
Like every there's a million film podcasts, right, and they're
all well, you know, basically hosted by various people who
know about movies, and they all have different tones, right,
Like a lot of times it's about like one director
or like a genre, but then it's also just people
who were like stating facts and figures about movies in
the movie industry and their thoughts. I think that we

(12:18):
decided and maybe it was conscious but a little unconscious too.
We just I think, really drilled into the emotional intelligence
of who we are as people, and we brought that
to the podcast. Like we talked about film in a

(12:39):
different way. I feel, and as somebody who had listened
to film podcasts before starting one, I think we were
doing something different and we were you know, like there
wasn't really at the time that we started. There wasn't
really film podcasts that were just like really going hard
and deep into like the character of films and like

(13:01):
what and how these characters are formed, and it has
I think it has everything to do with you being
a writer. I think that was a very natural entry point.
But it was like, you know, no one was out
here talking about, you know, the motivations of you know,
Laura Dern in smooth Talk, Like nobody was like speaking

(13:23):
about films through our specific experiences. And I am so
proud of that, Like I'm so proud that we decided
not to be like, let's talk about box office numbers
for the Scarsese project. We decided to do it in
a different way, and I think our listeners really appreciated that, and.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
It was nice to bring film older films to people,
and not necessarily focused on it in a specific way,
like we're only doing films from this decade, or to
make it, like you said, a genre focused. I just
really think that at the beginning, it was important to
us that we make people feel or remember that films

(14:05):
are for everyone, Which is why we covered a wide
range of movies on this podcast, because we cover things
that we are interested in, and we watch a lot
of movies, and we like a lot of movies, and
they cross a lot of different barriers, and they cross
a lot of different genres. But that was kind of
the focus, was to bring older films, so we weren't

(14:25):
tied to the yoke of only talking about Marvel, only
talking about numbers, only talking about how this historically fits
into things. I think we gave ourselves a lot of
freedom by talking about films that had kind of already
been established and out there that we could let people
find or not and just enjoy them enjoy the discussion.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
But that was really different.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
As well, is that we weren't coming to it and
saying the way that we chose to discuss films was
really also heavily influenced by the types of films who
were discussion, which are older movies, And I just I
like that reminding people that movies are movies can be
your friend, and you can come back to them again
and again. You can find something old that you watch
for the first time that changes your whole focus and

(15:07):
changes your life in some way.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, and it's really the for me.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Also, the thrust of art and engaging with any art
or anything artistic is kind of finding out finding a
place for it in your own life. So I think
we did a good job of showing people that there's
lots of different ways to access movies that can make
you feel like you're part of something, like you're part
of a wider community that you can talk about it
in a way that feels personal to you. You could

(15:33):
talk about it in a wider way, but there's a
way in for everybody.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
So that that feels really good. I feels really good.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
And I also think that it's we would be remiss
to not mention and hopefully bring on the mic here
our wonderful producer Casey O'Brien Hello, because there's something that Hello.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
It's like what do you what? What?

Speaker 1 (15:56):
What?

Speaker 2 (15:56):
He's like, I'm working.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
But there is something that is truly special about Casey.
There's lots of things that are truly special about case
But one thing that I think was just a really
beautiful evolution and helped us change our podcast for the
better was knowing that we were working with someone who
was also became our friend, who we genuinely like and

(16:22):
respect and love, who's so knowledgeable and really was really
had our back in terms of how to make the
show sound the way we wanted it to sound, how
to make it feel the way we wanted it to feel,
how to manage our schedules when they.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Became overwhelming, when they became.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
You know a little bit at a focus, because everything
in our lives was changing even right now.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Like I moved to LA three weeks ago.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
I moved to a few weeks ago and was like, Hey,
so I don't know how we're going to record the
last few episodes, but I'm not going to be at home,
And he helped us figure it out and was just always,
you know, in a technical sense, like always there for
us and made this a very easy process, which it
wasn't in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
We kind of stumbled through.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Some different iterations that were not as easy for us,
you know, it didn't really always make us the focus,
and it was hard to record in that way. But
Casey really just when when Casey came into our lives,
everything brightened, everything got better. And a lot of that
is because he's just a consummate professional, truly skilled, truly

(17:35):
skilled at what he does, but also just a really
fun and good and wonderful person. So it's nice that
we got to work with someone who benefited our show
just by being themselves.

Speaker 5 (17:47):
Oh thanks, Danielle, that's so nice. I've loved working on
this show. It's been so much fun. I mean, sometimes,
you know, in these sort of like professional situations where
you're like pair it up. I mean, it's kind of
like getting a a you know, random roommate your freshman
year of college. It's like it could be like horrible,
the worst thing ever, or it can be like a
really great match and you guys, you somehow end up

(18:11):
friends forever, you know. So I think it's the latter
in that situation. And it's been just so fun to
become friends with you both and to work on this show,
and I think we it's really been so much fun,
and I really look forward to recording it every week,
and it's just been it's really been an honor to

(18:32):
be the producer of this show, and it's been an
honor to get to know both of you better. And
so thank you both for allowing, you know, allowing me
to be a part of this show and allowing me
to have input on this show, because that's not always guaranteed,
you know, and so I really appreciate that. And I
have felt very supported by both of you as well.

(18:54):
So thank you, Thank you, Kasey.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
That's wild.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
It's wild to me to envision an area where you're
not your input is not included your skills like that,
that you are not included in some because again, you're
so good at this, but you're just good at a
lot of and you're good at being a person, and
you're just you have a great demeanor and you're super
kind and thoughtful, very very thoughtful. Well, we'll remind you
at the end of the show as well. But I

(19:18):
want to say that I know that we've hinted in
the social media feeds, and Millie has discussed this at
the live show that she is working on something else,
another another podcast that Casey will hopefully be part of yes,
So do not unsubscribe from this feed.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Oh no, I desperately need you, But.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Don't unsubscribe from the social media exactly.

Speaker 5 (19:49):
Don't unsubscribe just because this will be the this feed
will be where that show will live, and that way
it'll kind of I kind of like it because it's
like it can keeps alive the legacy if I saw
what you did while we move into this new, very
different show. But it's kind of like, you know, million
Danielle's channel that they start, it's like its own channel.

(20:09):
I kind of like thinking of it that way, and
so like, well, stay subscribed, don't you know the second
this episode is over, don't go to your podcatcher and
hit unsubscribed. Stay subscribed so you can keep listening to,
you know, Millie's new show.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
So yeah, and I'm so excited.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
I'm not only so excited, but so supportive and really
looking forward to seeing what you're.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Well, you're going to be on it too. We will,
we will get on it.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
That's the real like it or not part is I'm
just going to show up on the zoom off bike
and they'll be like, what.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Is she doing here? Who sent Danielle the zoom. How
did she get these zoom in days?

Speaker 3 (20:48):
That's how I learned to become a hacker, is just
to get the zoom link for you.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
That's because we're gonna still use the slack for the
next twenty years. Like we're just gonna be like our
little hang pad.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
It's our hang zhone.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm really excited about the possibility of
continuing doing a film podcast and just and keeping it
in the family. You know what I'm saying in the club.
We're all fam right, and we've heard this a million
times on TikTok, But I I'm so excited about our futures,

(21:20):
like all of us right, because it's like, you know, yes,
Casey and I are our goal is to continue working
together doing a film podcast in the same feed dona subscribe,
but that Danielle is also flourishing right now, right, and
that you know, the reason why we're both kind of

(21:42):
stepping away from I saw what you did is because
it's good things. Like it's not like again, I want
to reiterate, like it's not We're not in a bad place,
Like your career is taking off and it's been going
for a long time. But now you're just like at
this point where you're like working a bunch, you're books.
You wrote a fucking screenplay, like you actually wrote a

(22:03):
whole last screenplay you know, which I've read and is
very funny, and I may tell you why it's funny
because it's very personal to you inside joke and you're
in on it. That's like, I love it.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
If it gets made, I will tell the story, but
if not, it'll just be a fun thing that we
have to share too.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
But it is.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
It is something I've learned from both of you, and
that again I appreciate about the whole experience of this
podcast is that I've really learned how to prioritize things
and how to lean into my own life, because I
think in the way that you weren't sure that you

(22:51):
could carry a podcast on your own when we first started,
and you were kind of more tied to a more
corporate way of doing things, and that was kind of
an identity that you really held onto. I really don't
ever consider myself as someone who is useful in the world,
or you know that I'm bringing anything to the table

(23:11):
that people can can latch onto. And you know, when
my book came out, I didn't do a book tour,
so I didn't It was, you know, the middle of lockdown.
I just have never really been out there as a
forward facing person, so I've had to learn how to
prioritize things in a way that I can do that
and feel good about it and also still have the
privacy that I need. And you guys were both really

