January 26, 2017 • 59 mins
Is it time for another episode of this here podcast? Oh, yeah! Did Caitlin and Jamie invite comedian Julia Prescott to chat about Fargo? You betcha! Is Marge Gunderson a swell character? You're darn tootin'!
(This episode contains spoilers)
Follow @juliaprescott on Twitter! While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @hamburgerphone
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the be Dol Cast, the questions asked if movies
have women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends
and husbands, or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef
and best start changing it with the Bedel Cast. Hello,
and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. Oh wait, I meant
to do it a different way. Let me start over. Okay,
(00:22):
well hey, well hey there, and welcome to the beck
Doel Cast. Hey, I'm your host, Caitlin Durante. I'm Jamie Loftus. Well, hey,
hey there. That was a little bit in New York. Yeah,
it's really hard. I thought I would do better at
this accent. Figure it out. It's foreshadowing of the movie
we're gonna be talking about. This is so clever of us,
(00:45):
I know, I know, yeah, oh yeah. But before we
get into that, we're gonna just tell you a little
bit about what the Bechdel Cast is. What is it.
It's a podcast where we talk about movies, but specifically
they're female characters. Each we pick a different movie every
week and we just talk and chat and then we
(01:06):
also at the at the end when we remember, we
decide if it passed the Backdal test. That's which is
which has everything to do with whether there are two
female characters who speak to each other about something other
than a man. There's a variation of it where the
female characters have to have names depending on the movie.
(01:26):
We we take it easy on some and uh really
going on the others. Yeah, we're we can be ruthless. Yeah.
And if you're wondering, hey, who are these two people? Yeah,
why do why do they get to talk about? Well? Yeah,
I wonder if anyone ever is like, which one's talking? Oh,
these there's two ladies and they're both their voices are
(01:47):
too shrill, like Kippernette White ladies were the same lady.
But yeah, I'm the one. It's me, Caitlin. It's me. Uh.
And I have a lot of credentials. One. I have
made several students elms, at least three of them. Also,
I do. I do have two degrees in film. I
(02:08):
don't like to bring it up. I don't like the time. Well,
you know, the people want to know the people are as.
I used my degree this week, which is pretty amazing.
My radio degree. I know I never get to use
it because it's in irrelevant medium, but I used it
(02:28):
this week. I wrote some promos for a radio station. Hey,
there you go. It took three years, but I did it.
Did they pay you for it? Uh, we'll see. We'll
see if they come there. In theory, they should. Yeah,
if you do work, you should get paid for it. Yeah.
I have one degree. I bet I use it this week,
So it counts thet much for their head than I am. Switch.
(02:49):
But without further ado, let's introduce our guests. Yeah, she's
a very funny person. She's a writer, she's a comedian,
and her name is True Prescott. Thanks for having me on,
Thanks for joining us, for coming. Yeah, so you've brought
us a movie that we're going to be talking about,
and tell us. Tell us what it is. Well, first
(03:11):
and foremost, I must say my degree um, I degree
in in Film Studies UM from Chapman University. Interesting bit
of trivia about my degree. I got into film school
with an essay on the Cohen Brothers, got out with
a thesis on them. Baby, yeah sandwiched my education. Oh
this is perfect. Yeah, I I'm so excited to talk
(03:34):
about this movie. I did rewatch it, but I did
feel before I rewatched, I was like, do I need
to because I feel like I know it so well.
It's just one of those movies. And then I also
watched the TV series that it was based on. I
haven't seen that yet. I've heard it's very good. I've
heard some good things, such a treat. The movie is
Fargo FO which they probably knew because it's I'm guessing
(03:59):
on the episode listing. Yeah, well, no, we should keep
everyone in suspense. They have to listen to know what
movie we're talking about. Can I just say something while
I'm thinking about it. I didn't say my name yet.
Oh yeah, you should see your name. Oh boy, now
I feel very I feel full of hubrious. But my
name is Jamie. Okay, let's keep talking. That accent is
(04:22):
super fun. Oh yeah, I feel like I'm a real
sponge for accents. Like I'll be in Canada for like
half a day and everything will be like, oh yeah,
Like I stop doing it this afternoon, Like I watched
it this afternoon and then I came right here. I
was feeling real, Marge. It's just it's a kind musicality,
(04:44):
like there's there's like a real fun cadence to it
that just it opens the world up to you. That's
how I feel. But yeah, yeah, Yeah. To answer your
question from before, well, the reason why I brought this
movie is because this movie had always stuck out to me.
I think that for Cohen Brothers fans, they love Raising Arizona,
(05:05):
they love The Big Labowski, you know, they love other ones.
But I feel like this is a lot of Cohen
Brothers fans like, first, this is the big drama movie
that they really latch onto. And at least that was
the way it was for me. And I was always
a really big fan of film noir. I actually originally
wanted to major as a cinematographer because I was like,
(05:29):
really in a black and white cinematography. I was really
obnoxious eighteen to nineteen year old. But I got really
into film noirs and then um, you know, got into
Cohen Brothers movies, which is neon noir. And the way
that they do it in this film, I think is
just what. It's a spicy meat a ball. It's perfect.
(05:49):
We were talking earlier about how it's virtually flawless everything
about it. There's not a dull moment. Yeah, it's so good,
and it's full of olymptic to men, yeah and like
women who are doing their best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a
bunch of incompetent dudes and a bunch of very competent well,
not a bunch one, especially very competent woman. I feel
(06:14):
like that's a trend in a lot of Cohen Brothers
films in general, though, I mean, you see that with
Raising Arizona and the Character of High, you see that
with you know, a lot of their other films that
it it's sort of like the action of the story
begins with an incompetent man spinning a lie that just
gets them deeper and deeper and deeper. And of course
we see that in this movie with Jerry Lindagard played
by William H. Macy just being a total bumbling idiot.
(06:37):
Like I feel like you could, I mean, with the
exception of No Country for Old Men and some of
their later works aside, Like you can count on any
Cohen Brothers movie where in like the first five or
ten minutes, if a plot is enacted of deceit or
you know, some sort of like get rich quick scheme,
you know that it's not going to work out at
all because of this character's own misgivings, like they're inept
(06:59):
to two is going to get in the way and
you know, and it's going to be very entertaining because
they're gonna have like sort of a folksy approach to
it that is like very every man, which I find
really interesting. Yea. And with Jerry from moment one, like
he's late to the first scene and then he was like, Oh,
this guy does not have it. He doesn't have it together. Yeah,
(07:20):
And the way that he's interacting with these two mom
guys is so I mean, it's it's indicative of where
he comes from culturally, with like you know, far going
north North Dakota and just being very like, you know,
oh hey, how are you going? Oh hey, you know,
like just being overly accommodating. But it also speaks to
like his own ineptness of being a man, which is
(07:40):
really what drives his plot and is like a central
theme in this film. And they do it in the
first five fucking minute. So good. Yeah, it's so well written,
it's so well directed and act just like and the
way that they cast it too. I mean, they do
this for every one of their movies. They're so great
at finding these aasing character actors. But I was just
(08:02):
thinking about this, like even in the scene with Um,
like the two escorts that Marge interviews to find out
more about, you know, Steve Amy's character and Peter Stormyer's character.
Like they are such a specific kind of like North
Dakota trashy girl, and like, these aren't actresses that I've
seen in any other movie. And I don't think, you know,
(08:22):
I didn't check their IMDb, but I'm willing to bet
they weren't in a lot of things. But they just
they acted so well and they were so real and
it just like enhanced everything. Well, we just found out
before you got here that Jean the first thing she
was ever in was Fargo because she's from there. Wow,
really yeah, because I was like, I don't recognize her
from anything else, and from what I can tell, she's
(08:45):
the only like main cast member who is like absolutely
from there, which makes you know, her accent checks out.
It's what she what has she done? After this? She
was in Drop Dead Gorgeous and yes, those are two
of my favorite one of my favorite movies. Yeah, it's
but her first thing ever was Fargo, so they must
have plus set out of there. I remember she was
(09:07):
the Pork Products girl and Drop Dead Gorgeous. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I just love it I work here now. God, that
fucking movie is one of the best movies of all times.
It Oh my god, it's so good. Yeah. It was
directed by one of the members of the State and
it was written by this woman who I don't know
if she did a ton of movies after that. It
was her first feature film. And there's actually a whole
(09:30):
like BuzzFeed article written by Lewis Pisman that goes into
like the behind the scenes, you know, rise of the
cult of Drop Dead Gorgeous and talks about like drama
on set and like how it just kept changing due
to studio notes, etcetera, etcetera. But it's actually out of
print on DVD, so if you can find it on
e Bay, I highly recommend snatching that up and shout
(09:52):
out to Pietsman, I know what he kills it. Well, okay,
well that's the podcast. I think that's all we have
to say. I usually um to everyone's dismay, spend a
few minutes describing the story of the movie that we're
talking about, just for anyone at home who doesn't need
a refresher, who hasn't seen it before, or just likes
(10:16):
my hilarious take on what the movie is about, So
this is a story where we first initially, the central
character is Jerry Lindegard played by William H. Macy, and
he goes to these two criminal professional criminals and he's like, YO,
kidnap my wife because I'm in financial trouble and we're
going to do this whole fake ransom thing. But we
(10:38):
both get paid out because my wife's husband or I'm
my wife's husband, that's what he said. My wife's father
is wealthy, so like, yeah, cool, good idea. And then
we meet his family and his wife and his father
in law. And the second you meet his wife, you're
just like precious. Yeah, like at first it sounds fun
(10:59):
to kidnap a and you're just like, oh, maybe you know,
because I feel like we're conditioned took like, oh maybe
she's mean, maybe she's like, maybe we're not going to
love her. The first time she opens her mouth, she's
the most precious, She's wonderful. You're like, don't wonderful? Who
could want to lay a hand on this woman? And
it felt so sad for her in just seeing her
(11:19):
in like her homemaker life of like sitting on the
couch and watching like daytime TV. And knitting. I was
just like, and she's so clearly settled for what I'm like,
how did they meet? Like, I I just maybe that's
another season a far, because I I just I don't know.
Whenever I see her, I'm like, I know for sure
you could have done better yeah than Jerry. Yeah. Yeah.
(11:40):
So then we we learned that Jerry's a very dishonest
car salesman, and it's yeah, that's a great way to
describe them. Yeah, wanness um. His wife gets kidnapped. They
go off to take her to the lake, but before that,
a cop pulls them over and some murders happen, and
(12:02):
they're like, oh crap, this didn't go Things are not
going as planned. Jerry, we need more money, and he's like,
oh no, I don't know anymore. He couldn't even handle
the first of it, so things start to go awry.
Then after these murders happened, we meet Marge Gunderson. She's
a detective and she starts investigating these murders and she
(12:23):
connects a few things back to the dealership where Jerry works,
and she starts to question him, and he is very
bad at being questioned by police officers and things keep
heightening and some violence happens. More people get murdered, including
Jerry's father in law. They take her to the lake
(12:45):
and then it ends with Marge finding the foot in
the wood shipper and she finds the Tan Sierra. Well
that's the car. That be careful, Marge, B care I
was gonna send some car. And then she shoots the
bad guy leg and she's like, yo, all this for
a little bit of money, you stupid idiot. She's so great,
(13:06):
she really is. And then she goes home to her husband, Norm, Norm,
who is flacid in all the right ways. Well, before
you said that, I was going to say that it
reminds me so much of me and my fiance. Oh no,
not like that though, No though, I think he's an artist,
and so I was teasing him like you're just you're
painting your duck paintings, you know, run you know, we're
(13:29):
just sweet to each other in a similar way. Conversation
at the end with the with the sweet three cent
stamp and she's like, well that's good though, because people
need those sometimes, and he's like, okay, yeah, I do.
I do find myself like in situations where you know,
he's sort of down in the dumps about something creatively.
I do find myself like finding the cadence of Marge
going yeah, but you're better than them, Han, Yeah, but
(13:52):
you're better than them and yeah yeah, so only the
good parts to shout out to Mike if you're listening,
you know, Yeah, I love that moment at the end
with Marge. I mean, she's just so wise and she's
so like confident in her like sort of matriarchal ways.
(14:13):
And and it's not like she's just kind but also smart.
