The Bechdel Cast - 500 Movies of Bechdel Cast

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

We're celebrating having covered 500 movies between main feed and Matreon episodes! Thanks so much for listening, and here's to 500 more!!! Tickets to our upcoming Shrektanic shows, Movie Request Form, Letterboxd, and more can be found at linktr.ee/bechdelcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller

from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos,

host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands

or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Caitlin, it's a party. It is a party. We're celebrating. We're celebrating the passage of time. And how the more you know, the more you need to know.

Isn't that thrilling? Wow. It has been 84 years years and we have covered the Bechdel cast. Yes, and in those 84 years we've covered 500 movies. Yes, welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And normally this is our show where we examine a specific movie every episode and analyze it through an intersectional feminist lens. This week, we have two main things on the agenda. One is to plug a little tour we have coming up and make sure everyone knows about it so that you can come to the shows.

And we're also celebrating covering 500 movies over the course of doing this podcast. Yes. So we're going to do a little retrospective, have a little bit of fun, and then we'll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming. But first, yeah, we just wanted to remind everyone that if you live in the UK or Dublin, we are coming for you non-threateningly and with love. Yes. At the end of May. So let's run through. Where are we going, Caitlin? Do tell me. Well, I will tell you. First, we are going to London. We are doing two shows on May 22nd. The first show we're covering Shrek because we should say this is the Shrektanic tour. Yes.

And you don't need it broken down for you. Figure it out. If you can't figure it out, don't come. Please come. Yes. So the early show, we're going to be talking about shrek the later show on that same evening we're talking about titanic again that's may 22nd in london then we are going to oxford on may 24th this is part of the saint audio podcast festival and we're covering titanic ever heard of it yeah if you've listened to this show or if you exist chances are yes you have then we are going up to edinburgh on may 26th for a show on shrek because edinburgh is in scotland shrek Shrek is Scottish it just makes sense and again if you live in Edinburgh and you need this explained to you don't come no please come please come please come

do come and then we are doing a show in Dublin on May 29th. That's also a Titanic show. And what we want to make clear is that have we done about 800 episodes on Titanic already? We have. It's true. But this is going to be a whole new slate of stuff. Yeah, it really is like mainly a celebration of the show itself and all of like the goofiness. We are going to be wearing ridiculous outfits. We are going to talk about the movies themselves. But we also know you've heard us talk about these movies over the years.

We're going to have a broad conversation, but we're also going like play games have fun exclusive merch like it is like a celebration of not just these movies which we love to celebrate as if they are our gods but also just celebrate this show and celebrate the community it's going to be super super fun and we're pumped to see everybody i'm editing so many videos to screen at the shows Kaylin is going yeah and I'm drawing so many pornographic images of us to sell at the show that are like cartoons so don't even be scared and please purchase them it would be so great if you purchase the pornographic images we're making all that said please come we're really excited and same thing with the Shrek shows.

Yes, we've covered all four Shrek movies. But we can bring all of that information to you. In new and interesting ways. Caitlin, I haven't told you this, but I'm hoping, I'm aspiring, and I may, in fact, hold you hostage to do a challenge I call All Four Shreks No pee breaks before we depart. Like watch a marathon, a Shrek-a-thon? A Shrek-a-thon, yeah. Whoa.

Yeah. I'm up to the challenge. I, oh, I have no doubt. I have no doubt 2008 that you can do it, that I can do it. And that in fact, we were born to do it. So we're really excited. Please come out. Yes.

At the end of the day, we have covered 500 movies, Caitlin Durante. It is. Can you believe it? It is shocking. It is shocking. And to be clear,

I mean, whatever. I feel like we're always qualifying things and apologizing for things that people are not asking us to do. And if that's not the femme experience, no, but we have covered 500 movies

between the main feed and our Patreon, aka Matreon, which we have had since 2017. If you're like, oh no, there's no new episode of the Bechdel cast this week, really, then you can head over there. It's five bucks a month for two new episodes and an access to over 150 of these movies we're talking about.