(23:34):
great at helping me protect that and teaching me how
to do that and talking to me about how to
do that, and so I think it's you know, my
goal was the.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Was a couple of months ago.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
I was like, I'm met in the podcast and then
I'm disappearing forever. You will not see me on social media,
good bye. But now I kind of feel like, no,
I can still maintain my time and my career of
life and my privacy and the things that I need
to be a person.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
But it actually feels good.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
And connected to meet people who are into what you do, yes,
and that you can build a community there too. I
think I just forgot somewhere along the way that I
could it's possible for me to also be part of
the community in that way.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
So thank you both for showing me that as well.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Well, and like that. Sorry if you didn't go to
the live show. Uh, it was one of the greatest
times that I've.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Had a banger.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
You missed a banger. So for the majority of you
that weren't there, including Casey.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Sorry, sorry, but a part of.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
The joy of that evening was just see you interact
with our fans and they were fucking loving you. Like
one of my friends texted me while I was we
were up there on stage, I say stage.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
We were just in.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Director's chairs on the flat ground or wasn't a stage,
But one of my friends texted me and was like,
people were gasping when y'all walked out from behind the
door or whatever we were at, And I was like, what,
Like that is so strange to hear. But then I

(25:23):
was like, oh, well, duh. And then you get on
stage and you see like all of the funny shit
that Danielle is saying. People were like she had these
motherfuckers eating out of her hands. She was so funny
and telling stories about the you know whatever, like all
these things, and I just was sitting there like I
felt like the proud friend that I was just like nodding,

(25:43):
being like hell yeah, hell yeah, this is exactly what
I want. I'm like, I want to see this, and
I hope that you felt the love. And it felt
like love. The entire evening felt like love. So I'm just.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Felt like love in a very hard week to have
to feel loved exactly. And my favorite moment, which Casey
Casey knows this intimately, we have had like the things
we have cut from this show could be its own podcasts.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
But.

Speaker 5 (26:11):
The one at one Poles I get from Danielle.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Long voice memos got something like the panic, the panic.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
I'm thinking of one episode in particular.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
I panicked and I was like, oh my god, it's
not like ten text messages in a room. I'm like,
I know he has a baby. I know this might
I have to tell you have to cut this tomorrow. Tomorrow.
But we were talking at one point and Millie said
she was up late at night making beats, and I
was like, oh, what are you doing.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
With the beats? Like are you stewing them? Are you
like growing them? And she was like no, Like music beats.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Encapsulated both my person so specifically, and I could not
stop laughing even just thinking about.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
It so hard that I was crying. I took like
on stage, like I was basically like she thought I met.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Beats the Vegas, like red beats.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Like, yeah, she thought I was making them like canning
them or something else. No, I'm making beats like I'm
you know, like a rapper or something. And she was
like the confusion of it was so genuine, and we
were laughing. Sorry, everybody in the audience was laughing because
they were like, this is typical shit.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Like this is, but it's great because it was again like,
this is something that happens to us constantly. It is
just encapsulating who we are, and Casey helped us bring
that out of ourselves. And it's been on the receiving
end of so much of that confusion and craziness and hilarity.
And I really feel like we built something together, which

(27:46):
is also important to me that it's not just like
I know that Casey's not a forward facing part of
this this podcast, but we built this podcast together. I
feel like as soon as he arrived, we were building
something together. So it'll be missed, it'll all be missed,
but we still are friends and love each other and
we'll work on things and do things for ever together

(28:08):
because it's just you don't want to get rid of
When you find people who are good that you can
work with, well, you don't want to get rid of that.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, in this economy, if you find good people that
you could work with and creative, be creative with, don't lose.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Them, keep them, do not. But thank you Casey specifically
for everything.

Speaker 5 (28:27):
Well, thank you guys both. I really this has just
been a really special show. And I said this before
we started recording, but like the fact that it's kind
of we're leaving at the high point, it just feels
like it's going to live on and it is. You know,
it's like like you said, you're ending because of positivity,
not because Millie's in jail or something.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Like I would like, I love how I would be
the one to be in jail after everything, two hundred
and forty episodes of Danielle, I'm going to jail.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
That's how it works. It's never the one you think,
never the one you think it is. It's never the
one you think.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
But thank you so much for being part of this,
and also thank you truly, Like we have to take
a minute to truly thank Karen and Georgia. Karen Kilgariff
came to Milly with the idea, but Georgia Hardstark was
also right there in support of us, and we're just like, yeah,
go do your thing. And I think again, that's a

(29:30):
really special and wonderful creative and thoughtful creative brain to
have is to just say, yeah, let's hire great people
and let them do their thing. So thank you to
Karen and Georgia and everyone, and exactly right, there's so
many people that have worked on this show in some
capacity over the four years and we're just, you know,
thankful to all of you for your support and your generosity,

(29:55):
and it really is it's meaningful to us to have
been able to work with you, So thank you.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yes, Daniel Kramer, our other ep Analis Nelson, Alexi Sama Rossi,
Lauren Brown, very early days, I mean Tom Bryan Fogel,
Garrett who did the artwork, Steven.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
The pilot engineer of the show, Hannah Everywhere, every Aaron Brown,
absolute champion. Just really a great amount of great people
working with and for exactly right, have have really helped
us and we are grateful for it.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Finally, last, but definitely not least, I think we have
to thank our listeners. Yes, our listeners are incredibly wonderful people,
and you are all so frank with us, And even
though we're not able to always directly respond to emails, reviews,

(31:00):
comments on social media, you're part of why we did
this and how we did this, and it was your
feedback and you're being part of building a little community
with us.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Was really a delight.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, I gotta say it's I have done for facing
ish type of stuff in the past. I mean, I
did a few podcasts before I did this. One was
just like a co host didn't run it, but I
was on podcasts. I had done, you know, programming on
a national television network and was always getting feedback from

(31:41):
those things that a lot of it wasn't great. Like
I have been through it when it comes to like
social media comments, Twitter things like you know, I kind
of have seen it all in a lot of ways.
I feel I have to say that this podcast has

(32:02):
I have never received more positive comments in my life
doing anything creative, forward facing. I gotta say, like we
always had incredible reviews.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Four point nine the whole time.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, we had an amazing rating on Apple. We had
the best reviews, the best social media comments. We very
rarely got negative feedback, and even when somebody was like
even if somebody would email me and be like, actually
that movie wasn't directed, it was with all due respect ladies,
I have you know, it was like very very respectful,

(32:38):
uh you know, just if and if anything it was
it was people like really not wanting to have to
correct anything, but it was like gingerly like I'm sorry,
but that actually wasn't the fifteenth President of the United
States or whatever. You know, Like everybody was so sweet
and the thing that I think was the most heartwarming

(33:00):
just for me personally, just knowing my personality of feeling
like I always need and feel like I need to
be seen or I want that. I think I really
want that in life. I felt like our listeners saw
us a lot and they got the jokes. They got
the fucking jokes, which is so hard to do when

(33:24):
you were in a place where you say something like
random and somebody brings it back like a year and
a half later and be like, remember that thing that
you said that was so crazy, Like I remember it
and I love it and I want to put it
on a pillow or whatever. I mean, that is magic.
That is fucking magic. And I just am like, I
just again, I have to echo what Danielle has said.

(33:46):
The listeners are so amazing, so funny, so smart. They
came to this podcast and didn't even like movies, a
lot of them, and they got into film because of us.
They you know, expanded their knowledge, they took a chance,
and I just I love that to me is the

(34:06):
essence of why I love doing this podcast.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
To not agree more.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
There are people who started degrees in film because they
listened to the show. There are people who just truly
changed their own lives and they did it.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
We didn't do it. They did it.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
But that we were encouraging or a part of that
at all is unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
And that they were like comforted by our friendship, which
means a lot. I mean, that really means a lot
to us.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
So yeah, thank you all for being here so much.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now, on
that note, we do still have our last couple of
movies and our last theme that nobody ever guessed the

(34:55):
entire time the show was running, nobody ever fully guessed
the theme a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Have you got close?

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah, but that was a game they would have never won.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
That was a cruelty that I inflicted on people for
having them have to guess every single word, not just
a general area.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, every single word in the sentence that it. You know,
I was like, they're never going to get this, but god,
love it, let's just pretend. Let's pretend that they could.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
And it's every single word and the most really complicated,
borderline insane theme.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
You've ever heard. So this one is not that.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
This theme, our final theme is actually really sweet.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, do you want to tell them what it is?