It's it's weird. It's like she can sort of succinctly
boil everything down and get the answers, like earlier when
she's questioning Sheep at his shop and being like, you know,
like I I look into your background and you've got
some infractions and you're on parole, and I'm just thinking, like,
(14:34):
you probably wouldn't want to be involved with like this
being accessory to crime, now, would you? Like, you know,
she she's obviously playing a detective game, but there is
still this like genuine like warmth to her and she
actually cares about like she doesn't want people to go
back on Pearl. She doesn't want people to go you know,
commit crimes and go back into jail. She wants the
world to be good. She's a very nurturing yeah. Yeah,
(14:58):
And one of the reasons this movie is so great
is that she is such like a strong, multidimensional character.
She's like you said, smart, she's good at her job.
She's really good at her job. She's very competent. She's
like nice to a fault, but also like firm and
assertive when she needs to be. Like we see the
scene with mike Yanagita and he's like very clearly trying
(15:21):
to come onto her, and she's like, no, I preferred
if you sit over there. I want to talk about
that scene because that scene. I don't know if you
guys have found the controversy surrounding that whole subplot, because
I was about to say I think that with any
other character that wasn't as well developed as her, that
would be very distracting from the main action. But I
loved that scene because you just want to be like,
how would someone deal with this? I don't know? Right well, uh,
(15:44):
the internet said a lot of people were saying, like,
why you know, this film is so tidy in every
other way, but this one subplot of mike Yanagita like
feels like it comes out of left field a little bit,
and it doesn't really give as much to to the
motor of the plot as like some of the other
aspects of it, and you know, like why is it
(16:05):
even in there? You know, what does it do? And
I disagree. I think that, I mean, I trust Papa
and Papaco and um trust that they're going to carry
us on that that sweet good night. They're just such
competent directors, so I know that they know what they're doing.
But I also, you know, feel like the mike Yanagita character,
(16:25):
everything has a domino effect of her investigations. So she
gets the phone call from him and then knows that
he's in the Twin Cities. Then here's that you know,
the people that she's after went to the Twin Cities. Okay, great,
so that gives me a little bit more incentive to go.
Even though on paper you could say that like, oh,
is she you know, thinking about like philandering on norm
(16:49):
you know, But I don't think it's as complex as that.
I think that she's curious to find out, like, you know,
what this guy's life has been like. Um, But I
think that also that scene of them at the dinner
of the Raticon or whatever it is. You know, she
believes his story of his wife right, and then immediately
he confesses and says that that was a lie. So
(17:12):
that simple oh oh sorry, confess. She finds out later
you're right, friend, but it's not long after. Yeah. But
that whole process of her believing him and then realizing
that she was wrong forces her to start to question
some of her instincts previously, and it actually leads her
back to William H. Macy's character to question him for
(17:34):
the second it does connect and what do you have
as the brothers? I was a major in film study.
I thought that was interesting because it was interesting to
watch this movie in the context of this podcast and
really pay attention to the motivations of the female characters,
because there is sort of like a through line of
(17:56):
like the idea of women settling for men that don't
deserve them, Because I feel like Mike implies that when
they're chilling at the Ratison, He's like, oh, you ended
up marrying Normson, yeah, And and that makes it sound
like he thought she could do better. And I mean,
for anyone that's enough to plant to you know, it's
(18:17):
it's a downer to hear the person married and or
brainant with someone your respect thinks is like a loser
or whatever. But she and Norm have such a great
relationship and it's nice to see her go through that
whole process of like, no, this is the right thing
for me and this is what I want. Well, I
think you're tapping into something actually that I kind of
(18:38):
picked up in this rewatch of you know, there is
a moment when you know, she is at the buffet
with Norm and like one of her colleagues comes over
and it's like, oh, you're going to the Twin Cities
A and she's like, yeah, I'm going, and the Norm
is kind of surprised. Really oh yeah, yeah. So there
is just a flash of a moment of her sort
of exploring has she settled? Just a flash of it.
(18:58):
And I think that that's all so a symptom of
small towns in general, Like if you work in a
small town, if you live in a small town, have
I settled? Have I really seen my full potential? I
think that there is a flicker of that that leads
us to that frank meet up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I wish it's so hard not to do it. I
wish that we had that moment with Jean, because I mean,
(19:21):
I don't know Jeans the other female character of any
substance in this movie, and we I mean, we don't
really get to see much of her thoughts other than
the fact that she's very clearly duped. Uh. Yeah, I wish,
like the one thing that I would have liked to
have from this movie is at some point after her
(19:42):
kidnapping that she would get to say something. And I was,
I was bummed. I mean, it was fun to watch
her like run around like a chicken with her head cup.
That's an amazing scene and like tragic, but also likes character.
Good lord, he's so I love how people keep calling
(20:04):
him ugly funny, you know, just but I can't describe
how yeah exactly has it that in The Big Lebowski,
the reason that everyone's always telling Steve Bushmi's character in
that film, Donnie to shut the funk up is that
he doesn't ever shut the funk up in Fargo. So
that's funny. I think I heard that a while ago. Yeah,
(20:25):
that's hilarious. I thought you were going to be like,
because he's dead and shouldn't be talking. I'm like, oh god.
Another thing about The Big Lebowski is a similar thing
happens in The Big Lebowski, doesn't with like the Mike
Yanagitas subplot and Fargo with the there's just like a
character that feels tacked on, but you're like, I'm okay
(20:46):
with this, but like the Jesus character that oh my god,
look oh yeah yeah yeah, John, Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's
actually been I've heard theories about, like what's that all about.
There's a bar and I think I want to say
Germany that is like themed. It's called Labowski Bar and
the I believe drink they served there as white Russian.
(21:08):
I believe it. Yeah. In Los Angeles, have you guys
heard of Cafe Jack the Titanic one? Yes, And they
serve like what do they serve? It's like you fried
chicken and weird, like deeply weird American food that is
not that good but worth it, worth it for the experience,
(21:28):
and then you go to karaoke afterward. It's a good time.
I very, very unapologetically love the movie Titanic. I hope,
well you do it on this podcast sometime because I
love it so much. There was my mom the first
time I saw that movie because I was I wasn't
all enough to see it when I came out, But
eventually my mom had the two VHS for Titanic, and
(21:48):
she tried to convince me the movie it was over
at the end of the first VHS because the first
half is so fun. At the end, it's saying like,
we hit an iceberg, and she's like, and that's the movie.
Sounds like you're lying to like, yeah, and then that's
the inciting incident pretty much, but it just happens to
happen two hours. Um. I love the second half of
(22:12):
the movie. I love the whole movie, but I really,
to me, the second half of the film is just
like as soon as the iceberg they hits the iceberg,
I'm like, now it's getting good. I'm gonna I'm gonna
blow both your minds for a little bit. Last year,
I think on tour, I went to the Titanic Museum
where in Florida, in Pigeonforge, Tennessee. There are so many
(22:35):
I know this one shares a location. Their sister location
is in Branson, Missouri, And I lied and said that
I was covering it for a Vice article and they
were like that seems weird, but come on board. And
it was so bizarre and so fantastic, the kind of
like roadside weird attraction that I just like salivate over.
And when you go there, it's like if you've ever
(22:58):
been to Pigeonforge. People in this room and also people listening. Um,
it is like hill billy Vegas. So Dollywood is there obviously, yeah,
but then everything like leading up to Dollywood is like
wax museums and like go carts and like, you know,
here's a weird boat ride. I don't know. And then
here's like the Titanic Museum and then a Walmart and uh,
you show up and they give you a card and
(23:20):
they assign you to somebody that was actually on the
Titanic and then you like walk through and have to
figure out if you which is like they do with
the Museum of Tolerance to Yeah, that that's how the one,
and I've been to the one in Orlando several times.
There did you get to touch ice? I did get
to touch ice. Okay, this must be the same, must
be the same. It's awesome. I never have a kid
(23:41):
area that feels weird. It feels inappropriate. Yeah, like, oh,
this is like a playground. Yeah, And they were so
strict about taking photos and I respected that. Yeah. I
had like a digital camera when I was fifteen, and
I went and I tried to like sneak it, but
they were all blurry because it was a bad camera.
But when you get into the room with a grand staircase,
you're just like this, it's a big moment. And I
(24:01):
got my photo taken and I feel great. Me too.
I wish that I was a weird looking that I
am probably similar to jealousy that you guys have done
all this. There's one in Massachusetts too. It's so crazy.
And also the gift shop is rude. Can we agree
with the gift shops super rude? But that said, I purchased.
I know I was contemplating getting a really rude T
(24:22):
shirt that said Titanic. I was the term property of,
like it's a gym shirt, Titanic property. I was determined
when I was a teenager to be on I think
that they I'm pretty sure they did have like a
centennial voyage because I used to I used to be
really into Titanic from like a like a historical perspective.
(24:44):
It's not because I liked the movie, but it was.
And I would go out onto my roof every April
to fifteen in that morning, and I would sit there
and just like think real hard about the losses that
it transport. I thought, you're gonna say, like you spread
out your arms and said, I'm the king of the word.
But back to Fargo. Oh yeah, we've We've gone on
(25:05):
a tangent. We should do Titanics and soon. One of
my thoughts is that it very interesting happens in this
movie that usually does not happen in any movie where
the protagonists shifts from one character to another. Ye take
any screenwriting one on one class. I'll tell you not
(25:27):
supposed to happen at the beginning of the second The
Coen brothers are very good at what they do. They
pull it off very well because we start identifying and
relating to and like even feeling a bit empathetic towards
Jerry Lendergard because he says me, the second I see
his wife, that's the thing. It was like, I like
him in the first scene, and then the second you
(25:48):
see Jean, You're just like that sucks. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
because like again, like what you were saying earlier, if
his wife not to say that this excuses any kind
of abuse, but you know, as far as like what
we understand and in in movies, if the wife is
like very shrewish and like, you know, quote unquote deserving,
No one's deserving, Well you know what I mean, Like
(26:08):
it adds a little bit more validation to what she's
struggling with. Yeah, like we're conditioned to think, or it
just helps us understand why he would put the steps
to do what he's about to do, right, and it's
just like, well he must have a reason for but
he but she's just minderful and he's wonderful. Yeah, the
like little monologue, the speech that Marge gives it the
(26:29):
end to Peter Stormare's character should really be directed to
But yeah, you do lose empathy for him pretty early on,
but he's still the central character for a good half
hour until the murders happen, the three murders in Brainerd,
and then we meet Marge. Then she you're like, oh, okay,
(26:50):
she's the main character now, and then oh what a
delight she is. I know, she's so fantastic, which we've
already talked about. But it's like the slimier Jerry get
Like he just keeps every scene you see him and
he's lying to someone, he's manipulating someone, he's trying to
get his way, and he's intent. He does multiple and
every single time you're just like, this is your fault. Yeah,
(27:14):
And also like I was frustrated from him from a
from a criminal perspective of like, you look so fucking
guilty right now during a tantrum in your translucent office.
What are you doing? Yeah, well, I mean like we understand,
you know, the steps that he took to get to
like this low place because he's such a terrible car salesman.
(27:38):
He can't like sell you know, one feature on whole car,
just like you're gonna want. It's like, but you you
didn't say it. You know. It's like and I understand
who that outraged customer is. I've seen them in life,
I've been them, you know, I understand Jerry. And yeah,
and just like showing that oh he's lying, like oh,
(27:59):
I'm gonna go talk to my boss and he just
asked him about the game and then comes back it
just yeah, everything makes sense. You're like, man, you shouldn't
be doing this. And that's also I'm not going to
spoil anything with the TV series. You should definitely check
it out. Both of them are works of art, they
really are. Um. The first one has Billy Bob Thornton
in it as like the bad dude, terrifying, one of
the more terror I mean just imagine he's the best.