Yes. But yeah, we recently hit 500 movies covered, which is wild because we've covered some movies multiple times. I mean, like obviously Titanic, we've covered multiple times. And then there's a few episodes that we were strictly based on our own knowledge.

Well, maybe that's a fun place. Sorry. Ashamed of. This podcast started in 2016. We were different people. That was eight whole years ago or 84 years ago. It's been depending on how you experience time. I think spiritually, honestly, like I've been seeing more and more sort of thoughts and articles, etc.

About how the passage of time in the last five years has just like not quite been correct. We are in a weird time warp, time loop, multiverse. Something is happening. It's an interstellar thing it's a tenant thing it's just a lot of like christopher nolan movies and how time is experienced by those characters that is what is happening to us see i only saw a tenant at i think i've heard this experience from a lot of people that and i kind of not to be like justice for Tenet because who cares but like I know some people who recently saw when Tenet was like re-released into IMAX and they're like oh that

movie was actually really good because I think many of us saw Tenet either on our TVs or I saw it I've heard this story many times of like saw it at the drive-in in a desperate attempt to leave the home and feel like you're having a communal experience. So the two movies I saw at the drive-in during lockdown, and this is so bleak, is Tenet, which impossible, impossible to understand from 40 feet away and you're and like over a radio signal not good even if you're closer you're not able to understand it it is an unfollowable movie it's confusing when you're surrounded by it much less from far away like and you have your dog and you're like uh-huh uh-huh and then i also saw promising young woman at a drive-in which is like however you feel

about that movie not a drive-in movie for sure like real bummer to see at the drive-in anyways I have to you know rehabilitate my relationship with the drive-in the point is this show's been on for a long time and the show is I mean mean, we've talked about the origins of the show many times. We don't need to recap that here. But it's changed a lot over the years. And yeah, I don't know. I'm proud of our little show, Caitlin. I'll say it.

Oh my gosh. I'm so proud of it. I feel so lucky and privileged. Not only that this is my job, because it's a job that I love doing so much and it did not start as this is like you know whatever very much started as like when we have time at an active financial loss sort of thing so we're very lucky that it's turned into a job truly and i also just feel so lucky and honored to be working so closely with you jamie oh caitlin i feel so like i mean we yeah yeah it's i i like should we cry no no okay fine no i can't right now it's because i honestly i could cry

but i just ate popcorn and all the salt is in my mouth. I feel like I couldn't even force it into my eyeballs if I was feeling emotional, which I am. Does that make sense? I don't know. Um, I, I'm not really sure what's happening physiologically with,

I just feel like you, but you've got to pick a hole to have your salt. Right now it's in my mouth. I could do the like Liz Lemon thing where i start crying out of my mouth after she gets like off-brand lasik or whatever start drooling which also has kind of been my current reality anyways no can't i love you so much i like i feel like we have grown so close and like grown together through making this show and i just feel i feel lucky it's i mean i just feel lucky to be a friend of yours at all.

And also I just, I don't know. I feel like we're really lucky to have you. Like I was saying this the other day, I was like, Caitlin and I are like talking common law married. Like we are. Yeah.

Yes. We're common law married podcast wise. And, and also friendship wise. Like it's just, I, I don't know. i'm so grateful for you it's beautiful i love that we spend holidays together we go to universal together we have we

have we have theme park passes to use together we get our souls stolen on the mummy ride regularly we take pictures with shrek regularly we avoid beetlejuice regularly and i also i mean i really do think that like this show but also you specifically have like opened me up to movies that i would not normally see and end up really loving i don't this show in general i it has really broadened my horizons in terms I mean in terms of a lot of things but just in terms of seeing things and in terms of like thinking about movies and about who's making them and about like what I like and appreciate in in movies in a way that I didn't when this show started I was like very much for someone with a film degree, a very casual film watcher prior to