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Sure? So our final theme for the final episode, if
I saw what you did, is the movie that got
us into movies? Yeah, and that is sweet. That's actually
all you you suggest to that, And I thought, what
a great idea to go out on, because yeah, I mean,
I think it would be really cool to talk about

(36:06):
like that one movie that essentially just changed the trajectory
of our lives, our film lives especially, And so yeah,
I think that's nice to go out on this kind
of more personal note, right, And also.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah, and I was thinking also that it's it's personal,
But why not end with the beginning?

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, you know, let's end with the beginning, because there
should I want there to be a feeling of Yeah,
we also had a movie that clicked the light on
for us in some way in our lives. And maybe
you'll find that if you go back and re listen
to some old epps yeah, or maybe just keep pushing
forward until you do find that. But I thought it
would be something very nice and sweet about Yeah, we're ending,

(36:45):
but let's think about the beginning.

Speaker 4 (36:47):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
What brought us to be the kind of people who
would even make this podcast to begin with?

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, And this is always such like I love knowing
the answer to this question from the people that I
like and love because I feel it makes me feel
like I know them better, you know, where I'm like,
what is the one movie? And I know it's such
a like huge task to ask people that like movies

(37:12):
to be like, what is the one movie that you
loved and that got you into movies? I mean, it
just feels like one of those big questions, like a
dinner party question almost, But whenever somebody gives it thought
and like and can express that in a way, it
makes me feel like I know them a lot better.
And that's why I was like, oh, this is sweet

(37:33):
to go out on, because then it makes me feel
like I know your origin story, you know what I
mean in a lot.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
Of ways, absolutely, and especially your phil I mean, it's
both of them for sure, But it is nice to
know that, like.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Oh, this is the thing that.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
That really clicked for you, and to be able to
see like, oh, yeah, I can get that.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
I get that from you. This is this makes sense? Yeah,
well you are first.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
I am, Oh my god, I'm first. So my movie
for our theme the movies that got us into movies
is from nineteen sixty five. It was written by Jack Moran.
It was directed by Russ Meyer, and it's called Faster Pussycat,
Kill Kill.

Speaker 5 (38:13):
Jack and Jill.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
They make a mafia look like Brownie. So no, I
don't know if anybody actually knows this, but for the
past four years I've been writing basically scripts for my
movies for every episode. Right.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
That is definitely also a difference between the two of
us personality wise. That Millie, if she wanted to, as
soon as we end recording, could go into her own
archive and publish seventeen books based on the essay she's
written about every movie she brought to the podcast, whereas
I just like wrote some notes and winged it. Yeah,

(38:51):
but they both but it worked for both of us.
That's just our different styles, our different approaches. But you
could legitimately publishas of text.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
How much you wrote.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, No, I pretty much. A lot of times it
was word for word, Like I pretty much wrote everything
I was going to say, which sounds crazy because I
said a lot of bullshit, So I can't believe that
I prepared that. A lot of that there was. I
think there was maybe one or two times where that
wasn't the case. One of the times was when we

(39:25):
were recording very early days and I thought that I
had your movie. Yeah, it was fame, right, Remember we
bro like we did fame and Step Up. And then
I realized write before we press record, that I didn't
have fame and I had Step Up. And you were like,
of course you do. Why did you think you had fame?

Speaker 2 (39:43):
And I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
COVID it was like COVID was raging, so I guess
maybe I had, you know, pandemic brain. But I was like,
that was the one of the only times that I
remember I completely winged it with no notes. But this
is potentially the second time I didn't write any thing
for this because I just felt like, you know what, like,
let me just riff and see what happens to our
last episode. So so this movie, uh, you know, we've

(40:10):
done a russ Meyer movie. Prior to this, we did
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. So if you want
to go back and hear a little bit about I
talk a lot about like russ Meyer's sort of career
and his entry into film, which was essentially through World
War Two. I mean, he was one of the directors
that had taken advantage of this thing that they were

(40:31):
offering a Hollywood which was basically like training to become
you know, a World War two photographer out you know,
over there, and you know basically he kind of, you know,
learned how to make films through that process and through
the war, and then came back and was just like,
now I know how to make movies. And I also

(40:52):
like Big Boobs. So this is an incredible experience for
me because now I can just make really well made movies.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
The thing that I like, let's make this TwixT bar
of my life movies and Big Boobs.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, and see what happened.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
And like I said in that episode about Beyond the
Valley of the Dolls. You know, we talked a lot
about him being a filmmaker who was a man, a
straight man, or was a straight man. He passed away.
He died actually almost to the day, twenty years ago.
I mean it was in September, so it wasn't too
far off. But we talked a lot about in that

(41:30):
episode about him being, you know, an exploitation filmmaker who
a straight man, who was very interested in sex and
nudity and female bodies, but didn't ever feel like, you know,
sort of like gross, I guess, is the way to
put it. And I mean there are films in his
filmography that sort of maybe are a little bit more

(41:52):
salacious and kind of you know, hornier than others, for sure,
But it was this movie that I think really kind
of crystallized his sort of genuine love and appreciation for women. Yeah,
and so I'll just tell you a little bit about
my history of watching this film, which I might have

(42:13):
talked about in a boutus episode briefly. But so, when
I was a freshman in film school at George State University,
this was like nineteen ninety seven, nineteen ninety six, eighty
ninety seven, I took a film class, and one of
the professors that I had was this professor Eddie von Mueller,

(42:35):
who I feel like I've talked about before. He was
kind of like one of several professors in the the
film program at GSU at that time that was like
cool and interesting and was kind of like, you know,
not one of these like stuffy film professors that was
like teaching, you know, like montage editing. He was doing

(42:57):
the basics, but then he was also in operating a
lot of his own films that he thought were interesting,
and a lot of these films were in American independent cinema,
foreign cinema, you know, anything that you would kind of
consider like a centophile type of film. And prior to this,
like when I was in high school, you know, I

(43:19):
had I wasn't really super raised on film. Both my
parents were like kind of classically not into film, but
I was definitely a child of television and VHS era
video store stuff. I really had to seek all that
out on my own, and so when I got to college,
it felt like, oh, here's this like very like formalized

(43:40):
educational place for me to really like soak in all
the things that I want. Because back in those days
when you were in high school in the before the Internet,
it was really hard to get stuff that you wanted
to see. Yeah, you know, I talk about stories about
how you know, like I would be talking to some
friend of mind be like, have you seen this like weird? Well,

(44:02):
I don't know, kung Fu movie or whatever, and then
in order to actually want to see that movie, you
would have to go to the craziest depths to get
that movie, whether it was looking at Fangoria magazine, at
Tower Records, and then like writing down a po box
where you would like send a fucking fifty dollars check

(44:23):
to get a VHS sent to you and hope.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
That they would send it to you and not just
take your money and run right right right.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, there was a lot of people who were who
were doing like dubbing of rare films or cult films
or whatever, and it was that kind of thing where
you're just like, well, like, godspeed, I hope my mom's
checkbook works and I will get this VHS tape. But
there was also video stores in town where I lived

(44:52):
in Atlanta. There was also literally, like I tell a
story a lot about this guy that I used to
buy videos from who was a bouncer at a strip club,
a very legendary strip club here in Atlanta called the
Claremont Lounge. And I used to like, I was like seventeen,

(45:13):
eighteen years old, and I would hand this grown man
cash money to make me dubs of Asian films, basically.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Like the story a trunk by the side of the
trunk of a car the parking lot and.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
It's some part of the city that I'm not familiar with.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had this stapled It was basically
like four pages of typed out film titles that he
owned in his catalog, in his collection, right, and it
was stapled together and it was folded in half long
ways and shoved in the back of his pocket. And
when he was working, you could be like, you know, hey,

(45:58):
I was wondering if maybe do you have a car,
do you have the wrote trio? Like, do you have
you know, like whatever, the one arm executioner. I really
want to see that, And then you know, pull out
his list and be like, yeah, yes, I do have that,
and then you would hand him fifty dollars in cash
and then he would in two weeks come back with
a you know, eighth generation dub of a Maggie Chung movie,

(46:19):
and that was how you got.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Movies by then.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
It was crazy. I can't believe what I'm saying that.
So there's this is the era that I was in,
was that I was just starved for stuff. And so
when I went to film school, Uh, I was just like,
I'm here. I hated fucking high school. I hated all
those assholes I went to high school with. And so
now I'm downtown, I'm in a film program, and I'm
just so I just want it all. I want to

(46:42):
I want to observe and be a part of the
city and you know, work at the radio station, work
in the movie theater, and be in the film And
so I remember this was probably the first or second
class on my freshman year at GSU. We did a uh.
I was in a like a film one on one class,
and in this movie, Faster postcat Kill was screened and