(28:21):
I'd wear a vial of his blood. Yeah, um, can
we get that on et scene now? Um, I feel
like we can with the divorce, maybe she's taking up hobbies,
but um so the main character in the Fargo series,
it's sort of a similar situation of William H. Macy's character,
where instead of being a used car salesman who's innapt,
he's like an insurance salesman. So you kind of see
(28:42):
like a similar pattern of like these kind of like
you know, emasculated men, like trying to live up a
life that you know they feel entitled to but you know,
have no talent to achieve. I like one of the
interesting male characters that I didn't think about a lot
before this, like you watching, was Wade Wade is the
Dead Wade Because I don't know, like I remember the
(29:05):
first time I saw this movie. I was surprised at
how sad I was when he's killed um, and that
sort of took me off guard because the whole time
I was like, well, kind of every guy in this
movie is an asshole, but he was a well intentioned
enough really cared about his daughter and getting his daughter
back right. But that said he also what did not
sell me on him was that scene in the diner
(29:27):
where he's talking Jerry and he's like, well, I don't
want to give a million dollars, Like maybe I can
give a half a million dollars, and then like Jerry
is the real ship. He'll of that scene because he's
like no, no, no, you gotta give all the money
and he's lying. But even like Wade saying I don't know,
I just like tried to think. I was like, if
my dad had a million dollars, amazing first of all,
(29:48):
but like I would not want him to be haggling
for my life like that. That bugged me. Yeah, I
mean that's what you want, but also I guess I
don't know, you don't know the things. I kind of
samathized with him in that moment of little bit too,
because you don't know, like the back and forth of
that kind of mental gymnastics of like are we even
going to get what we pay for technically getting her back?
(30:10):
Is she going to be Okay, we don't have any
evidence that she's still alive. We're definitely being duped in
some way. It's fucking tough. It's yeah. I mean he's
in an impossible situation, and you hate Jerry even more
when you see Scotty crying and that's like, what's going
to happen if he didn't can't even think about his son?
(30:31):
And in the parking lot, it's like, oh, a son,
and you literally see it occurred to him that he
that his son would of course be terrified, which is
like the most believable like face that he gives to
being grieved in the entire you know movie. So I
was like, oh, well, good on you. You at least
got that scene, Jerry, Right, That's the one. Yeah. The
(30:53):
scene that always like raises my blood pressure is the
scene right after he sees that Jean has been kidnapped
and he practicing how to tell away, just like yeah,
the button on that scene is amazing because he's like
working out this fake emotion to be like wait it's
what happened, makes the phone call, and then he's like
(31:15):
you can see him like gearing up to be emotional,
and then he has to be like, oh, Wade or
whatever because he got the receptionist or whatever. Yeah, which
I mean can incriminate him too, because they can go
back and get the recordings from the phone calls that
he made to sort of see I don't know whatever.
I'm super that it's like if I wanted to commit
(31:37):
a murder, I've seen enough dateline that I think I
could get away. Well, you're just like he's making a
lot of rookie as mistakes. Yeah. Well, with Wade's character
negotiating or haggling with the ransom, I think that actually
kind of speaks to the duplicitus of his character, of
like him being this sort of like very shrewd, very
(31:59):
tough kind of character who we see this tender side
when it comes to his daughter being in danger, but
then that toughness and that kind of like unfair shrewdness
comes back with him trying to haggle. I think that
that kind of shows the back and forth of his
character maybe a little bit, and we do see both
sides of him of like there are scenes where he's
(32:20):
structly a businessman and strictly a father and grandfather, like
that scene where he is like Geane and Scotty, you'll
never have to worry. That was when I really liked him,
because I was like, yeah, fuck Jerry. Yeah yeah. And
for how inept and slimy and terrible Jerry is, Marge
is the up like she's just like the first clue
(32:42):
you get that she's good at her job is she
and her colleague I think his name is lu Detective
Cyber or whatever. They're at the crime scene where the
trooper and the two other people who witnessed the murder
are all killed, and they're all they're dead in the snow,
and he's like, yeah, he must have started writing it
(33:03):
down and then didn't get the whole license plate. And
she's like no, She's like, I'm not so sure about
your detective work there. Yeah. She's like he's it was
clearly a dealer plate and he's like oh yeah. And
even when she's correcting him, it's not condescending, right, Yeah,
She's so kind, and I like in a lot of movies,
I've like powerful females is often like conflated with and
(33:27):
she's also really me like she doesn't have friends, and
she's like very yeah yeah. And it's like even in
her relationship with norm it seems like a very equal partnership,
even when in my head I was like, oh, March,
you're like you're in charge, right, But but she doesn't
(33:48):
treat it that way. And she's like genuinely very kind.
She cares about people, and she's great at stuff, and
I feel like you don't see that very often. It's
very easy to just say like, oh, if you're good
at your job, you're also bad at your personal life.
I think also with that particular kind of job, there
tends to be I think, like a misconception that you
have to be detached from human emotions in that way
(34:09):
because you're seeing a lot of blood and guts and
you have to sort of come to terms with that
and reconcile that in yourself, that you're not constantly throwing
up over where you're not bringing your work home in
your brain, you know, to kind of have a live
with you and and haunt you. But she seems very adaptive, yeah,
where she throws up like she's about to throw up,
And I was like, oh, is it because she's looking
(34:30):
at a dead child and she's like, no, it's just
more than Yeah. I think a lot of cops and
movies are portrayed as like I'm a tough guy and
everyone's guilty and and she just she just like helps
for the best in people. Yeah, exactly when they're bad.
She's so disappointed. That increases the impact of how disappointed
(34:51):
she is. At the end of the movie, you're just like,
I what can we tell you March. Yeah. I also
want to talk about how like her relationship with norm
and how like the gender roles of their marriage are
very reversed, and that like he is an artist slash
house husband. I'm guessing like from what little we know
about him because she needs nightcrawlers. Yeah, but he loves
(35:14):
her breakfast. He brings her lunch, like he's taking care
for in away that in like meal providing, which is
like very stereotypically it's hard, but you're like she's like
out there working and you're like making her breakfast and
it's just one of those Yeah, Mike has never brought
(35:39):
me lunch and RBS in the middle of the day,
never cook me breakfast. I wanted to eat Rby so
bad when when he says I'll cook you eggs and
then hawks up a lugy just like and she's I know,
she's smile, she loves so much. But it's great. Yeah, um,
(36:03):
something I wanted to I was thinking about the whole
movie in regards to William H. Macy's character is I
kept like drawing comparison in my head. I don't know
why to American Beauty and how many things Fargo does
write that American Beauty I think I don't like that
movie at all, but it came out a couple of
years after Fargo. I think, like, and uh, it's all
(36:26):
I mean, they have a similar character of like the
frustrated husband trying to blow off steam. But the I
don't know, like I hate how American Beauty you know,
paints Kevin Spacey is this very tragic figure and you're
just like, no, this guy's a fucking jerk hervert, like
there's no excuse for this person, and the whole idea
(36:47):
of like, well, life in the suburb is a suffocating
and I don't know, I'm just like, shut the funk up,
you're fine, Whereas like William H. Macy's character as portrayed
as what I view those types of people to be,
which is like pathetic and kind of sad. Like I
feel like William H. Macy's character is like the the
(37:07):
frustrated husband who's trying to get his life together and
is like punished fairly and portrayed fairly as like this
guy does not know what he's doing. He's certainly not
the hero of the story. I don't know, Like I
couldn't stop thinking about American beauty and no, uh and
how I don't know like it, but it's always bothered.
(37:27):
Just Kevin Species portrayed as sort of like a tragic martyr, right,
and then when he's just a piece of I have
a theory about that. I think that. So there's also
an article that came out a while ago. I think
it's from a V club that talked about like the
craziest year for movies in the twenty one century was
or something, because it just was a huge year of
(37:48):
Titanic and like the Phantom Menace, and it was just
like there was a lot of spotlight happening on on
feature films at the time. But American beauty, I feel,
is like at the epicenter of this trend of this
sort of like I wouldn't say faux art sinis, but
definitely art senis in the forefront. And I think that
it's attributed to the rise of the mid budget movie
through Mirrimax and through Quentin Tarantino, and like that becoming
(38:11):
more a part of like what the mainstream could be,
and that people were kind of opening their doors at
least the Academy was to like films that maybe they
quote unquote didn't quite understand, but like acknowledged as art.
And I feel like American Beauty like perfectly epitomizes that.
I mean with just that drifting plastic bag plot of
(38:32):
the most beautiful thing in the whole world, I mean,
which we now roll our eyes because it's like first
year art school bullshit. Um. But at the time I
think was captivating a lot of people, um because they
didn't understand it. And so I think that a lot
of people attribute like good art to something that they
just don't understand, right, And that's something that I feel
like it is almost universally agreed does not hold up
(38:54):
very Yeah, And also with I don't remember the characters
in but Kevin Spacey's wife in that being yeah, yeah, yeah,
like she's portrayed. I mean, she's portrayed. She's a developed character,
but she's still ultimately portrayed as like a shrewish person.
And I'm just I don't know, I'm like grateful that
Gene is not portrayed that way. Jane is doing her best,
(39:18):
so isn't that bending's character? But I feel like the
story just paints her as you're getting C grades, like
she's just she also just wants the best. It caused
her pain to tell her son he couldn't go out
for hockey. I know you mentioned like whenever Marge is
correcting her colleague and his like his police work, she
(39:40):
doesn't do it in a condescending way. There is a
scene though, where she is very condescending, but it's to
someone who very much deserves it. And I don't know
if you like perceive this this way or not, but um,
whenever she first meets Jerry in his office, she's like, oh,
you're the owner here, and he's like, no, I'm just
the executive sales whatever. She's like okay, and then he's
(40:01):
like my father in law. He's like clearly trying to
like push blame off onto someone else and she's like, oh, yeah, okay,
well I'm a police officer. And it's the second meeting,
right or noticed the first meeting. Yeah, no, I remember that.
She's just like, you're an idiot, so I'm going to
talk to you like you are one. I think it's
(40:23):
the second meeting where she says something like, oh, this
this crime I'm investigating. The purps were driving a car
with dealer plates and they called someone who works here
at this dealership, so it would be quite a coincidence
if they weren't, you know, connected, And it's she's just like,
it's so great how much she condescends to such a
(40:44):
piece of ship that Jerry Lindergart is. And I love
watching that scene because he is trying so hard to
like be like I'm cooperating and like to be like
cool and chill, and he's just barely holding it. Yeah,
that entire scene, for those periods of silence, I'm like, well,
you're done, Je, you are so guilty, like you have
(41:05):
no I want to watch this guy play poker because
you feel like, can I say what My favorite part
about that scene is speaks directly to what I was
saying earlier about being a cinematography nerd Uh. Similar to
in Psycho, we see Janet. What's her face is? Um
character's name, the main lady in Psycho. Um, we see
(41:25):
her in her like Neglija at first, and it's white
and pure when she's like cooking up with her dude.
And then later when she decides that she's going to
you know, steal the money from her boss and like
run out her Neglija is black to you know, represent
that she's now evil and she's corropted, she's turned. So
(41:47):
in a similar way, Um, these two scenes, if you
face them together, um, the scene of Marge first visiting
Jerry and the scene of the second one. So I
feel like this was calculated and strategic from the makers
that there are vertical blinds in his office because in
the first scene they're open, it's bright. He's you know,
(42:08):
seemingly passing off this slide to her. It's totally fine.
Second scene, the light is casting over the vertical blinds
representing prison bars on Jerry Lendergard's face and he's done
for And shortly after that he sprints off, takes one
of the cars and she realizes, oh he's Oh, he's
gone he's playing the interview in the Yeah, so that
(42:31):
was a little bit of things that was like a
little bit of Trump. Yeah baby, I was like, m yeah,
that's good, Like it just was so fun. I love
stuff like that, and that's part of the reason why
I wanted to go into that line of work and
why I never will. I don't know. Maybe there's time.
There's time. Yeah, you can do anything. We're women and
we can do whatever we want to. Guess what I
(42:52):
want to keep writing if they'll let me still allow.
The final thing that I want to talk about unless
I think of something else is Marge does everything that
she does while she's like seven months So that's highly
symbolic as well. Tell me of what I shall Um,
(43:12):
so you know here they are there basically. I mean,
we'll get into if this passes Sebactel test eventually. I'm
assuming you know, I've never heard Okay, are you talking about? So?