this show. You the other day were like, I'm going to be in Boston and there's a Lord of the Rings marathon that I might go to of all three Lord of the Rings movies. And I'm like, Jamie, what did you just say to me? I know I'm different. I've changed. I couldn't believe it. I've changed. And I also it i've changed and i also i

think said no pee breaks i'm really like addicted to the idea of pissing your pants infinite movies no pee breaks yeah i don't really know but yeah i i there are interests and like appreciations and also like we've made friends with our guests through making this show it's just been absolutely wonderful and i think like one of the things that i think was a cool kind of turning point throughout this show was like i think it was like maybe late 2018 into early lockdown where we had covered a lot of movies that were you know kind of generally blockbusters or culturally formative in the broadest sense during the time that we were growing up and then when we started to run out of those movies realized that like the show needs to evolve in all of these ways and not only have our guests obviously been tremendously helpful in helping the show grow

and sort of broadening the kinds of movies we look at and the movies we're championing and like who we are like you know I think like early Bechtelcast Us is like we're gonna cover Michael Bay movies because people have seen those and you know us now it's like I think we're more discerning and we're trying to and I just I don't know I think that that has so much to do with our guests and what our guests bring us as well as what our listeners bring us and and have asked for as time goes on and it's really wonderful it really is and i've loved seeing the show grow and i certainly have grown myself i don't think i would be this i'm three inches taller than when we started I'm six two whoa I know I'm five inches shorter somehow oh my god I know I'm sick no um I've certainly grown as a feminist by doing

this show I don't think I would be as fervent and militant a feminist as I am now if it were not for this show and all of the research that I've had to do along the way. And I'm grateful to the show and to feedback from our listeners and insights from our guests for kind of informing and shaping my journey with feminism. So it's just been such a wonderful experience. It's been really great. So if you are a new or long time lister, we've covered 500 movies and we have sort of a dual interest here. We are interested in over the years, what have been your favorite episodes? What are episodes that have stuck with you? Because, you know, we've covered 500 movies,

but there's still at least 20 movies we haven't covered. Yeah, 20 more movies exist. 22 movies we haven't covered that have been released. But, yeah, I mean, i'd be super curious of like over the years what are episodes that you still think about what are types of episodes what are guests that have stuck with you and then moving forward we have had gosh i think over a half decade now we've had our request page where listeners can send us requests that have, I think, has become kind of increasingly important in the show as time goes on because we want to know

what our listeners want to hear. And then we'll generally, you know, with some exceptions, it's like there's no hard rules with our show, never really has been. But we will first show potential guests the movies that you want to hear about and we want to you know show a diverse range of directors we want to show more diversity in like the times movies have come out because we've covered every single movie that came out in 2003 at this point um yep and yeah we want to know what you're what you're interested in hearing us talk about moving forward so this is bafflingly become a endorsement of an old google doc that we have

that will be linked in the description yes which we rarely plug but it is i know i feel like it's really like an if you know you know know thing. It's true, right. But it is readily available on our Linktree, which is also where you can get the tickets to that Shrektanic tour we were just talking about. But yeah, if you go to Linktree slash Bechtelcast, you will see our listener request form. You will see our Letterboxd account, we also where we put our requests yeah i guess we haven't plugged it in a while and then we just end up getting a million dms being like when are you gonna talk about poor things and it's like oh my god soon if not already because we recorded the episode it's forthcoming or and it was hard so you're welcome yeah yes so um yeah

we've got all kinds of goodies over there on our link tree. So check that out. But yeah, we are curious about what you'd like us to hear that we haven't covered already. So yeah, fill out that form. And generally, if we see a, you know know commonly recurring movie on the request form then we'll add it to our letterbox list of like frequent requests and so that's kind of how we do it and we'll and we'll find a guest that wants to talk with us about it yeah so you do have you do have power it's true and you know how you can have even more power is to join our matreon and oh we're plugging the patreon for a second yeah just oh my god let people know head over there yeah we're doing um we're we're switching our focus over there for uh on and off for the next couple months to focus