(47:06):
it was literally life changing for me. I mean for
so many reasons. Number one, I had never really seen
an exploitation film before, right, and from the kind of
classic exploitation era right as now we know as part
of this kind of like you know, fifties, sixties you

(47:28):
know of these classic characters like Russ Meyer, Herschel, Gordon Lewis,
you know, Doris Wishman, all these filmmakers that were kind
of working in American exploitation films in the fifties and sixties.
So I've never seen a movie like that before. I
had seen very little in black and white, like I
just really hadn't. I hadn't seen many black and white films,

(47:51):
and I never seen a movie where there were a
women as protagonists in this very pronounced way with their
bodies out basically, like their butts and their boobs were out,

(48:13):
and they were like flourishing. Like I had had such
issues with my own ethnicity, yeah, right, as kind of
a bigger girl who was who had big boobs, who
had a big ass, you know, and being half Asian, right,

(48:35):
I always had issues with that. And so I was like, Okay,
so you're telling me that there are three women in
this film who are the stars of this film. Two
of them are literally half Filipino, which is so insane
to me that I would even know that they were
half Filipino, Like, I mean turists Aitana, who is the

(48:58):
star of this film. She plays varl you know, she
you know, is essentially you know, her father was a
Japanese actor, but he was a Filipino descent. Her mother
was Native American. She had had such an insane life,

(49:19):
like she was in an internment camp in America during
World War Two. She suffered rape and sexual abuse. She
was an exotic dancer. She had such a life, you know,
and most of these people did at this time. I mean,
this is a thing. If you were a woman working
in this industry, like in this era, you there were
things like you had a lot of things. But she

(49:41):
was like the first character I think in a movie
that I was ever like, I feel connected to this
woman in a way that I've never felt connected to
in any other film character.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Right, That's powerful. It was.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
I mean it was to me in such an intense way.
And Haji, who was another actress in the film. Who
is funny because when I first saw this film, you've
got basically these three women. You know, Terris Aitana is Varla,
Hajji is Rosie, and Laurie Williams is Billy. Right, and

(50:17):
Laurie Williams is the beautiful buxom blonde character. Right, She's there,
but these other two women are clearly there's something there.
They're there there, there's an ethnicity to them, and you
can't You don't really know what I think at first,
although I kind of clocked Varla being half Asian. When
I first saw Hajji, I was like, is she Italian?
She kind of has an Italian accent her name Haji.

(50:41):
I don't know if that's Middle Eastern. It was very
like vague to me, but all I knew was that
she had she looked like somebody like me and the
women that I knew in my life, right, Haji in fact,
is Wasian just like me, half Filipino and half British,
and I it's just like that fucking rocked me. I

(51:03):
was like, okay, so you're telling me that there's not one,
but two half Filipinos in a movie where they're beautiful
the o their bodies are on display, which I was
again like I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and
they're running shit this entire movie. If, by the way

(51:23):
one sentence synopsis stuff I hadn't said it already, three
women go to the desert and just start beaten up.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Men, killing men.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
With their bare hands, with their bare hands, How could you.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Not like a movie like that, what a sentence, what
a synopsis, But it's true and they're What I also
love about this movie is that, yes, there's a multitude
of representation in the film right away, but also that
they're kind of villainous, like they're not meant to be adored,
They're not meant to be revered, they are meant to

(52:05):
be feared.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Yes, And that's something that at the time when I
saw this movie in nineteen ninety seven, I had never
seen that. We talk a lot about. I mean, we
have talked and discussed many films on this podcast up
until now that are about complicated female characters.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
I think that you and I are both the age
where we had grown up with you know, the fucking
Kelly Kapowski's, the fucking you know, like all of these
like cheerleader types, well meaning good girls that got the
boys in the end, and this kind of stuff to
watch movies that feature women who are complicated and who

(52:50):
sometimes make poor choices and sometimes don't know how to
navigate their lives in the best ways. I think was
I think it was a revelation first both because it
meant that we weren't going to have to be in
this structure of femininity or womanhood that was served to us, right.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yeah, it was very prescriptive for most of our childhood
how to be an acceptable quote unquote women in the world.
So film was for you and for me, I think
a way that we literally saw a different way of being.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Yeah, and this and this is to your exact point.
I think this is why this movie resonated with me,
is that it was like, Oh, these women are actually villains.
They're actually killing people, and they don't give a shit.
They literally don't give a shit. Varla is one of
the most sociopathic characters ever been an exploitation film. And

(53:48):
I'm also like, thank god, Like there's a moment where
I was just like, I don't think I've ever seen
somebody like this before, Like yeah at all, Like even
maybe to this day, it really empowered me seeing these
women out there. And like, again, I think that there's
various degrees of psychosis happening in this film with these women,

(54:12):
because you have Varlaw, who's kind of the gang leader.
Guess what she is in a I mean I wouldn't
even say it's coded. I think they do allude to it.
She's in a lesbian relationship with Rosie the Hausey character.
The way that they speak to each other is if
they're in a relationship. I mean, that's groundbreaking for nineteen
sixty five, and I appreciated that as someone. I mean,

(54:36):
I'm a cishet woman, but I appreciated seeing that type
of relationship in a movie because it felt very fresh,
you know, at the time.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
And it wasn't used in a way that was overbearing
or performative. It was really subtle in a way that
helped enhance what you thought their relationship could be, and
it helped. I think it just pushed the viewer into
being more active, because it had to at that time.
But it also wasn't like look at like, look at

(55:09):
these two big boob lesbians going at it. It wasn't for
the male gaze.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Yeah, exactly. And I think the like, you know, adding
to this is the Billy character again, the uh Lorie
Williams character. She's the blonde kind of buxom. They're all boxom,
but you know, the blonde woman. She she's arguably the
most sexual of them all, where she's literally like are

(55:35):
we fucking or what like? That's kind of her standard
operating procedure. It's just like I want to have a
good time. I get my kicks, I do what I
want to do. I sleep with men, I drink, I
like tip party and I don't care yep. Again for
nineteen sixty five, you're like, oh, like, oh, there's a

(55:56):
woman who's like completely in charge of her own life
and her own faculty, and this is this is how
she acts. So it's wonderful. It was wonderful to see
as a young.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Woman, nobody forever, for a very long time, in film
and in real life, nobody really gave a shit about
female pleasure or what women wanted or liked. And in
this instance, yeah, they like killing, but they also liked
you know, like the Billie character, they just wanted to
be free.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
They wanted some access point to freedom. So that was
really impactful.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Yeah, definitely. And I think that the other interesting component
about this film, which I feel like is sort of
the thing that people forget, because I do think that
the film is largely about the trio of women. Obviously,
how could you not how could it not be about them?
But there's a character in the film, so basically, you know,

(56:47):
like like I said, I'm not going to go through
the plot. I'm just saying, like in order to establish
what the film is about. It's like these women are
in the desert. They're you know, racing cars with each other,
and then they come across a young couple. It's basically
like the guy is like an all American dork, the
girl is like basically a gidget tricksy ish girl, and

(57:12):
Varla ends up killing her boyfriend and they kidnap her,
and they basically come across a family that lives in
the desert, which kind of reminds me of the family
from the Texas Chainsawmaskar. It's like a weird old guy
in a wheelchair, and then like his two weird sons, right,
and they kind of you know, go to their property.
They find out that he has a lot of money,

(57:32):
and so Varla's like, guess what we're getting that money?
So let's figure them out so we can steal their
money and then make out, you know, like bandits or whatever.
There's the two son characters. They're very different. One is
you know, a very kind of i don't know, like
kind of like the guy that's running the household. You know,

(57:54):
he's a very responsible, stand up guy. And then The
other one, who is played by the actor Dennis Bush,
is called by his own father the Vegetable, and all
he is is these this beefy, brawny, muscular guy that

(58:14):
has seems like he's suffered some trauma in his life
and maybe has some cognitive issues. But he's like basically
like a gentle giant, if you will, and but is
also triggered to kill at a moment's notice. So it's
very complicated. But the way in which this character, this

(58:37):
vegetable character, is presented on screen is just as equally
i would say, salacious as the way the women are filmed.
This guy is, his ass is always on camera.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Okay, they always are filmed from behind always.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Yeah, and listen rus Meyer. It might be a straight
guy and loves women's bodies, but he loved this man's body.
I gotta say. They were like his arms, his back.
There was like a part where he's like basically like
lifting ways he's doing like an overhead press, and like
Billy's walking around and being like what's upstud, And she's