This world is littered with dudes, It's lousy with dudes,
and so um, Marge is really like this big female
figure in that Um, not just because there's not too
(43:33):
many other people besides Gene that she can kind of
wrap with in like the other escorts, but they wanted
to make her this like matriarch that sort of carried
and saved this plot. And having her also be pregnant
really enhanced that kind of maternal instinct that was a
requirement for her instinct as a detective to get down
(43:55):
to the case. Like it not only signified that she
was like a protector of the town, a protector of justice,
but she's you know, literally protecting life and preserving life,
and those are like her motivations. You know, she wants
people to be good, so she's protecting life for like
their livelihood. She wants people to not die, so literally
(44:16):
protecting life in that way. And as she's seven months
pregnant and like fucking doing it like a badass, it
just further proves that she's going to be the one
that carries this. Yeah, and and like the scene, it's
so like interesting the scene where she looks at the
dead child, I know, and she's seven months pregnant and
then she's about to throw up and you're like when
(44:38):
does that happen? But Okay, I remember, and it's like
but that to be is like a testament of like, no,
she is really good at her job and she's able
to compartmentalize accordingly, which is a superpower. It's a superpower there. Yeah.
But and and the fact that she's also like, even
though she is very pregnant and that's important to her,
(45:00):
she's not compromising the job. She's doing this kind of
dangerous well, it is dangerous, and she's not compromised, Like,
she doesn't compromise in any regard, which is amazing. And
she's incredible. When we when pregnant women are portrayed in
like movies and TV, it's almost always like they are
(45:23):
cranky and hormonal and they're like, oh, what a delicate flower.
I am. Oh, I have to pee all the time
and I pant and I not have been yet, so
I have no idea what it's like. And I'm sure
it is very uncomfortable, but like you can still carry
on with your life in your job pregnant. But like
it's almost always when you see a very pregnant woman
(45:45):
on screen, it's like, oh, look, how pregnant I am?
I think talking about they're they're like sort of damselfied
and it's yeah, and I mean it's like, barring medical conditions,
most pregnant women work up until till they give birth
in their off this often I've heard, oh, there's a
Harmon Town show happening. Chills, yeah, chills, Like why is
(46:08):
the man yelling during our podcast? So I just love
that she mentions it, but she's like, could you mind
if I sit down? I'm paying quite a load. And
that's pretty much the only the most like she gets
in a way, Yeah, and the only time really that
her pregnancy affects her performance. Yeah, apart from the time
(46:29):
that she kiels over it almost barf. But then I
love how she's like, oh, it passed, and now I'm
hungry again, all right, right, and then she goes back
to work. Yeah, she goes back to work. And then
I love how many times you see her eating and
the movie she's eating Arby, she had eat. She's going
to town on that buffet, buffet, and then it's so
like representative of that region of like these comfort foods,
(46:52):
these heavy, heavy sausages. And can we talk about like
the choice to make this like murder plot in this
folksy setting a little bit because I love I love
that the Cohen Brothers did this, and I do think
that it allows for that comedy to just sort of
naturally happen. I mean, obviously it's like mismatched to what
the actions are you wouldn't suspect. And I think that
(47:14):
even in like the tagline on the poster, it was
like a murder mystery, like a homespun murder mystery or
something that's sort of like, you know, let you know
that this is going to be this offbeat, cookie kind
of like we don't know what we're in for. We're
in way over a heads kind of town, and one
would suspect that, like a small town wouldn't have the
resources to deal with solving a murder, but they don't
(47:34):
have March. But I also I found so there's this
book that I really like called The Philosophy of the
Cohne Brothers, and it is edited by Mark T. Kennard,
who is this like really superboss film critic. But each
chapter it's like an assemblage of essays from different film critics.
And so I forget the name of of the gentleman
(47:54):
who wrote a chapter about mondanity and noir in Fargo,
but I found it really interest ding because of course,
you know, any film genre is representative of social anxiety.
You know, we see that a lot with science fiction,
you know, science fiction represents social anxiety about like progress,
and then you can kind of actually divide the genre
into like two different chapters, pre Cold War and post
(48:15):
Cold War, and that post Cold War deals a lot
with like nuclear attacks and like the fear of that,
and that's like sort of what the menaces with it.
And I feel like with noir they kind of tap
into that kind of social anxiety through modernity because with
that comes like you're making progress, but with progress, you
are breaking off from the past. So with that becomes
(48:37):
this loneliness in isolation and alienation, and that a lot
of noirs, especially ones that define the genre in the forties,
took place in like these urban city scapes, which could
be comforting but also isolating as well, because if you're
like this one person walking around the city scape, you've
got these skyscrapers looming over you, making you feel like
you can either be protected by them or trampled by them.
(49:00):
And so what the Cohen Brothers do and what you know,
they actually what this author suggests, they kind of took
a page from um Orson Wells in Touch of Evil,
bringing the noir to the desert into Mexico. Um is
that they are jarring the audience from what is known
to be noir in the city and by taking it
to this like desolate landscape that's snow covered. You know,
(49:21):
it's it's different than what we expect. But I also
really love it because you know, we know that there's
a danger. The danger is lurking. However, everywhere we look,
we think we see everything that there is to see.
It's this blank canvas, you know, It's these large expanses
of land. Where could the danger be hiding? And I
think that that was a very smart choice that they
(49:42):
made to raise the tension of where is it going
to pop out? What are we doing? And also the
fact that it is snow covered, I feel like speaks
to like how flimsy the foundation of what all the
things that we are to believe are resting on, um,
the flimsy foundation of all the character and their intentions,
and how it can change it any minute. That to
(50:03):
me was interesting. It's like a real maybe this is
like a political climate thing that's influencing this, but it
seems like a real American yeavy and it's like a
side of the country you don't see in movies a
lot at all, and it it almost feels like a
non judgmental depiction of like a very American place where
(50:27):
it's like, yeah, they're good people and they're bad people,
but it is what it is. It's not necessarily making
a very overt commentary on it. It's just like presenting
it and what feels like a pretty like cool and
honest way that you don't see a lot. And I
think that it being like this sort of more realistic
environment like raises fears and people watching it, that it
(50:50):
feels closer to home than watching like two people buzz
around a city. It's not sexy. Crime Feders in this
movie was particularly no one gets me for in this
entire movie exactly exactly. And the sex is also like
the sex scenes that we see are not fetishized in
any way. They're not romantic anyways, they're almost tishemmy, but
(51:13):
also like the people that are having the sex don't
seem to particularly enjoy it. Oh my god, I love
the prostitutes. Dig and this where at some point she's
like basically mocking bushemy while she's like all right, loving
this or no, she's like, I'm he and dinner earlier,
(51:33):
and he's nice he's taken her to dinner, like he's
he's paid her for the evening and they don't technically
have to go out. They can just do what he
paid her for. Being very delicate in my choices, but
you know, he tries to relate to her and tries
to have a conversation, and she like judges him and like,
what are you talking like this kind of work, like
(51:55):
being a prostitute. She's like, what dumb question? Yeah? Um,
But that kind of leads us to the question of
whether or not this movie passes the Bechdel test. There
is allegedly some some controversy apparently which I do not
know about. I, using my my own my doub old brain,
have decided that thanks so much of the fear that
(52:20):
as far as I'm concerned, it does pass the Bechdel test,
because there is a scene or mare just questioning the
two young women who are women and ladies of the
night about the two guys that they spent the night with.
Before they move on to that subject, though, they're talking
about where the two women went to college, where they
went to high school, and she's like, cool bears, and like,
(52:43):
so it's a sliver of a conversation. But to me,
I would say that, like most of the movies we have,
let pass, it passes on a techniccount. Yeah, even though
the whole reason why they're talking is because of these
two guys, right, I can see it both ways. I
feel like, and I'm purely speculating here, but I feel
(53:06):
like the Vechteal test was designed to question whether or
not the women. The assumption is that if they are
talking about a man, it's because he's the romantic interest
of something. So this is their purpose derives from that man.
It is a work conversation, right, yeah, it's yeah, so
they happen to be talking about men, but it's in
the context of like a criminal investigation rather than like, yes,
(53:28):
we love these men, oh right, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
I agree. I'm inclined to give it past just because
I mean, like the Vectel test is certainly flawed and
that I feel like this movie is pretty unepistically like
it has amazing female characters. Right, Maybe there aren't enough
of them per se, but I almost feel like that's
(53:49):
intentionally done in the case of this because March just
is this force of good and badassus in a sea
of she's strong that I think she alone makes up
for it, like exactly she's not her purpose is derived
from a man, and her self worth isn't defined by
how men perceiver at all. In fact, she doesn't seem
(54:12):
to register it. She doesn't care. I mean, we see
it for a flash when she gets all you know,
done up to see her old pal. But I think
that that's just her wanting to have a break for
a moment to like, you know, that's like human. I
feel like that, Yeah, it's such a human moment of
Like I mean, any marriage, there comes a moment where
(54:33):
there's like that thought of like oh what if, and
then she seems to pretty immediately snap back into like,
oh no, I made the decision. Yeah, that's awesome to see. Yeah.
And I just think in general of just like having
an excuse to, like I don't know, not play act necessarily,
but just like to get gussied up into to just
explore a path for a night, even if it's just
(54:56):
a thought for a second, especially like with the she's
about to become a mon there and they're supposed to
be this big change. It's almost like a last last
kind Yeah, yeah, I agree, But then he was like, Oh,
I'm gonna sit over here and put my arm around you,
and then she's like away from me. Yeah, what's a
creepy Yeah. I don't know if you've been in similar
(55:17):
situations where it's like super awkward on the same sif like, oh,
I just don't want to have to turn my neck.
But it's like clearly the front for how she like
registered that is, Oh, that was weird. Go back tu. Yeah,
he sounded so manic on the phone when we first
hear him, and yeah, it's just it's just bad. Well,
(55:39):
I think now is the time where we on a
scale of zero to five nipples the movie based on
its treatment and portrayal of its female characters. This is
our alternative to the Metal Test five nip rating. Yeah,
who would like to go first? I first, sure, I
(56:02):
would give it without knowing any precedent of how you've
rated previous films and where you personally reside and like
the parameters of that. I would give it a four
point five because I would give it a five just
on Marge alone, because she's so iconic as a strong
female character, and I think that a lot of people
(56:22):
have referenced her through other characters written after this um
as like sort of the goal of what you can
achieve with like a woman who is in control and
is dynamic and interesting and all and all of that stuff. However,
you know, take away a point five because a lot
of the other female characters are escorts that we don't
know too much about, and Gene isn't really given a perspective. Unfortunately,
(56:48):
one more I wanted. We know that she knits, you know,
but there's more to her. There's more to her. So yeah, unfortunately,
four boys because you because you describe those nipples. Sorry,
we should have We should you five nipples they're like,
you know, not like a deep flesh color, but like
like a mom about to give birth. They're like so
(57:11):
like so actually no, they are deep in color, bursting
with milk and probably bursting with milk. Leaky nips, nips
that you don't want to see, and you actually see
it when you stimone into your mom's room a little
too soon and you're asking what's for dinner. That's that's
the nip. I would have also given it a four
point five nip rating for the I'm just gonna pick
you back and steal your um and this just might
(57:35):
be true of that area of the country. I doubt
there's much diversity. I don't see any women of color. Um,
it's nice that we see like all the women aren't
these like hot Hollywood look how hot I am? And
everyone's just like nice and normal looking. And it seems
like a lot of tertiary characters were from Farga probably
(57:55):
guess including Gene. So yeah, it's just probably that there's
no diversity in this town, that we don't see any
women of color. Um. I like that Marge is like
probably forty late thirties, because women of color, women over
the age of like forty and fifty are even more
poorly represented than white women. Yeah, so four point five
(58:17):
beautiful nipples. I can't. I'm gonna give it four print
five as well because I love a good bandwagon and
also I agree mine are going to be Marche nipples
as well. But these ones are radiating beams of light.
I like, that's blind. That's a future pop culture themed
art show. Yes, there March just marges. Yeah, just a
(58:44):
statue of Marge, but there are very strong lights where
her nips should be. That is something I would really
make into a Facebook profile picture. I think highest compliments. Well,
there you have it, Argo across the board four point five.
I think that's the best one. So fun. So thanks
(59:07):
for bringing us this great So is there anything that
you'd like to plug or like? Where can people find
you online? How do people follow you? Oh my gosh.
You can find me at Twitter dot com finn slash
Julia Prescott. There I post my musings in my show dates,
and then I have a podcast about the Simpsons called
(59:28):
Everything's Coming Up Podcast. You can find us at Simpson's
Pod and on iTunes. Wonderful. Thank you so much. If
you want to follow us, the Bechtel Cast, you can
do so are cheering. You can follow us at Bechtel
Cast on Twitter. You can email us if you want,
(59:49):
The Bechtel Cast at gmail dot com. And we love you.