on women directors um ever heard of them ever heard heard of them? But we're, because, you know, because of the arc of time, you know, we have ended up covering quite a few movies directed by men. Regrettably, but also Shrek and Titanic, you know, it's hard. True. So we're focusing on movies directed by women over on the Matreon, aka Patreon, aka call it what you want just give us five dollars and we're starting with a month of women directed comedies that's right and and i i mean finally i just wanted to i feel like we do this every so often but like we're very very grateful to our

listeners obviously the show wouldn't exist without you every time someone's like says that to a show i listen to i'm like no fucking duh yeah if no one listened to your show you'll be broke it's true anyways we are very very grateful to our listeners like over the years i feel like so much of what has moved the show to change and grow has been our listeners being I mean I think being very like kind and firm about what they want to hear and it's really cool I feel I feel lucky that we have the community that we do we have the best listeners we do. It's so every time we go on tour, I'm like, oh, my God, the nicest people in the world listen to our show. And then I have imposter syndrome.

Like, we're pieces of shit. No, like, Caitlin, we fucking suck. Why are these nice people here? No, we're nice. We're so nice. We're so we're so lucky to to have such an intelligent and kind and funny group of people listening to our show it's really cool uh not to get parasocial in the reverse but the point is we've covered 500 movies uh and so we are we are taking this week off and

then returning to your regularly scheduled programming. But we just wanted to take a moment to say thank you and celebrate. Because this show is the best show. Sorry if you didn't know that. Yeah. Now you know. And yeah. Share any fond memories you have.

Share any highlights. Remember when Alfred Molina was a guest who could forget I remember and originally we were like we're gonna reminisce I'm like I don't remember anything except Alfred Molina I know anytime someone's like what's your favorite episode I'm like I don't remember what I did yesterday and I simply can't be expected to remember anything from before that so we've had great times I know it I just don't remember it really and if that's not Tenet and if that ain't Tenet maybe I don't know actually no that's a different Christopher Nolan movie aka M.k.a. Memento. I don't want to watch it right now.

You don't have to. To all of our listeners, thank you for being with us for so long or so new or so short or maybe you just came back. We don't know. But yeah, we will be back next week. And if you'd like to hang with us in the meantime, again, if you're in the UK or Dublin,

please come to our tour soon. And if you want a new episode, head over to the Patreon and we will see you there. Yes. One last little plug because I am doing a few extra shows on this little European excursion that we'll be on. I am doing a show on my literal birthday in Dublin on May 17th. It's a stand-up show and I'll be doing a long set and the rest of the lineup are amazing local comedians from Dublin. So come out and watch some hilarious stand-up comedy from yours truly and you kind of have to do it

because it's my birthday so yeah you're kind of being a bully you're not being that which includes me i'm sorry i can't be there but it's okay it's okay it's irish law to go see caitlin's birthday show it really is the show's at Hysteria Comedy Club. The tickets for that are also on our link tree. And then I'm doing a few other standup shows in Paris and Berlin and maybe Copenhagen. I'm still trying to figure that out. Those shows are on my website, Caitlin Durante.com slash shows. But the real one that I want you to come to is my birthday show. And then we'll have a little birthday pint in Dublin afterward. We'll have a nice little celebration. And then as for me, I have a new weekly show starting in May called 16th Minute on this

network on Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. It's going to be a weekly show where each and every week I revisit and examine an internet character of the day that everyone remembers but no one ever thought to get to know. And so that'll start at the beginning of May and continue thereafter. I'm very excited. Love it. Yeah. Happy 500, Bechtelheads.

We did it. 500 more. 500 more. 500 more. We love you. Bye. Bye-bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus,

produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrosensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks

She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host wherever you get your podcasts. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better.