(59:17):
like touching his back muscles and his shoulders. I mean,
it's like.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
He's just always slamming eggs, like cardboiled eggs.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Well, but like he I'm saying, I think The Vegetable
is being shot from a female point of view. Like
there's even in the midst of this movie where these
women or their boobs are popping out and their butts
are hanging out, and you could feel kind of aggressively hetero,
even though I don't really think it's hetero. I think
it's actually kind of campy. There's a camp to it

(59:48):
that's not it really like removes the sting of the
fact that there's a straight white guy filming him. I
don't know how to explain it. I don't know, but
I think part of it is that this character, the
vegetable character, is also being shot in a way that
makes him look hot and sexually attractive, and so it's

(01:00:10):
kind of like a horny movie for both men and
women essentially. But anyway, needless say, I won't give away
the ending because I mean, I think you know how
it's probably gonna end up. It's very simple sixties expectation
movies were very simple back then. But to wrap it up,
I just have to say, like seeing this movie really

(01:00:31):
changed my whole life. I mean, it's the movie that
got me into cult movies, right, I have had a
really great career in that world for over twenty years now,
and it's because of this movie. Like I, if I
hadn't seen this movie, I certainly probably wouldn't have ever

(01:00:52):
started TCIM Underground. I wouldn't have written a book about
cult movies. I wouldn't be, you know, for the most part,
a semi authority or an authority on cult movies and
get asked to do DVD commentaries and talk about cult films.
I mean, this is what launched a thousand ships. And
like I said, I think the biggest reason why I

(01:01:14):
love it so much is that it felt like I
was being shown a world that was possible for me
as a half Asian woman, and as a woman who
you know basically has always felt very not great about
her own body and her own sexuality, as much as
every woman on the planet feels that way, you know

(01:01:36):
what I mean. I was like, here's like the best
version of who I could be in a weird way.
I don't want to kill anybody, but I do think
the occasional karate chop to the neck would be kind
of fun. Non lethal, non lethal, A respectful karate chop.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
To the neck. It's I could get out of my
way moment.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Yeah, and I love a black driving glove, you know,
but but I love it. I love this movie. It
made it made me feel powerful and capable and sexual
and sexy and Asian and everything. It just really blew
my mind so great.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
So glad that you brought this one to the pod.
I know we have talked about it off Mike. I
know that it's, you know, part of your book. I
know that it's like a part of your life and
development as a film critic and as someone who is
an authority, not a semi authority, who is an authority
on cult films, And it's just it's a it's a

(01:02:40):
really it's really great to go back and watch this
film from from the lens of my my forty seven
year old eyes. Yeah, because I think it's it can't
help but be impactful to everyone who.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Sees it for the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah, it's definitely like an influential film in the cult
movie world. I mean there's so many references to it
at this point. I mean it's part of like, you know,
death Proof by Tarantino. I mean, the Cramps probably would
half exist if it wasn't for this movie. I mean,
they called one of their albums Smell a Female. It's

(01:03:15):
just like, you know, there's a lot, a lot, a
lot of things happened culturally because of a movie of
this movie in particular, and I think it's actually besides
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I think it's probably
the other most successible Russ Meyer movie if you want
to just like kind of jump into his world, which

(01:03:36):
is a wild world. I'm not going to deny that,
but it's like, I feel like this movie is the
best one to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Could not agree more. Start here, you will not be disappointed.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Well, listen, I've gone on way too long about my life.
What about your life? Your movie life?

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
No such thing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Movie that I brought for our final episode, the movie
that got us into movies. The screenplays by Dan O'Bannon.
The director was Ridley Scott. And I'm of course talking
about alien.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
How do we kill it?

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Ash, there's gotta be a way of killing it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
How how do we do it?

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
You're cold?

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
So I'm gonna give you a one sentence synopsis.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Ignoring a woman who says no, kills an entire space
crew and they fucking deserve it sounds like you now,
prior to this week, I probably would have come up
with something like funny or quirky or whatever, but I'm like, no,
that's pretty.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Much what this movie is about.

Speaker 3 (01:04:47):
On its face, though, it is about a crew, a
seven member crew of a kind of like a commercial
towing vehicle in space and it's on its way back
to Earth. They receive distress signal from somewhere. They go
check it out and one of their crew members gets
hugged in the face by an alien and they fill

(01:05:11):
a little bit of time try to figure out like
should we let him in?

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Should we not let him in?

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
And Ellen Ripley, who I Will get into the star
of the movie, the primary character of the film, is like, no,
we shouldn't let him in, and they ignore her, and
then the whole movie happens, Oh I Will.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Isn't that always the way?

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Oh? My god, always the way? So let me first
tell you who's in this film.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
Ellen Ripley, who goes by Ripley, is the protagonist of
the film, played by Sigourney Weaver, and she's kind of
like a just a third officer on the ship, like
I don't know exactly what her job is, but I
think it involves like warrants or something. The captain of
the ship Dallas Captain Dallas played by Tom Skarett, who

(01:05:58):
we talked about at length during our Seal Magnolia's review.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
In the live show, a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
People were mad that we didn't record that. I was like, sorry,
had to be there once again.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Also, and this might be an unpopular opinion, I think
live recordings of podcasts are impossible to listen to because
so much of what they are doing is on a
screen behind them, or it did a visual joke that
you will not get, and nobody takes the time to
stop and explain what's going on. So and even the
podcast that I love, when they're like we're doing a
live episode, I'm not listening because I know that it

(01:06:30):
will be a different flavor and it is meant to
only be important or useful to the people in the room.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Like, let it just be its own thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
You don't have to I don't every want to listen
to a live recording of a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Personally.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
You said that very early days of this podcast, and
I was like, listen, I'm with you. I love right,
like good We don't have to haul fucking Casey out
to wherever with all a bunch of equipment to record
us talking about stuff like I was, like, I'm on board,
but not doing a live episode.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
So it's it's just a different beast. It's just a
different thing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
So like, yeah, go and support the live episodes of
the podcast that you love, but stop stop asking them
to record them and make it available to everyone. It
is a different experience.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Yeah, Plus there's a magic in person. You got to
go to live show. Sorry, you don't just get the
internet for all your needs. Sometimes you actually got to
go outside and look at us and cry with us.
Come on, look us in the eyeball.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
But yeah, that we did not record the live episode,
but we did talk about Tom Scarett. You also have
the engineer of the ship played by Engineer Kine, who's
played by John Hurt, legendary film act, legendary actor of
stage screen. The navigator is Lambert, who's played by Veronica Cartwright.

(01:07:53):
You have a kind of a tech a tech guy
like an engineering tech guy played by Harry Dean Stanton.
His name is Brett. The science officer. His name is
Ash played by Ian Holme, and the chief engineer is
Parker played by Yafet Codo.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
One thing that is also.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Really was really influential about this movie was the way
that the movie looked and the way that the reason
for that and the reason the movie looked very futury
and kind of greasy and kind of scary was because
the xenomorph, the villain in the movie, the alien, was

(01:08:37):
based on drawings by hr Geiger. And you either know
nothing about hr Geiger or you had a boyfriend when
you were nineteen and everything about hr.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Geiger, that's right. His art is intense and specific and
very cool, but it can be overwhelming if you don't care,
like if you don't care about H. R.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Giger, be overwhelming to hear about their career. But I
employ you to go look at some of their work.
And I also I'm gonna kind of I do have notes,
but I'm talking loosely about the movie because I feel
like this is one of those films that you've either
definitely seen or just have to this point not wanted
to see, so either know about it or you don't.

(01:09:20):
But this movie basically starts with everyone sleeping in their
pods like The Distress. The Distress signal comes through to
the computer interface on the ship that they call Mother,
and I could write and I'm not even exaggerating, I
could write a doctoral thesis about feminism and the alien movies.

(01:09:42):
Oh my god, please, the reception of women in the
Alien franchise.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Okayn, I just write a book, like does it have
to be?

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Uh? It could be a book. It could be a book.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
But I immediately go to academia because I would. I
could slice and dice up the themes and the representations
in these films all day long. I'm not gonna do
that to you. I won't punish you with our last episode.
But Mother, who is this again? This computer system interface
kind of gets this message.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
But everyone's sleeping in their pod.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
And they all sleep in like these big old diapers,
like they're just chilling in these little futuristic pods and
these little diapers. And at the time that I saw
this movie for the first time, which of course, again
was way too young.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
I saw this when I was.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Like eight or nine years old, and at the time,
I thought, all of these people are fifty years old.
They all looked like full on old ass adults to me,
and watching it in recent years, I've never seen any
of these actors look younger.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
They were absolute babies.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
And this even Harry Dean Stanton, who I think was
born looking like he was seventy years old.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
Yeah, looks like a baby in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
He came out the womb like smoking a cigarette, being
like avenge me.