We love you. Bye bye
On the be Dol Cast, the questions asked if movies
have women and um are all their discussions just boyfriends
and husbands, or do they have individualism the patriarchy? Zef
and best start changing it with the Bedel Cast. Hello,
and welcome to the Bechdel Cast. Oh wait, I meant
to do it a different way. Let me start over. Okay,
(00:22):
well hey, well hey there, and welcome to the beck
Doel Cast. Hey, I'm your host, Caitlin Durante. I'm Jamie Loftus. Well, hey,
hey there. That was a little bit in New York. Yeah,
it's really hard. I thought I would do better at
this accent. Figure it out. It's foreshadowing of the movie
we're gonna be talking about. This is so clever of us,
(00:45):
I know, I know, yeah, oh yeah. But before we
get into that, we're gonna just tell you a little
bit about what the Bechdel Cast is. What is it.
It's a podcast where we talk about movies, but specifically
they're female characters. Each we pick a different movie every
week and we just talk and chat and then we
(01:06):
also at the at the end when we remember, we
decide if it passed the Backdal test. That's which is
which has everything to do with whether there are two
female characters who speak to each other about something other
than a man. There's a variation of it where the
female characters have to have names depending on the movie.
(01:26):
We we take it easy on some and uh really
going on the others. Yeah, we're we can be ruthless. Yeah.
And if you're wondering, hey, who are these two people? Yeah,
why do why do they get to talk about? Well? Yeah,
I wonder if anyone ever is like, which one's talking? Oh,
these there's two ladies and they're both their voices are
(01:47):
too shrill, like Kippernette White ladies were the same lady.
But yeah, I'm the one. It's me, Caitlin. It's me. Uh.
And I have a lot of credentials. One. I have
made several students elms, at least three of them. Also,
I do. I do have two degrees in film. I
(02:08):
don't like to bring it up. I don't like the time. Well,
you know, the people want to know the people are as.
I used my degree this week, which is pretty amazing.
My radio degree. I know I never get to use
it because it's in irrelevant medium, but I used it
(02:28):
this week. I wrote some promos for a radio station. Hey,
there you go. It took three years, but I did it.
Did they pay you for it? Uh, we'll see. We'll
see if they come there. In theory, they should. Yeah,
if you do work, you should get paid for it. Yeah.
I have one degree. I bet I use it this week,
So it counts thet much for their head than I am. Switch.
(02:49):
But without further ado, let's introduce our guests. Yeah, she's
a very funny person. She's a writer, she's a comedian,
and her name is True Prescott. Thanks for having me on,
Thanks for joining us, for coming. Yeah, so you've brought
us a movie that we're going to be talking about,
and tell us. Tell us what it is. Well, first
(03:11):
and foremost, I must say my degree um, I degree
in in Film Studies UM from Chapman University. Interesting bit
of trivia about my degree. I got into film school
with an essay on the Cohen Brothers, got out with
a thesis on them. Baby, yeah sandwiched my education. Oh
this is perfect. Yeah, I I'm so excited to talk
(03:34):
about this movie. I did rewatch it, but I did
feel before I rewatched, I was like, do I need
to because I feel like I know it so well.
It's just one of those movies. And then I also
watched the TV series that it was based on. I
haven't seen that yet. I've heard it's very good. I've
heard some good things, such a treat. The movie is
Fargo FO which they probably knew because it's I'm guessing
(03:59):
on the episode listing. Yeah, well, no, we should keep
everyone in suspense. They have to listen to know what
movie we're talking about. Can I just say something while
I'm thinking about it. I didn't say my name yet.
Oh yeah, you should see your name. Oh boy, now
I feel very I feel full of hubrious. But my
name is Jamie. Okay, let's keep talking. That accent is
(04:22):
super fun. Oh yeah, I feel like I'm a real
sponge for accents. Like I'll be in Canada for like
half a day and everything will be like, oh yeah,
Like I stop doing it this afternoon, Like I watched
it this afternoon and then I came right here. I
was feeling real, Marge. It's just it's a kind musicality,
(04:44):
like there's there's like a real fun cadence to it
that just it opens the world up to you. That's
how I feel. But yeah, yeah, Yeah. To answer your
question from before, well, the reason why I brought this
movie is because this movie had always stuck out to me.
I think that for Cohen Brothers fans, they love Raising Arizona,
(05:05):
they love The Big Labowski, you know, they love other ones.
But I feel like this is a lot of Cohen
Brothers fans like, first, this is the big drama movie
that they really latch onto. And at least that was
the way it was for me. And I was always
a really big fan of film noir. I actually originally
wanted to major as a cinematographer because I was like,
(05:29):
really in a black and white cinematography. I was really
obnoxious eighteen to nineteen year old. But I got really
into film noirs and then um, you know, got into
Cohen Brothers movies, which is neon noir. And the way
that they do it in this film, I think is
just what. It's a spicy meat a ball. It's perfect.
(05:49):
We were talking earlier about how it's virtually flawless everything
about it. There's not a dull moment. Yeah, it's so good,
and it's full of olymptic to men, yeah and like
women who are doing their best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a
bunch of incompetent dudes and a bunch of very competent well,
not a bunch one, especially very competent woman. I feel
(06:14):
like that's a trend in a lot of Cohen Brothers
films in general, though, I mean, you see that with
Raising Arizona and the Character of High, you see that
with you know, a lot of their other films that
it it's sort of like the action of the story
begins with an incompetent man spinning a lie that just
gets them deeper and deeper and deeper. And of course
we see that in this movie with Jerry Lindagard played
by William H. Macy just being a total bumbling idiot.
(06:37):
Like I feel like you could, I mean, with the
exception of No Country for Old Men and some of
their later works aside, Like you can count on any
Cohen Brothers movie where in like the first five or
ten minutes, if a plot is enacted of deceit or
you know, some sort of like get rich quick scheme,
you know that it's not going to work out at
all because of this character's own misgivings, like they're inept
(06:59):
to two is going to get in the way and
you know, and it's going to be very entertaining because
they're gonna have like sort of a folksy approach to
it that is like very every man, which I find
really interesting. Yea. And with Jerry from moment one, like
he's late to the first scene and then he was like, Oh,
this guy does not have it. He doesn't have it together. Yeah,
(07:20):
And the way that he's interacting with these two mom
guys is so I mean, it's it's indicative of where
he comes from culturally, with like you know, far going
north North Dakota and just being very like, you know,
oh hey, how are you going? Oh hey, you know,
like just being overly accommodating. But it also speaks to
like his own ineptness of being a man, which is
(07:40):
really what drives his plot and is like a central
theme in this film. And they do it in the
first five fucking minute. So good. Yeah, it's so well written,
it's so well directed and act just like and the
way that they cast it too. I mean, they do
this for every one of their movies. They're so great
at finding these aasing character actors. But I was just
(08:02):
thinking about this, like even in the scene with Um,
like the two escorts that Marge interviews to find out
more about, you know, Steve Amy's character and Peter Stormyer's character.
Like they are such a specific kind of like North
Dakota trashy girl, and like, these aren't actresses that I've
seen in any other movie. And I don't think, you know,
(08:22):
I didn't check their IMDb, but I'm willing to bet
they weren't in a lot of things. But they just
they acted so well and they were so real and
it just like enhanced everything. Well, we just found out
before you got here that Jean the first thing she
was ever in was Fargo because she's from there. Wow,
really yeah, because I was like, I don't recognize her
from anything else, and from what I can tell, she's
(08:45):
the only like main cast member who is like absolutely
from there, which makes you know, her accent checks out.
It's what she what has she done? After this? She
was in Drop Dead Gorgeous and yes, those are two
of my favorite one of my favorite movies. Yeah, it's
but her first thing ever was Fargo, so they must
have plus set out of there. I remember she was
(09:07):
the Pork Products girl and Drop Dead Gorgeous. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I just love it I work here now. God, that
fucking movie is one of the best movies of all times.
It Oh my god, it's so good. Yeah. It was
directed by one of the members of the State and
it was written by this woman who I don't know
if she did a ton of movies after that. It
was her first feature film. And there's actually a whole
(09:30):
like BuzzFeed article written by Lewis Pisman that goes into
like the behind the scenes, you know, rise of the
cult of Drop Dead Gorgeous and talks about like drama
on set and like how it just kept changing due
to studio notes, etcetera, etcetera. But it's actually out of
print on DVD, so if you can find it on
e Bay, I highly recommend snatching that up and shout
(09:52):
out to Pietsman, I know what he kills it. Well, okay,
well that's the podcast. I think that's all we have
to say. I usually um to everyone's dismay, spend a
few minutes describing the story of the movie that we're
talking about, just for anyone at home who doesn't need
a refresher, who hasn't seen it before, or just likes
(10:16):
my hilarious take on what the movie is about, So
this is a story where we first initially, the central
character is Jerry Lindegard played by William H. Macy, and
he goes to these two criminal professional criminals and he's like, YO,
kidnap my wife because I'm in financial trouble and we're
going to do this whole fake ransom thing. But we
(10:38):
both get paid out because my wife's husband or I'm
my wife's husband, that's what he said. My wife's father
is wealthy, so like, yeah, cool, good idea. And then
we meet his family and his wife and his father
in law. And the second you meet his wife, you're
just like precious. Yeah, like at first it sounds fun
(10:59):
to kidnap a and you're just like, oh, maybe you know,
because I feel like we're conditioned took like, oh maybe
she's mean, maybe she's like, maybe we're not going to
love her. The first time she opens her mouth, she's
the most precious, She's wonderful. You're like, don't wonderful? Who
could want to lay a hand on this woman? And
it felt so sad for her in just seeing her
(11:19):
in like her homemaker life of like sitting on the
couch and watching like daytime TV. And knitting. I was
just like, and she's so clearly settled for what I'm like,
how did they meet? Like, I I just maybe that's
another season a far, because I I just I don't know.
Whenever I see her, I'm like, I know for sure
you could have done better yeah than Jerry. Yeah. Yeah.
(11:40):
So then we we learned that Jerry's a very dishonest
car salesman, and it's yeah, that's a great way to
describe them. Yeah, wanness um. His wife gets kidnapped. They
go off to take her to the lake, but before that,
a cop pulls them over and some murders happen, and
(12:02):
they're like, oh crap, this didn't go Things are not
going as planned. Jerry, we need more money, and he's like,
oh no, I don't know anymore. He couldn't even handle
the first of it, so things start to go awry.
Then after these murders happened, we meet Marge Gunderson. She's
a detective and she starts investigating these murders and she
(12:23):
connects a few things back to the dealership where Jerry works,
and she starts to question him, and he is very
bad at being questioned by police officers and things keep
heightening and some violence happens. More people get murdered, including
Jerry's father in law. They take her to the lake
(12:45):
and then it ends with Marge finding the foot in
the wood shipper and she finds the Tan Sierra. Well
that's the car. That be careful, Marge, B care I
was gonna send some car. And then she shoots the
bad guy leg and she's like, yo, all this for
a little bit of money, you stupid idiot. She's so great,
(13:06):
she really is. And then she goes home to her husband, Norm, Norm,
who is flacid in all the right ways. Well, before
you said that, I was going to say that it
reminds me so much of me and my fiance. Oh no,
not like that though, No though, I think he's an artist,
and so I was teasing him like you're just you're
painting your duck paintings, you know, run you know, we're
(13:29):
just sweet to each other in a similar way. Conversation
at the end with the with the sweet three cent
stamp and she's like, well that's good though, because people
need those sometimes, and he's like, okay, yeah, I do.
I do find myself like in situations where you know,
he's sort of down in the dumps about something creatively.
I do find myself like finding the cadence of Marge
going yeah, but you're better than them, Han, Yeah, but
(13:52):
you're better than them and yeah yeah, so only the
good parts to shout out to Mike if you're listening,
you know, Yeah, I love that moment at the end
with Marge. I mean, she's just so wise and she's
so like confident in her like sort of matriarchal ways.
(14:13):
And and it's not like she's just kind but also smart.