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
Imagine a baby popping out and asking for a sig
I'm going to be born and ripped SIGs. Let's go,
I've already been born. Let's get these fresh lungsome action.
And this is also this is something about this cast

(01:11:15):
of characters is when you first meet them, they're just
kind of waking up and having a meal. But there's
so much about these early scenes that are that are stunning.
Because the early scenes of the film are very quiet.
It's very quiet and normal, normal, and that you expect
to see a space crew kind of sleeping in pods

(01:11:35):
and waking up just to eat and go back to
their pods because they're on their way back to Earth
that could take weeks to get there. But it's a
really quiet ear and it grows into an eerie quietness
over time. But there is also in this first scene
of them all being together, a real look at how
reckless people were with space in the nineteen seventies because

(01:11:57):
they are all smoking cigarettes.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
They have flame throwers, like.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
There is no there are a lot of officers and
engineers on this ship. There is no safety engineer on
this ship because they are all smoking full hand rolled
cigarettes in space.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Yo, I think the era is real thin up there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
I'd be real thin.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Would like, let me ask you, would you smoke a
cigarette on a spaceship?

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Absolutely not you how much oxygen has to be in
those things just to keep you alive?

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
I know, I was like, I kind of thought that
if open fire happened in space, it just explodes or something.
Is that. I'm not a scientist. I don't know if
that's actually true, but I just always felt like.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
That would happen.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
I definitely think it would explode in a vessel that
is enclosed, that is containing tons of oxygen tanks on it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Like if it was like silent running with Bruce Dern,
if you were living in that in that bubble, you
could probably rip a sick maybe like let a dube
or something, but not on a spaceship.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
Right, just everywhere on the spaceship they're smoking.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
And then again at one point, somebody literally brings out
a fucking flame thrower, and I'm like, who.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
We even got that on board?

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Much damage you're gonna do with a flamethrower on a spaceship?
It's going on, and it's one of those old seventies
style flamethrowers where the flame is just always going.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
It looks like a like a tiki torch.

Speaker 3 (01:13:17):
Yeah, So I'm like, who approve this? This ship is wild?
This ship is wild. So Tom Scarett Dallas, the captain,
intercepts this message as he kind of wakes up and
is like, hey, mother, like what's going on?

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
What do we miss?

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
And she's like, well, there's a fucking message from somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Maybe you should check it out.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
So they start to argue about whether or not they
need to go and engage in this rescue, but they
do kind of go, but they take the little ship,
you know, they disengage from the big ship and they
take the little ship down to investigate, and all of
the old tech on the ship is very like Joy
Division cover kind of looks it's like, oh, Joy Division Cover.

(01:13:57):
It's like that's where they got that from. And the
ship breaks while it's landing, probably because it's covered in
nicotine and fire.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, and the ship's like I've had it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
So their little ship breaks and they have to kind
of dry dock for a little bit. But they go
and investigate this vessel on this abandoned planet, and they
send a small group out to the terrain and they
do find something mysterious. It again looks like a ship.
They go in because they have their board. I don't
know what that's their job. I don't know they went in.

(01:14:32):
I would not have been like, you could send me
back to Earth. I'll be in my pod right. But
inside this ship they find a bunch of eggs with
quote organic life moving around inside. So you know when
you were a kid, like you shine a flashlight on
a chicken, an egg with a little chicken side, you
can see like all the membranes.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
That's what this looked like.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
And instead of running from it, they poke at it
until one opens up and splays itself all over the
face of John Hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
No Way, And I'm like, that's what you get for poken.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Eggs on a spaceship and an abandoned planet. Like, I
don't care what kind of science you're into. There are
protocols for you interacting with that egg.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
I know, I know it's real loosey goosey right now
up here, but like, you gotta you gotta be careful.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
You gotta have some standards, man like for your own safety.
Clearly because this thing, which we now call a face
hugger attaches itself to Caine. So now everyone's like, uh,
what is going on. Ripley is like, do not open
the hatch. We have a twenty four hour quarantine process

(01:15:40):
for when shit like this possibly happens. Every single all
six other people all the ship are like, no, let
him in. We gotta save him. Just throw the book
out the window. And they let her. They ignore her
and let him in. So now they're trying to save
him quote unquote. So Ash the Science tech is like
trying to figure out and Dallas and like, well, we

(01:16:01):
can't actually get it off his face because every time
we touch it, it tightens its grip around it's his neck.
Let's just slide Caine into the wall and scan him.
So they just slide him into a wall and scan
his body, and that's when they realize there's like a
tendril from the face hugger is stuck down his throat
and they think it's feeding him Oxygen's like, oh, this
is now a symbiotic relationship where this thing is keeping

(01:16:22):
him alive and we can't cut it off.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
How awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
The cool news is they do cut into it and
the alien's blood is fucking acid just starts eating through
the floor of the spaceship. Again, who is in charge
of making sure this spaceship can say viable with these
fuckers on board?

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
They're like the jackass guys. It's like, let's just cut
it off.

Speaker 3 (01:16:42):
And then it's acid and they're like, let's say where
the acid goes. But even better news, they go back
and check on Caane and the face hugger is gone, right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
So Ripley in the midst of this is like, I
don't know, I don't trust ass.

Speaker 3 (01:16:59):
He seems to you pushing real hard for this alien
to survive, for us to not hurt it. But Cain
kind of wakes up and seems fine. And also in
this scene you have to pay attention to the fact
that Kane John Hurt is wearing a lace up onesie,
like a deep V lace up onesie, which is such
a weird choice. But they kind of like, what, what's

(01:17:23):
the last thing you remember, like, you remember this acid
filled alien hug in your face and he's like, no,
the last thing I remember is a dream about smothering.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
You're like, yep, that's normal.

Speaker 3 (01:17:31):
That tracks carry on as usual because they go just
go and have one more meal. They're like, all right,
the face hugger is gone. Kin seems fine, Let's just
go eat and go back to our pods, right, And
it's all happy and good, smoking cigarettes, playing with a
flame flower until the iconic scene where the alien baby

(01:17:51):
that has clearly embedded itself in his body burst out
of his chest. Yes, and it has been parried several times,
It's been parted spaceballs.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
It is fucking disgusting looking. This little head pops out and.

Speaker 3 (01:18:04):
Then these tiny, tiny teeth, tiny like steel teeth, and
this tiny, tiny jaw opens up and just goes ah
and scurries across the fucking table and leaves.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
I have to ask, what were you thinking when you
first saw this scene? What how do were you feeling
when you saw this for the first time.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
I was terrified because I've already gone through the poultugeist
scene of the chicken with the maggots on it, so
I'm already prepped to think anything could burst out of
my body at any time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:36):
It was terrifying, and it didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
It looks comical now, it doesn't look like it was
clearly a puppet obviously, so it looks very comical now,
but at the time it's just this like blood and
ooze covered thing. Yeah, and it bursts out of his
chest in such a violent way that it also destabilized
the film because you're like, well, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
Know what had happen next.

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):
Now we're dealing with an alien on the loose, and
the crew has no idea what it is or how
to combat it. So it was both disgusting and terrifying,
but also wildly exhilarating to watch this saying jump back
and chest.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
That's what I think is so interesting about watching a
movie like this as such a young person, because I've
actually heard from like several people, like some several of
my friends who when they saw this movie for the
first time as a young person, they were like, this
scene particularly changed something in me, like like made me

(01:19:33):
a horror movie maniac, like got me really into science fiction,
like something where they were just like, oh, yeah, I
was completely freaked out but then it also rewired my brain. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
I think that's why I picked it too, because up
to this point, my grandmother had been showing me horror
movies and sci fi movies, you know from the fifties
sixties is. She loved you know, all the ogs like
you know, Swamp Thing and the original monster movies, but
she also loved all the og science fiction movies.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
And this one felt different. This this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
From the first time I saw it, it felt like
it was showing me a different way to tell a story. Yeah,
and I was sucked the fucking Yeah, I bet I
was onto it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
This really did.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
And it also helped me to see my own place
in a science fiction future because there were women on
the ship and black people on the ship. Yeah, And
it was life changing in that way to see that
as a kid and to think, oh, in the future,
I could be this kind of like this could happen,
or this could be a future.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
That we're working towards.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
A in a broadway, but in a specific way, I
was I'm like, this is Coole ast shit.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Yeah that to this day, like that scene is so jarring.
It's kind of is the most It is the most
famous scene I think of maybe the entire franchise, and
it's like one of the most iconic scenes I think
in film history too.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
I gotta say, what if it's not list, I will
make that list and put it at the top for sure.
The only other I think more iconic image from any
of the Alien movies in the franchise is the I
believe it's in three where the alien like Ripley's face
is kind of turned against the ship.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
And the alien is right against her freezing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's the other iconic but you know, I yeah, definitely, yeah,
this is the first I had seen. When I saw
this movie for the first time, I jumped when that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:30):
Yeah, so nothing about that scene is expected because you think, oh,
we've seen them have dinner before, we've seen them, you know,
cutting up before they go back to their pods.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
We did not.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
We'd never seen anything like this, nothing like this. So
now they're all looking for the fucking alien that burst
out of Kyne's chest. Kine's dead. They're like, peace out.
They shoot him out of the ship and into the
fucking atmosphere. They're like, let space have you and do
what it will because you're truly which they should have
done from the beginning, but then of course again the
movie wouldn't exist. But this is also where we learned

(01:22:01):
there's a cat on board. There's an orange cat called Jonesy,
who I love. And once you meet this cat, if
you're an animal lover or an animal person at all,
once you meet this cat, all you can think of is,
please do not let this alien eat this cat.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
I know, please do, sir.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
That is such a big part of the rest of
the movie. For me is like where is Josie?