It's it's weird. It's like she can sort of succinctly
boil everything down and get the answers, like earlier when
she's questioning Sheep at his shop and being like, you know,
like I I look into your background and you've got
some infractions and you're on parole, and I'm just thinking, like,
(14:34):
you probably wouldn't want to be involved with like this
being accessory to crime, now, would you? Like, you know,
she she's obviously playing a detective game, but there is
still this like genuine like warmth to her and she
actually cares about like she doesn't want people to go
back on Pearl. She doesn't want people to go you know,
commit crimes and go back into jail. She wants the
world to be good. She's a very nurturing yeah. Yeah,
(14:58):
And one of the reasons this movie is so great
is that she is such like a strong, multidimensional character.
She's like you said, smart, she's good at her job.
She's really good at her job. She's very competent. She's
like nice to a fault, but also like firm and
assertive when she needs to be. Like we see the
scene with mike Yanagita and he's like very clearly trying
(15:21):
to come onto her, and she's like, no, I preferred
if you sit over there. I want to talk about
that scene because that scene. I don't know if you
guys have found the controversy surrounding that whole subplot, because
I was about to say I think that with any
other character that wasn't as well developed as her, that
would be very distracting from the main action. But I
loved that scene because you just want to be like,
how would someone deal with this? I don't know? Right well, uh,
(15:44):
the internet said a lot of people were saying, like,
why you know, this film is so tidy in every
other way, but this one subplot of mike Yanagita like
feels like it comes out of left field a little bit,
and it doesn't really give as much to to the
motor of the plot as like some of the other
aspects of it, and you know, like why is it
(16:05):
even in there? You know, what does it do? And
I disagree. I think that, I mean, I trust Papa
and Papaco and um trust that they're going to carry
us on that that sweet good night. They're just such
competent directors, so I know that they know what they're doing.
But I also, you know, feel like the mike Yanagita character,
(16:25):
everything has a domino effect of her investigations. So she
gets the phone call from him and then knows that
he's in the Twin Cities. Then here's that you know,
the people that she's after went to the Twin Cities. Okay, great,
so that gives me a little bit more incentive to go.
Even though on paper you could say that like, oh,
is she you know, thinking about like philandering on norm
(16:49):
you know, But I don't think it's as complex as that.
I think that she's curious to find out, like, you know,
what this guy's life has been like. Um, But I
think that also that scene of them at the dinner
of the Raticon or whatever it is. You know, she
believes his story of his wife right, and then immediately
he confesses and says that that was a lie. So
(17:12):
that simple oh oh sorry, confess. She finds out later
you're right, friend, but it's not long after. Yeah. But
that whole process of her believing him and then realizing
that she was wrong forces her to start to question
some of her instincts previously, and it actually leads her
back to William H. Macy's character to question him for
(17:34):
the second it does connect and what do you have
as the brothers? I was a major in film study.
I thought that was interesting because it was interesting to
watch this movie in the context of this podcast and
really pay attention to the motivations of the female characters,
because there is sort of like a through line of
(17:56):
like the idea of women settling for men that don't
deserve them, Because I feel like Mike implies that when
they're chilling at the Ratison, He's like, oh, you ended
up marrying Normson, yeah, And and that makes it sound
like he thought she could do better. And I mean,
for anyone that's enough to plant to you know, it's
(18:17):
it's a downer to hear the person married and or
brainant with someone your respect thinks is like a loser
or whatever. But she and Norm have such a great
relationship and it's nice to see her go through that
whole process of like, no, this is the right thing
for me and this is what I want. Well, I
think you're tapping into something actually that I kind of
(18:38):
picked up in this rewatch of you know, there is
a moment when you know, she is at the buffet
with Norm and like one of her colleagues comes over
and it's like, oh, you're going to the Twin Cities
A and she's like, yeah, I'm going, and the Norm
is kind of surprised. Really oh yeah, yeah. So there
is just a flash of a moment of her sort
of exploring has she settled? Just a flash of it.
(18:58):
And I think that that's all so a symptom of
small towns in general, Like if you work in a
small town, if you live in a small town, have
I settled? Have I really seen my full potential? I
think that there is a flicker of that that leads
us to that frank meet up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I wish it's so hard not to do it. I
wish that we had that moment with Jean, because I mean,
(19:21):
I don't know Jeans the other female character of any
substance in this movie, and we I mean, we don't
really get to see much of her thoughts other than
the fact that she's very clearly duped. Uh. Yeah, I wish,
like the one thing that I would have liked to
have from this movie is at some point after her
(19:42):
kidnapping that she would get to say something. And I was,
I was bummed. I mean, it was fun to watch
her like run around like a chicken with her head cup.
That's an amazing scene and like tragic, but also likes character.
Good lord, he's so I love how people keep calling
(20:04):
him ugly funny, you know, just but I can't describe
how yeah exactly has it that in The Big Lebowski,
the reason that everyone's always telling Steve Bushmi's character in
that film, Donnie to shut the funk up is that
he doesn't ever shut the funk up in Fargo. So
that's funny. I think I heard that a while ago. Yeah,
(20:25):
that's hilarious. I thought you were going to be like,
because he's dead and shouldn't be talking. I'm like, oh god.
Another thing about The Big Lebowski is a similar thing
happens in The Big Lebowski, doesn't with like the Mike
Yanagitas subplot and Fargo with the there's just like a
character that feels tacked on, but you're like, I'm okay
(20:46):
with this, but like the Jesus character that oh my god,
look oh yeah yeah yeah, John, Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's
actually been I've heard theories about, like what's that all about.
There's a bar and I think I want to say
Germany that is like themed. It's called Labowski Bar and
the I believe drink they served there as white Russian.
(21:08):
I believe it. Yeah. In Los Angeles, have you guys
heard of Cafe Jack the Titanic one? Yes, And they
serve like what do they serve? It's like you fried
chicken and weird, like deeply weird American food that is
not that good but worth it, worth it for the experience,
(21:28):
and then you go to karaoke afterward. It's a good time.
I very, very unapologetically love the movie Titanic. I hope,
well you do it on this podcast sometime because I
love it so much. There was my mom the first
time I saw that movie because I was I wasn't
all enough to see it when I came out, But
eventually my mom had the two VHS for Titanic, and
(21:48):
she tried to convince me the movie it was over
at the end of the first VHS because the first
half is so fun. At the end, it's saying like,
we hit an iceberg, and she's like, and that's the movie.
Sounds like you're lying to like, yeah, and then that's
the inciting incident pretty much, but it just happens to
happen two hours. Um. I love the second half of
(22:12):
the movie. I love the whole movie, but I really,
to me, the second half of the film is just
like as soon as the iceberg they hits the iceberg,
I'm like, now it's getting good. I'm gonna I'm gonna
blow both your minds for a little bit. Last year,
I think on tour, I went to the Titanic Museum
where in Florida, in Pigeonforge, Tennessee. There are so many
(22:35):
I know this one shares a location. Their sister location
is in Branson, Missouri, And I lied and said that
I was covering it for a Vice article and they
were like that seems weird, but come on board. And
it was so bizarre and so fantastic, the kind of
like roadside weird attraction that I just like salivate over.
And when you go there, it's like if you've ever
(22:58):
been to Pigeonforge. People in this room and also people listening. Um,
it is like hill billy Vegas. So Dollywood is there obviously, yeah,
but then everything like leading up to Dollywood is like
wax museums and like go carts and like, you know,
here's a weird boat ride. I don't know. And then
here's like the Titanic Museum and then a Walmart and uh,
you show up and they give you a card and
(23:20):
they assign you to somebody that was actually on the
Titanic and then you like walk through and have to
figure out if you which is like they do with
the Museum of Tolerance to Yeah, that that's how the one,
and I've been to the one in Orlando several times.
There did you get to touch ice? I did get
to touch ice. Okay, this must be the same, must
be the same. It's awesome. I never have a kid
(23:41):
area that feels weird. It feels inappropriate. Yeah, like, oh,
this is like a playground. Yeah, And they were so
strict about taking photos and I respected that. Yeah. I
had like a digital camera when I was fifteen, and
I went and I tried to like sneak it, but
they were all blurry because it was a bad camera.
But when you get into the room with a grand staircase,
you're just like this, it's a big moment. And I
(24:01):
got my photo taken and I feel great. Me too.
I wish that I was a weird looking that I
am probably similar to jealousy that you guys have done
all this. There's one in Massachusetts too. It's so crazy.
And also the gift shop is rude. Can we agree
with the gift shops super rude? But that said, I purchased.
I know I was contemplating getting a really rude T
(24:22):
shirt that said Titanic. I was the term property of,
like it's a gym shirt, Titanic property. I was determined
when I was a teenager to be on I think
that they I'm pretty sure they did have like a
centennial voyage because I used to I used to be
really into Titanic from like a like a historical perspective.
(24:44):
It's not because I liked the movie, but it was.
And I would go out onto my roof every April
to fifteen in that morning, and I would sit there
and just like think real hard about the losses that
it transport. I thought, you're gonna say, like you spread
out your arms and said, I'm the king of the word.
But back to Fargo. Oh yeah, we've We've gone on
(25:05):
a tangent. We should do Titanics and soon. One of
my thoughts is that it very interesting happens in this
movie that usually does not happen in any movie where
the protagonists shifts from one character to another. Ye take
any screenwriting one on one class. I'll tell you not
(25:27):
supposed to happen at the beginning of the second The
Coen brothers are very good at what they do. They
pull it off very well because we start identifying and
relating to and like even feeling a bit empathetic towards
Jerry Lendergard because he says me, the second I see
his wife, that's the thing. It was like, I like
him in the first scene, and then the second you
(25:48):
see Jean, You're just like that sucks. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
because like again, like what you were saying earlier, if
his wife not to say that this excuses any kind
of abuse, but you know, as far as like what
we understand and in in movies, if the wife is
like very shrewish and like, you know, quote unquote deserving,
No one's deserving, Well you know what I mean, Like
(26:08):
it adds a little bit more validation to what she's
struggling with. Yeah, like we're conditioned to think, or it
just helps us understand why he would put the steps
to do what he's about to do, right, and it's
just like, well he must have a reason for but
he but she's just minderful and he's wonderful. Yeah, the
like little monologue, the speech that Marge gives it the
(26:29):
end to Peter Stormare's character should really be directed to
But yeah, you do lose empathy for him pretty early on,
but he's still the central character for a good half
hour until the murders happen, the three murders in Brainerd,
and then we meet Marge. Then she you're like, oh, okay,
(26:50):
she's the main character now, and then oh what a
delight she is. I know, she's so fantastic, which we've
already talked about. But it's like the slimier Jerry get
Like he just keeps every scene you see him and
he's lying to someone, he's manipulating someone, he's trying to
get his way, and he's intent. He does multiple and
every single time you're just like, this is your fault. Yeah,
(27:14):
And also like I was frustrated from him from a
from a criminal perspective of like, you look so fucking
guilty right now during a tantrum in your translucent office.
What are you doing? Yeah, well, I mean like we understand,
you know, the steps that he took to get to
like this low place because he's such a terrible car salesman.
(27:38):
He can't like sell you know, one feature on whole car,
just like you're gonna want. It's like, but you you
didn't say it. You know. It's like and I understand
who that outraged customer is. I've seen them in life,
I've been them, you know, I understand Jerry. And yeah,
and just like showing that oh he's lying, like oh,
(27:59):
I'm gonna go talk to my boss and he just
asked him about the game and then comes back it
just yeah, everything makes sense. You're like, man, you shouldn't
be doing this. And that's also I'm not going to
spoil anything with the TV series. You should definitely check
it out. Both of them are works of art, they
really are. Um. The first one has Billy Bob Thornton
in it as like the bad dude, terrifying, one of
the more terror I mean just imagine he's the best.