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
Where is Josi? But it adds to the fear.

Speaker 3 (01:22:23):
And again, if you're a little kid and you love
animals and you're like, am I gonna be watching a
cat get eaten up?

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Like please don't. So everyone's looking for Jonesy.

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):
Brett harrydan Stan's character is looking for Jonesy, and at
one point he picks up this this what looks like
a loose skin, like an like a snake shedding its skin,
which is how we learn that the xenomorph, the alien
is growing. And when I say growing, it goes from
baby to minute bowl in like twenty minutes. Ha, this

(01:22:54):
thing is fucking massive in twenty minutes. And then it
like when you see it again. It has a mouth
within a mouth like it's growing extra parts of itself.
It's it's ceaseless. It's a ceaseless alien.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
That is growing in huge proportions.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
So Brett at one point is looking for it and
he kind of just stands under this this dripping water, which, again,
what is going on with this ship?

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
Dripping water is bad news for a spaceship.

Speaker 1 (01:23:24):
I know, there is just probably a leak somewhere, right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
It should be bad news. Like also, that's probably not
just water like, but he's standing in.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
It like like like tourists Atana in our film earlier
taking a bath in a water tower. That's Brett on
this ail, on this fucking spaceship. And of course he dies.
He's eaten up by that. That's because again we see
the alien.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
It's huge.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
It's like ten times it's three times the size of him.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
He's gone.

Speaker 3 (01:23:52):
And the other thing I love about the xenomorph is
it disappears people. So they're like, yeah, we know he's dead.
He can't help but be dead. He cannot find even
his bones, like they just aw the whole thing in.
So they go back to the computer and they're like, hey, mother,
what's up? What's up with this fucking alien thing? And
she's like, uh, my direct is is that you should

(01:24:14):
save the alien at all costs.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
The crew is expendable.

Speaker 3 (01:24:18):
And they're like I'm sorry, what and she's like, like
one of our chances and she's like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
Does not compute, motherfucker, you are expendable.

Speaker 3 (01:24:24):
I don't know how other times, like how many other
times I can say it, So I'm not going to
go through the full rest of the film, but I
will say there are two things that always crack me
up about this movie. One is when Dallas, the captain,
encounters the alien, which is a terrifying moment because he's
kind of crawling around in a small space and everyone's
watching this heat dot and they're like, the alien is

(01:24:45):
right there, like it's coming towards you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
It's right there.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
And when he finally sees it, it reaches out to him
like it's doing jazz hands, which always cracks me up.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
Ha ha.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
He's like, come on, baby, hello, my baby, Hello, baby baby.
And then my my other favorite part is Ash so.
Ash is the science engineer played by Ian Holme, and
at one point Ash starts to sweat milk like he
just looks like he's sweating milk because he's getting into
it with Ripley, and he attacks the shit out of Ripley,

(01:25:15):
like throws her around with one hand. And Ian Holme's
a tiny little dude, and he just attacks Ripley and
just throws her around, and we're trying to figure out,
like what the fuck is going on, and then we
have Parker comes. Parker and oh god, Lambert come around
the corner and they see basically Ash roll. He rolls

(01:25:41):
up a magazine and tries to jam it down Ripley's throat,
which is so phallic and awful. And again I could
write a million papers about this this movie. But he's
fully bugging out, like his eyes are fluttering. He's violent.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
So they and everyone's like, why why is Ash so strong?
Like we didn't know Ash was so strong.

Speaker 3 (01:26:01):
Parker hits him in the back of the head with
like a fire fingersher.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
Basically, and it knocks his head off his body.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
So now everyone's like, oh shit, Ash is a goddamn robot.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
He's park Android, which.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
Is again the surprises do not stop coming in this film.
But then they take his head, don't worry, they take
his head and they plug it in and rewire his
head to get some answers, and so you're looking inside
like the cavity of his neck and you're like, oh,
he's made of like spaghetti and milk and some bubble
te balls. And they plug in his head and they're like,

(01:26:38):
what's going on. He's like, you're all gonna fucking die,
ha ha, And then he just gets They use the
flamethrower and light him up. But that scene was so
fucking like his head on that table is so iconic
to me about again, what could happen in storytelling, how
surprises work, how plot twists work, how things.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Work, and I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
There's just so many things that stand out to me
and will always stand out to me. Is what makes
this What makes this movie a supreme film and just
and sci fi but across the genres. And Ripley after
seeing this is like, Yo, we're blowing this ship the
fuck up. There's only three of us left. Let's get
the fuck out of here. Let me go get this cat.
And I'm gonna end the description there of the movie

(01:27:21):
because I think if you haven't seen it, you have to.

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
If you have, you know what's coming.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
Yeah, And we all know Ripley makes it because there's
like four more alien movies, but you have to watch.
If you've never seen this movie, do yourself the favor
of watching it. Don't take for granted that, oh, we've
got Alien Resurrection and all these new alien you know,
Prometheus and all these new things coming out. See the
first one to understand what this world is and what's
what was especially exciting to me about this world. Even

(01:27:47):
though there is a scene later with Ripley kind of
getting undressed and trying to crawl into the pod and
like her underwear doesn't fit in the weirdest way possible.
It's like it's too low, it's rolled down, and her
ass crack is out.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Listen. I know a ton of people who are like
sexually activated by that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
Absolutely, So I know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:06):
A ton of people who have specifically been like, yo,
the ill fitting underwear was my sexual awakening.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
Ah. They knew what they were doing. I'll just say
that they did.

Speaker 3 (01:28:19):
They knew what they were doing across the sexuality spectrum.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
People were launched.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
Yes, but there's this scene and you're like, okay, so
you know that she again, like she does survive to
fight the alien another day. But watching her get to
a point where she could possibly do that is fascinating
and again unexpected. There are twists, but I just really
as a kid resonated. Something about this movie that really

(01:28:46):
resonated with me was this notion of survival, this notion
of fighting. Seeing like women kicking ass as a weight
is it means purely fight for their own survival, not
to benefit men or anything like. It was revolutionary to
me to see Ripley as a character because we again

(01:29:10):
have seen over the development of the franchise how they
sexualized her much like more and more and more. And
if this movie were to be made today, I think
it would have all the bells and whistles of the
extreme jumping and extreme punching and extreme fighting. What makes
this movie brilliant is how quietly you are watching people

(01:29:32):
fight for their life. Yeah, and it really changed something
in me to be able to see not just a
different world, a different landscape in space, in spaceships, but
to see Sigourney Weaver as Ripley kicking absolute s in
a way that felt at the same time very feminine.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
She's crying, she's like yelling. She is not.

Speaker 3 (01:29:55):
Timid about expressing herself while she's fighting for her fucking
life and revolutionary to.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
Me, unbelievable, And you're so right about there was a
restraint I think to seventies cinema when it came to
like action science fiction things like that, even like early
eighties stuff like that just doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (01:30:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
I think that we're too We need to keep attention.
Like that's the thing is that, like people are so
distracted that now everybody's just trying to keep your attention
at all times. The fast edits, the you know, the graphics,
the special effects, that kind of stuff when you walk back,
Like for example, if you have like no reference for

(01:30:40):
something like this, like if you've never seen it and
you've not really watched a lot of you know, classic
films or older cinema, and you watch something like this,
it's I would be curious to see what you think,
because you know, I think a lot of people who
dip in older films are like, man, they're so like
boring and not like kind of mute it. And I'm

(01:31:03):
just like, that's what I love about it, though, I mean,
don't you love that?