(28:21):
I'd wear a vial of his blood. Yeah, um, can
we get that on et scene now? Um, I feel
like we can with the divorce, maybe she's taking up hobbies,
but um so the main character in the Fargo series,
it's sort of a similar situation of William H. Macy's character,
where instead of being a used car salesman who's innapt,
he's like an insurance salesman. So you kind of see
(28:42):
like a similar pattern of like these kind of like
you know, emasculated men, like trying to live up a
life that you know they feel entitled to but you know,
have no talent to achieve. I like one of the
interesting male characters that I didn't think about a lot
before this, like you watching, was Wade Wade is the
Dead Wade Because I don't know, like I remember the
(29:05):
first time I saw this movie. I was surprised at
how sad I was when he's killed um, and that
sort of took me off guard because the whole time
I was like, well, kind of every guy in this
movie is an asshole, but he was a well intentioned
enough really cared about his daughter and getting his daughter
back right. But that said he also what did not
sell me on him was that scene in the diner
(29:27):
where he's talking Jerry and he's like, well, I don't
want to give a million dollars, Like maybe I can
give a half a million dollars, and then like Jerry
is the real ship. He'll of that scene because he's
like no, no, no, you gotta give all the money
and he's lying. But even like Wade saying I don't know,
I just like tried to think. I was like, if
my dad had a million dollars, amazing first of all,
(29:48):
but like I would not want him to be haggling
for my life like that. That bugged me. Yeah, I
mean that's what you want, but also I guess I
don't know, you don't know the things. I kind of
samathized with him in that moment of little bit too,
because you don't know, like the back and forth of
that kind of mental gymnastics of like are we even
going to get what we pay for technically getting her back?
(30:10):
Is she going to be Okay, we don't have any
evidence that she's still alive. We're definitely being duped in
some way. It's fucking tough. It's yeah. I mean he's
in an impossible situation, and you hate Jerry even more
when you see Scotty crying and that's like, what's going
to happen if he didn't can't even think about his son?
(30:31):
And in the parking lot, it's like, oh, a son,
and you literally see it occurred to him that he
that his son would of course be terrified, which is
like the most believable like face that he gives to
being grieved in the entire you know movie. So I
was like, oh, well, good on you. You at least
got that scene, Jerry, Right, That's the one. Yeah. The
(30:53):
scene that always like raises my blood pressure is the
scene right after he sees that Jean has been kidnapped
and he practicing how to tell away, just like yeah,
the button on that scene is amazing because he's like
working out this fake emotion to be like wait it's
what happened, makes the phone call, and then he's like
(31:15):
you can see him like gearing up to be emotional,
and then he has to be like, oh, Wade or
whatever because he got the receptionist or whatever. Yeah, which
I mean can incriminate him too, because they can go
back and get the recordings from the phone calls that
he made to sort of see I don't know whatever.
I'm super that it's like if I wanted to commit
(31:37):
a murder, I've seen enough dateline that I think I
could get away. Well, you're just like he's making a
lot of rookie as mistakes. Yeah. Well, with Wade's character
negotiating or haggling with the ransom, I think that actually
kind of speaks to the duplicitus of his character, of
like him being this sort of like very shrewd, very
(31:59):
tough kind of character who we see this tender side
when it comes to his daughter being in danger, but
then that toughness and that kind of like unfair shrewdness
comes back with him trying to haggle. I think that
that kind of shows the back and forth of his
character maybe a little bit, and we do see both
sides of him of like there are scenes where he's
(32:20):
structly a businessman and strictly a father and grandfather, like
that scene where he is like Geane and Scotty, you'll
never have to worry. That was when I really liked him,
because I was like, yeah, fuck Jerry. Yeah yeah. And
for how inept and slimy and terrible Jerry is, Marge
is the up like she's just like the first clue
(32:42):
you get that she's good at her job is she
and her colleague I think his name is lu Detective
Cyber or whatever. They're at the crime scene where the
trooper and the two other people who witnessed the murder
are all killed, and they're all they're dead in the snow,
and he's like, yeah, he must have started writing it
(33:03):
down and then didn't get the whole license plate. And
she's like no, She's like, I'm not so sure about
your detective work there. Yeah. She's like he's it was
clearly a dealer plate and he's like oh yeah. And
even when she's correcting him, it's not condescending, right, Yeah,
She's so kind, and I like in a lot of movies,
I've like powerful females is often like conflated with and
(33:27):
she's also really me like she doesn't have friends, and
she's like very yeah yeah. And it's like even in
her relationship with norm it seems like a very equal partnership,
even when in my head I was like, oh, March,
you're like you're in charge, right, But but she doesn't
(33:48):
treat it that way. And she's like genuinely very kind.
She cares about people, and she's great at stuff, and
I feel like you don't see that very often. It's
very easy to just say like, oh, if you're good
at your job, you're also bad at your personal life.
I think also with that particular kind of job, there
tends to be I think, like a misconception that you
have to be detached from human emotions in that way
(34:09):
because you're seeing a lot of blood and guts and
you have to sort of come to terms with that
and reconcile that in yourself, that you're not constantly throwing
up over where you're not bringing your work home in
your brain, you know, to kind of have a live
with you and and haunt you. But she seems very adaptive, yeah,
where she throws up like she's about to throw up,
And I was like, oh, is it because she's looking
(34:30):
at a dead child and she's like, no, it's just
more than Yeah. I think a lot of cops and
movies are portrayed as like I'm a tough guy and
everyone's guilty and and she just she just like helps
for the best in people. Yeah, exactly when they're bad.
She's so disappointed. That increases the impact of how disappointed
(34:51):
she is. At the end of the movie, you're just like,
I what can we tell you March. Yeah. I also
want to talk about how like her relationship with norm
and how like the gender roles of their marriage are
very reversed, and that like he is an artist slash
house husband. I'm guessing like from what little we know
about him because she needs nightcrawlers. Yeah, but he loves
(35:14):
her breakfast. He brings her lunch, like he's taking care
for in away that in like meal providing, which is
like very stereotypically it's hard, but you're like she's like
out there working and you're like making her breakfast and
it's just one of those Yeah, Mike has never brought
(35:39):
me lunch and RBS in the middle of the day,
never cook me breakfast. I wanted to eat Rby so
bad when when he says I'll cook you eggs and
then hawks up a lugy just like and she's I know,
she's smile, she loves so much. But it's great. Yeah, um,
(36:03):
something I wanted to I was thinking about the whole
movie in regards to William H. Macy's character is I
kept like drawing comparison in my head. I don't know
why to American Beauty and how many things Fargo does
write that American Beauty I think I don't like that
movie at all, but it came out a couple of
years after Fargo. I think, like, and uh, it's all
(36:26):
I mean, they have a similar character of like the
frustrated husband trying to blow off steam. But the I
don't know, like I hate how American Beauty you know,
paints Kevin Spacey is this very tragic figure and you're
just like, no, this guy's a fucking jerk hervert, like
there's no excuse for this person, and the whole idea
(36:47):
of like, well, life in the suburb is a suffocating
and I don't know, I'm just like, shut the funk up,
you're fine, Whereas like William H. Macy's character as portrayed
as what I view those types of people to be,
which is like pathetic and kind of sad. Like I
feel like William H. Macy's character is like the the
(37:07):
frustrated husband who's trying to get his life together and
is like punished fairly and portrayed fairly as like this
guy does not know what he's doing. He's certainly not
the hero of the story. I don't know, Like I
couldn't stop thinking about American beauty and no, uh and
how I don't know like it, but it's always bothered.
(37:27):
Just Kevin Species portrayed as sort of like a tragic martyr, right,
and then when he's just a piece of I have
a theory about that. I think that. So there's also
an article that came out a while ago. I think
it's from a V club that talked about like the
craziest year for movies in the twenty one century was
or something, because it just was a huge year of
(37:48):
Titanic and like the Phantom Menace, and it was just
like there was a lot of spotlight happening on on
feature films at the time. But American beauty, I feel,
is like at the epicenter of this trend of this
sort of like I wouldn't say faux art sinis, but
definitely art senis in the forefront. And I think that
it's attributed to the rise of the mid budget movie
through Mirrimax and through Quentin Tarantino, and like that becoming
(38:11):
more a part of like what the mainstream could be,
and that people were kind of opening their doors at
least the Academy was to like films that maybe they
quote unquote didn't quite understand, but like acknowledged as art.
And I feel like American Beauty like perfectly epitomizes that.
I mean with just that drifting plastic bag plot of
(38:32):
the most beautiful thing in the whole world, I mean,
which we now roll our eyes because it's like first
year art school bullshit. Um. But at the time I
think was captivating a lot of people, um because they
didn't understand it. And so I think that a lot
of people attribute like good art to something that they
just don't understand, right, And that's something that I feel
like it is almost universally agreed does not hold up
(38:54):
very Yeah, And also with I don't remember the characters
in but Kevin Spacey's wife in that being yeah, yeah, yeah,
like she's portrayed. I mean, she's portrayed. She's a developed character,
but she's still ultimately portrayed as like a shrewish person.
And I'm just I don't know, I'm like grateful that
Gene is not portrayed that way. Jane is doing her best,
(39:18):
so isn't that bending's character? But I feel like the
story just paints her as you're getting C grades, like
she's just she also just wants the best. It caused
her pain to tell her son he couldn't go out
for hockey. I know you mentioned like whenever Marge is
correcting her colleague and his like his police work, she
(39:40):
doesn't do it in a condescending way. There is a
scene though, where she is very condescending, but it's to
someone who very much deserves it. And I don't know
if you like perceive this this way or not, but um,
whenever she first meets Jerry in his office, she's like, oh,
you're the owner here, and he's like, no, I'm just
the executive sales whatever. She's like okay, and then he's
(40:01):
like my father in law. He's like clearly trying to
like push blame off onto someone else and she's like, oh, yeah, okay,
well I'm a police officer. And it's the second meeting,
right or noticed the first meeting. Yeah, no, I remember that.
She's just like, you're an idiot, so I'm going to
talk to you like you are one. I think it's
(40:23):
the second meeting where she says something like, oh, this
this crime I'm investigating. The purps were driving a car
with dealer plates and they called someone who works here
at this dealership, so it would be quite a coincidence
if they weren't, you know, connected, And it's she's just like,
it's so great how much she condescends to such a
(40:44):
piece of ship that Jerry Lindergart is. And I love
watching that scene because he is trying so hard to
like be like I'm cooperating and like to be like
cool and chill, and he's just barely holding it. Yeah,
that entire scene, for those periods of silence, I'm like, well,
you're done, Je, you are so guilty, like you have
(41:05):
no I want to watch this guy play poker because
you feel like, can I say what My favorite part
about that scene is speaks directly to what I was
saying earlier about being a cinematography nerd Uh. Similar to
in Psycho, we see Janet. What's her face is? Um
character's name, the main lady in Psycho. Um, we see
(41:25):
her in her like Neglija at first, and it's white
and pure when she's like cooking up with her dude.
And then later when she decides that she's going to
you know, steal the money from her boss and like
run out her Neglija is black to you know, represent
that she's now evil and she's corropted, she's turned. So
(41:47):
in a similar way, Um, these two scenes, if you
face them together, um, the scene of Marge first visiting
Jerry and the scene of the second one. So I
feel like this was calculated and strategic from the makers
that there are vertical blinds in his office because in
the first scene they're open, it's bright. He's you know,
(42:08):
seemingly passing off this slide to her. It's totally fine.
Second scene, the light is casting over the vertical blinds
representing prison bars on Jerry Lendergard's face and he's done
for And shortly after that he sprints off, takes one
of the cars and she realizes, oh he's Oh, he's
gone he's playing the interview in the Yeah, so that
(42:31):
was a little bit of things that was like a
little bit of Trump. Yeah baby, I was like, m yeah,
that's good, Like it just was so fun. I love
stuff like that, and that's part of the reason why
I wanted to go into that line of work and
why I never will. I don't know. Maybe there's time.
There's time. Yeah, you can do anything. We're women and
we can do whatever we want to. Guess what I
(42:52):
want to keep writing if they'll let me still allow.
The final thing that I want to talk about unless
I think of something else is Marge does everything that
she does while she's like seven months So that's highly
symbolic as well. Tell me of what I shall Um,
(43:12):
so you know here they are there basically. I mean,
we'll get into if this passes Sebactel test eventually. I'm
assuming you know, I've never heard Okay, are you talking about? So?
This world is littered with dudes, It's lousy with dudes,
and so um, Marge is really like this big female
figure in that Um, not just because there's not too
(43:33):
many other people besides Gene that she can kind of
wrap with in like the other escorts, but they wanted
to make her this like matriarch that sort of carried
and saved this plot. And having her also be pregnant
really enhanced that kind of maternal instinct that was a
requirement for her instinct as a detective to get down
(43:55):
to the case. Like it not only signified that she
was like a protector of the town, a protector of justice,
but she's you know, literally protecting life and preserving life,
and those are like her motivations. You know, she wants
people to be good, so she's protecting life for like
their livelihood. She wants people to not die, so literally
(44:16):
protecting life in that way. And as she's seven months
pregnant and like fucking doing it like a badass, it
just further proves that she's going to be the one
that carries this. Yeah, and and like the scene, it's
so like interesting the scene where she looks at the
dead child, I know, and she's seven months pregnant and
then she's about to throw up and you're like when
(44:38):
does that happen? But Okay, I remember, and it's like
but that to be is like a testament of like, no,
she is really good at her job and she's able
to compartmentalize accordingly, which is a superpower. It's a superpower there. Yeah.
But and and the fact that she's also like, even
though she is very pregnant and that's important to her,
(45:00):
she's not compromising the job. She's doing this kind of
dangerous well, it is dangerous, and she's not compromised, Like,
she doesn't compromise in any regard, which is amazing. And
she's incredible. When we when pregnant women are portrayed in
like movies and TV, it's almost always like they are
(45:23):
cranky and hormonal and they're like, oh, what a delicate flower.
I am. Oh, I have to pee all the time
and I pant and I not have been yet, so
I have no idea what it's like. And I'm sure
it is very uncomfortable, but like you can still carry
on with your life in your job pregnant. But like
it's almost always when you see a very pregnant woman
(45:45):
on screen, it's like, oh, look, how pregnant I am?
I think talking about they're they're like sort of damselfied
and it's yeah, and I mean it's like, barring medical conditions,
most pregnant women work up until till they give birth
in their off this often I've heard, oh, there's a
Harmon Town show happening. Chills, yeah, chills, Like why is
(46:08):
the man yelling during our podcast? So I just love
that she mentions it, but she's like, could you mind
if I sit down? I'm paying quite a load. And
that's pretty much the only the most like she gets
in a way, Yeah, and the only time really that
her pregnancy affects her performance. Yeah, apart from the time
(46:29):
that she kiels over it almost barf. But then I
love how she's like, oh, it passed, and now I'm
hungry again, all right, right, and then she goes back
to work. Yeah, she goes back to work. And then
I love how many times you see her eating and
the movie she's eating Arby, she had eat. She's going
to town on that buffet, buffet, and then it's so
like representative of that region of like these comfort foods,
(46:52):
these heavy, heavy sausages. And can we talk about like
the choice to make this like murder plot in this
folksy setting a little bit because I love I love
that the Cohen Brothers did this, and I do think
that it allows for that comedy to just sort of
naturally happen. I mean, obviously it's like mismatched to what
the actions are you wouldn't suspect. And I think that
(47:14):
even in like the tagline on the poster, it was
like a murder mystery, like a homespun murder mystery or
something that's sort of like, you know, let you know
that this is going to be this offbeat, cookie kind
of like we don't know what we're in for. We're
in way over a heads kind of town, and one
would suspect that, like a small town wouldn't have the
resources to deal with solving a murder, but they don't
(47:34):
have March. But I also I found so there's this
book that I really like called The Philosophy of the
Cohne Brothers, and it is edited by Mark T. Kennard,
who is this like really superboss film critic. But each
chapter it's like an assemblage of essays from different film critics.
And so I forget the name of of the gentleman
(47:54):
who wrote a chapter about mondanity and noir in Fargo,
but I found it really interest ding because of course,
you know, any film genre is representative of social anxiety.
You know, we see that a lot with science fiction,
you know, science fiction represents social anxiety about like progress,
and then you can kind of actually divide the genre
into like two different chapters, pre Cold War and post
(48:15):
Cold War, and that post Cold War deals a lot
with like nuclear attacks and like the fear of that,
and that's like sort of what the menaces with it.
And I feel like with noir they kind of tap
into that kind of social anxiety through modernity because with
that comes like you're making progress, but with progress, you
are breaking off from the past. So with that becomes
(48:37):
this loneliness in isolation and alienation, and that a lot
of noirs, especially ones that define the genre in the forties,
took place in like these urban city scapes, which could
be comforting but also isolating as well, because if you're
like this one person walking around the city scape, you've
got these skyscrapers looming over you, making you feel like
you can either be protected by them or trampled by them.
(49:00):
And so what the Cohen Brothers do and what you know,
they actually what this author suggests, they kind of took
a page from um Orson Wells in Touch of Evil,
bringing the noir to the desert into Mexico. Um is
that they are jarring the audience from what is known
to be noir in the city and by taking it
to this like desolate landscape that's snow covered. You know,
(49:21):
it's it's different than what we expect. But I also
really love it because you know, we know that there's
a danger. The danger is lurking. However, everywhere we look,
we think we see everything that there is to see.
It's this blank canvas, you know, It's these large expanses
of land. Where could the danger be hiding? And I
think that that was a very smart choice that they
(49:42):
made to raise the tension of where is it going
to pop out? What are we doing? And also the
fact that it is snow covered, I feel like speaks
to like how flimsy the foundation of what all the
things that we are to believe are resting on, um,
the flimsy foundation of all the character and their intentions,
and how it can change it any minute. That to
(50:03):
me was interesting. It's like a real maybe this is
like a political climate thing that's influencing this, but it
seems like a real American yeavy and it's like a
side of the country you don't see in movies a
lot at all, and it it almost feels like a
non judgmental depiction of like a very American place where
(50:27):
it's like, yeah, they're good people and they're bad people,
but it is what it is. It's not necessarily making
a very overt commentary on it. It's just like presenting
it and what feels like a pretty like cool and
honest way that you don't see a lot. And I
think that it being like this sort of more realistic
environment like raises fears and people watching it, that it
(50:50):
feels closer to home than watching like two people buzz
around a city. It's not sexy. Crime Feders in this
movie was particularly no one gets me for in this
entire movie exactly exactly. And the sex is also like
the sex scenes that we see are not fetishized in
any way. They're not romantic anyways, they're almost tishemmy, but
(51:13):
also like the people that are having the sex don't
seem to particularly enjoy it. Oh my god, I love
the prostitutes. Dig and this where at some point she's
like basically mocking bushemy while she's like all right, loving
this or no, she's like, I'm he and dinner earlier,
(51:33):
and he's nice he's taken her to dinner, like he's
he's paid her for the evening and they don't technically
have to go out. They can just do what he
paid her for. Being very delicate in my choices, but
you know, he tries to relate to her and tries
to have a conversation, and she like judges him and like,
what are you talking like this kind of work, like
(51:55):
being a prostitute. She's like, what dumb question? Yeah? Um,
But that kind of leads us to the question of
whether or not this movie passes the Bechdel test. There
is allegedly some some controversy apparently which I do not
know about. I, using my my own my doub old brain,
have decided that thanks so much of the fear that
(52:20):
as far as I'm concerned, it does pass the Bechdel test,
because there is a scene or mare just questioning the
two young women who are women and ladies of the
night about the two guys that they spent the night with.
Before they move on to that subject, though, they're talking
about where the two women went to college, where they
went to high school, and she's like, cool bears, and like,
(52:43):
so it's a sliver of a conversation. But to me,
I would say that, like most of the movies we have,
let pass, it passes on a techniccount. Yeah, even though
the whole reason why they're talking is because of these
two guys, right, I can see it both ways. I
feel like, and I'm purely speculating here, but I feel
(53:06):
like the Vechteal test was designed to question whether or
not the women. The assumption is that if they are
talking about a man, it's because he's the romantic interest
of something. So this is their purpose derives from that man.
It is a work conversation, right, yeah, it's yeah, so
they happen to be talking about men, but it's in
the context of like a criminal investigation rather than like, yes,
(53:28):
we love these men, oh right, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
I agree. I'm inclined to give it past just because
I mean, like the Vectel test is certainly flawed and
that I feel like this movie is pretty unepistically like
it has amazing female characters. Right, Maybe there aren't enough
of them per se, but I almost feel like that's
(53:49):
intentionally done in the case of this because March just
is this force of good and badassus in a sea
of she's strong that I think she alone makes up
for it, like exactly she's not her purpose is derived
from a man, and her self worth isn't defined by
how men perceiver at all. In fact, she doesn't seem
(54:12):
to register it. She doesn't care. I mean, we see
it for a flash when she gets all you know,
done up to see her old pal. But I think
that that's just her wanting to have a break for
a moment to like, you know, that's like human. I
feel like that, Yeah, it's such a human moment of
Like I mean, any marriage, there comes a moment where
(54:33):
there's like that thought of like oh what if, and
then she seems to pretty immediately snap back into like,
oh no, I made the decision. Yeah, that's awesome to see. Yeah.
And I just think in general of just like having
an excuse to, like I don't know, not play act necessarily,
but just like to get gussied up into to just
explore a path for a night, even if it's just
(54:56):
a thought for a second, especially like with the she's
about to become a mon there and they're supposed to
be this big change. It's almost like a last last
kind Yeah, yeah, I agree, But then he was like, Oh,
I'm gonna sit over here and put my arm around you,
and then she's like away from me. Yeah, what's a
creepy Yeah. I don't know if you've been in similar
(55:17):
situations where it's like super awkward on the same sif like, oh,
I just don't want to have to turn my neck.
But it's like clearly the front for how she like
registered that is, Oh, that was weird. Go back tu. Yeah,
he sounded so manic on the phone when we first
hear him, and yeah, it's just it's just bad. Well,
(55:39):
I think now is the time where we on a
scale of zero to five nipples the movie based on
its treatment and portrayal of its female characters. This is
our alternative to the Metal Test five nip rating. Yeah,
who would like to go first? I first, sure, I
(56:02):
would give it without knowing any precedent of how you've
rated previous films and where you personally reside and like
the parameters of that. I would give it a four
point five because I would give it a five just
on Marge alone, because she's so iconic as a strong
female character, and I think that a lot of people
(56:22):
have referenced her through other characters written after this um
as like sort of the goal of what you can
achieve with like a woman who is in control and
is dynamic and interesting and all and all of that stuff. However,
you know, take away a point five because a lot
of the other female characters are escorts that we don't
know too much about, and Gene isn't really given a perspective. Unfortunately,
(56:48):
one more I wanted. We know that she knits, you know,
but there's more to her. There's more to her. So yeah, unfortunately,
four boys because you because you describe those nipples. Sorry,
we should have We should you five nipples they're like,
you know, not like a deep flesh color, but like
like a mom about to give birth. They're like so
(57:11):
like so actually no, they are deep in color, bursting
with milk and probably bursting with milk. Leaky nips, nips
that you don't want to see, and you actually see
it when you stimone into your mom's room a little
too soon and you're asking what's for dinner. That's that's
the nip. I would have also given it a four
point five nip rating for the I'm just gonna pick
you back and steal your um and this just might
(57:35):
be true of that area of the country. I doubt
there's much diversity. I don't see any women of color. Um,
it's nice that we see like all the women aren't
these like hot Hollywood look how hot I am? And
everyone's just like nice and normal looking. And it seems
like a lot of tertiary characters were from Farga probably
(57:55):
guess including Gene. So yeah, it's just probably that there's
no diversity in this town, that we don't see any
women of color. Um. I like that Marge is like
probably forty late thirties, because women of color, women over
the age of like forty and fifty are even more
poorly represented than white women. Yeah, so four point five
(58:17):
beautiful nipples. I can't. I'm gonna give it four print
five as well because I love a good bandwagon and
also I agree mine are going to be Marche nipples
as well. But these ones are radiating beams of light.
I like, that's blind. That's a future pop culture themed
art show. Yes, there March just marges. Yeah, just a
(58:44):
statue of Marge, but there are very strong lights where
her nips should be. That is something I would really
make into a Facebook profile picture. I think highest compliments. Well,
there you have it, Argo across the board four point five.
I think that's the best one. So fun. So thanks
(59:07):
for bringing us this great So is there anything that
you'd like to plug or like? Where can people find
you online? How do people follow you? Oh my gosh.
You can find me at Twitter dot com finn slash
Julia Prescott. There I post my musings in my show dates,
and then I have a podcast about the Simpsons called
(59:28):
Everything's Coming Up Podcast. You can find us at Simpson's
Pod and on iTunes. Wonderful. Thank you so much. If
you want to follow us, the Bechtel Cast, you can
do so are cheering. You can follow us at Bechtel
Cast on Twitter. You can email us if you want,
(59:49):
The Bechtel Cast at gmail dot com. And we love you.
We love you. Bye bye
The Bechdel Cast News
Hosts And Creators
Caitlin Durante
Jamie Loftus
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.