Speaker 3 (01:31:08):
I mean that I don't know what's going to happen
because of these overblown movies.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
I know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
Yeah, even like thrillers and suspenseful movies, you just see
shit coming from a mile away. Now where I feel
like a movie like Alien is really like a really
a great example of tension building.

Speaker 2 (01:31:29):
Absolutely, Oh, just such an economy of language and.

Speaker 3 (01:31:34):
The use of force or strength, and it's it's a
beautiful fucking movie. It's a weird movie. It's a hilarious movie,
and it's scary as shit. It's one of the first
scary movies that I saw that I really felt like, oh,
but I understand the terror.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:53):
And when I was really little and watching movies with
my grandmother, I'm like, this is just scary.

Speaker 2 (01:31:57):
I don't like it. But it really became.

Speaker 3 (01:32:01):
Like, oh, yeah, this is this is how terror can
work in a way that feels interesting. And I also,
again would be remiss if I didn't mention that the
actor who plays the alien, who's actually in the alien
costume is Bolage Beideho, who was huge, like just a
fucking giant person. But go look information about Bolagie Bideho,

(01:32:25):
who did a fucking fantastic job in this film, and
never you never see their face or you know his face,
so you don't get to know much about who he
is beyond behind the scenes, but really was part of
the iconic franchise and the main part of the p
iconic franchise, which we I didn't learn for years who
that there was an actor. I thought it was all
puppets and strings, but no, there's a human being in there.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
Yeah. I just have to say, the course, over the
course of four years, two hundred and something episodes, you
the narrative that you presented very early on of being
a young person who was forced into horror, science fiction,
and other forms of depravity through your grandmother is one

(01:33:10):
of the funniest, best most endaring things ever. Like I
mean as a person that's often like thought about and
talked about, you know, movie culture, but also like how
people get into movies, how they were formed as children
to like the things that they like. Now, Like, that's

(01:33:31):
one of the best stories is to just have this
like little mean, depraved horror movie loving grandma with her
saw DVDs next to her husband's ashes, just fucking your
mind up, just like fucking you up forever.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
And doesn't even think of it. Just like if I'm
gonna watch it.

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
These kids I'm watching are also gonna watch it, Like
was not even we weren't even considered in terms of
any of this being bad.

Speaker 2 (01:34:00):
For our development.

Speaker 3 (01:34:01):
She thought it was cool, so she's like, well, they'll
clearly think it's cool because I love it, so.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
They'll love it.

Speaker 3 (01:34:06):
It is also joyful to me to note and have
heard from so many people who got into movies in
the same exact way. Whe They're like, yeah, my fucking
grandmother is the one that made me watch all these
slasher films. And I again, part of my possible doctoral
thesis in the future is going to be to examine
and really research and study why so many older women,

(01:34:29):
grandmother specifically, fucking love horror movies. Because I think there
is a generational thing happening where they were so locked
in and unable to express themselves in their actual day
to day lives that they grew to enjoy any expression
of direct violence against oppression.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
I don't know, I think there's something to it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
We were talking about this when we were both in
Atlanta for the live show. I mean, why the hell
do you think you and I love heavy metal and
rap music. I feel like it's the same thing. There's
something that connects all of this, and it has to
do with women's oppression in some basic way.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
We have got to crack the code, even if it
means cracking the DNA sequence and going and becoming scientists.
Like there is something so intense about this that I
believe is a genetic issue.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):
Listen, as we're figured this out, I'll take a face
hugger for the team if we if we can solve
if we can solve the riddle of this and I
have to have a face hugger in the process, I'll
take one. I'll be that person because I want to know.
We gotta we gotta figure this out for humanity.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
Maybe we can get a synthetic face hugger or something.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
Well, I will say this too, just to close up
my thoughts about you picking this amazing film this week.
I'm so glad that you had that experience with being
shown this movie at a young age, having it fucking
rock your brain, and that you did something positive with

(01:36:01):
it and he did not turn into a Republican Christian
freakazoid like it had the intended effect, which is that
it turned you into a professional maniac that was subsequently
able to put great art and entertainment into this world.
Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 (01:36:20):
Like you, Yeah, it didn't shut me down to the
point where I'm like, nobody can ever see anything like this?

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
Why would we let anybody watch this?

Speaker 3 (01:36:26):
I was like, actually, this is kind of cool, and
I have some ideas of my own, and it's not like.

Speaker 1 (01:36:31):
This stupid narrative that like all these like fucking like
satanic panicky types are always saying like, oh, the things
are ruining the children's brains and they're all going to
become like this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
No, was like, no, sometimes they become professional, successful weirdos,
And that's what we need in the world. We don't
need any more fucking jumpers. Basically, we don't need even
more fascists. We don't even be conservatives. We need awesome freaks.

Speaker 3 (01:37:00):
Oh, I'm so happy to be an awesome freak. You're
an awesome freak too.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
Thank you. I know that's what we get along. I
think that's why we get along so well.

Speaker 2 (01:37:08):
I so too.

Speaker 3 (01:37:09):
You're like this movie in the desert with all these
women just running like ragged over men. That is what
is going to activate me in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
Seeing women kill men in the sand with their bare
hands made me the person that I am today.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
Oh God, I love this so much. I've loved every
minute of this. Every minute of this.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
I have too, And I'm sad that this episode is
finally coming to an end because I think, you know,
I'm just gonna miss sitting with you, like doing this
shit every week. I mean, honestly, like, it was a
joy to talk about movies. It was a joy to
hear you talk about movies. I feel like we created
this amazing little world where we got to share our

(01:37:58):
thoughts and our feelings in our opinion, and a lot
of times it went from like talking about extremely hard, difficult,
sometimes sometimes traumatic, sometimes emotional things to talking about farts
and you know, like bad dates and you know, like

(01:38:20):
thigh chafing. Like it was the range of like topics
was so vast, and it was like you were there
for every bit of it. There was never a time
where I felt like I'm going in a direction and
you weren't on the ride.

Speaker 2 (01:38:35):
You know, if you put it down, I'll pick it up, Yeah,
I'll pick it up.

Speaker 1 (01:38:39):
That's the best thing that you can hope for in
any friend and anybody that you creatively collaborate with. Is
somebody that is going to like take you at your
high low, is never going to make you feel weird.
And that's this podcast for me, in a nutshell, it's
just the feeling of being seen and understood by you,
by Casey, by everybody we work with, by everybody who's listening,

(01:39:00):
has made it every second worth it for me.

Speaker 2 (01:39:03):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:39:04):
I could not agree more, and thank you so much again.
Don't forget, Do not unsubscribe to your feed and your
whatever you're using to listen to this podcast. Keep subscribing
to the feed, keep subscribing to our social media because
as announcements come out, that is where they will live.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
Be on the lookout for a film podcast for me
and Casey, possibly in January, maybe sometime in twenty twenty five,
I don't know, but yeah, you will hear about it
first of you stay on this feed, so just stay it.
And also I gotta say, like, I know that our

(01:39:45):
social media is still gonna be up, Like I don't
think we're striking it down at least not in the
short term, so you know our social media will be there.
But also we'll be checking the emails. I mean, I
know that you and I will both check it for
a little bit and I might just still check it
once in a while.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):
Who the fuck goes so keeping that too, So even
if we don't check it for a couple of years,
it'll be there.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
Yeah, I saw what you did pot at jumid dot com.
You can just like lob over late night voicemails. It
was just like something you want to do. I'm not
saying they're going to be listening to them. We're going
to listen to them with any kind of like regularity
over time. But if that's just something you want to do,
that email address will still be there, and you.

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
Know, keep it movie related pod focused, but send us,
send us some stuff, especially in the in the in
the next coming weeks, we will definitely be reading too
and hopefully having some time to respond to people directly.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):
And you can always.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):
Find out more about us on our link tree, which
is on our social media uh and you can find
us on our socials at I saw pod on Instagram,
Blue Sky and Twitter.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
Yeah, to keep in touch with.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
Us, keep in touch and Danielle. The last time I
want to say this as always, as ever as it
shall be a fucking pleasure doing and have done this
podcast with you.

Speaker 3 (01:41:07):
Honestly, it has been a distinct honor and my fucking pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:41:15):
All right, so much siding off.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
We love you.

Speaker 1 (01:41:19):
Thanks for being a listener. We appreciate it. Bye hed
did bye see.

Speaker 4 (01:41:31):
Yeah, this has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:41:42):
Our senior producer is Casey O'Brien.

Speaker 3 (01:41:44):
Episode mixing and theme music by Tom Bryfogel, artwork by
Garrett Ross. Our executive producers are Georgia heart Start, Karen
kile Gareff, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow us on
Instagram and Twitter at I Saw pod, and you can
email us at I Saw What you Did pod at
GMA yep