The Bechdel Cast - Chicken Run

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

On this unlocked Matreon episode, Jamie and Caitlin cluck about Chicken Run! Check out the screening of Chicken Run that we're presenting at American Cinemateque's Friend of the Fest in Los Angeles on August 25 -- tickets at linktr.ee/bechdelcast and here's the article in Film School Rejects by Brianna Zigler that we reference -- https://filmschoolrejects.com/revolutionary-spirit-of-chicken-run/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question, starting October 3rd. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon, Karl Rove, and David Axelrod. But we're also gonna have some fun,

thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions Thank you. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 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,

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and search true story of the fake zombies and start listening. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson.

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I used to host Planet Money. Now I'm starting a new show. It's called What's Your Problem? Every week on What's Your Problem, entrepreneurs and engineers describe the future they're going to build once they solve a few problems. I'm talking to people trying to figure out how to do things that no one on the planet knows how to do,

from creating a drone delivery business to building a car that can truly drive itself. Listen to What's Your Problem on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast cast 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 cluck cluck full clutch cluckuck, queen. How are you?

I'm doing so great. How are you? Never been worse, and I cannot overemphasize that. But today we are here to release, I think, kind of a banger episode. We're unlocking an episode from our Patreon, aka Matreon. If you enjoy this episode, you should obviously be subscribing. It's five bucks a month and it'll give you access to over 150 episodes plus new ones every month with Caitlin and myself. But it's Chicken Run Week.

It's Chicken Run Week. Yes, it is. Oh, you didn't think it was Chicken Run Week? Well, it is. Well, it is. Take that. And there's a reason. There's a method. Yes, there is. So this is an episode that we originally released on the Matreon in February 2021. As a part of a theme that we didn't have a good title for. But the theme itself

was, I think, pretty solid, which was movies with animals in the title because we did chicken run and coyote ugly yes which has nothing to do with animals yeah and two movies that are really like couldn't be less in conversation with one another um true but but two fun episodes to do yes chicken run i mean an all-timer movie film there has since been a sequel released on Netflix that I have not watched yet. What about yourself? I just watched it yesterday. My niece loves it and she's four. So there you go.

It was fun. I would say not as good as Chicken Run, the original. High bar. Kind of nothing. High bar to clear. Exactly. Anyway, we released this episode like three and a half years ago so if you hear some references that feel a bit dated that's why if you're like

why are they bringing up the sonic the hedgehog movie why are they talking about pandemic stimulus checks as if it just happened well that's why's why. Well, guess what? We weren't even vaccinated. Like really take yourself back there. We were in the thick of it and we're in the thick of it now, but it's in a different way. The reason we're doing this is if you're in the Los Angeles area, you're in freaking luck

because we are hosting a screening of Chicken Run at the Los Feliz 3 with American Cinematheque on August 25th. We're so pumped. We technically hosted a screening with them last year, but neither of us could go. This year, things are a little different because you had COVID last year.

I have COVID right now, so I'm not going to have it in three weeks. So we'll be there. We'll be there presenting Chicken Run. Yes, this is part of American Cinematek's Friend of the Fest podcast festival where they have podcast hosts introduce one of their favorite films. And we have the honor of presenting Chicken Run. And we're like, hey, what better way to promote that screening than to unlock our Matreon episode on Chicken Run? And that's what we're doing right now. Amen. Now, if this is your first episode of the Bechdel cast or, you know, you don't really know who we are and what we are.

We well, first of all, my name is Caitlin Durante. My name is Jamie Loftus. This is our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point but Jamie what's that? Well the Bechdel test is a media metric originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel often called the Bechdel-Wallace test because it was co-created with Alison Bechdel's good friend Liz Wallace. This test was created as a joke, a bit, a lark, an idea, a passing fancy by Alison Bechdel

for her iconic comic. Iconic comic, Degs to Watch Out For, great comic. She's basically commenting on how infrequently women talk to each other. In a queer context originally, but the way it's been adapted for the mainstream is that it's looking at how infrequently people of marginalized genders are allowed to speak about not men. So there's a lot of versions of the test. The test we use is this two characters

of a marginalized gender with names must speak to each other for more than two lines of dialogue about a character who is not a man and i honestly forget with chicken run i honestly forget you're gonna have to consult with us three and a half years ago because they know. Yeah. Well, if you want me to spoil it for you right now, they definitely passed the Bechdel test. I mean, it is mostly about, yeah, this is a chicken matriarchy. In any case, that is what we're releasing. And if you are in the LA area, we would love, love, love for you to join us on sunday august 25th at 4 p.m we're going to put the link in the description of this episode we're also going to be plugging the hell out of it

on social media and please join us it's 84 minutes long and and it's been 84 minutes minutes and i can still smell the chickens yep i can still smell the chickens the chickens had never been used which is which is the whole point which is the whole point of chicken run this is the whole point they're trying to escape with their lives exactly yeah just a perfect movie um we would love to watch it with you I you know I want to dress up like a chicken there I said it I want to dress up like a chicken do it I don I want to dress up like a chicken do it I don't know like I've never really I believe in myself that I can make this happen I don't know what that's gonna look like but you should come and see if see if we pulled it off yes definitely

so yeah grab tickets for that you can also find the tickets uh on our link tree link tree slash Bechtel cast and yeah we are so excited to present this movie and we hope to see you there. And in the meantime, enjoy this unlocked Matreon episode of Chicken Run. Jamie, what's your relationship with Chicken Run? Chicken Run is one of my favorite movies ever. I love Chicken Run. I remember seeing it in theaters with my family and being like, wow, look at those chickens run. And not really understanding, you know, feminism, patriarchal structures or, you know, workers liberation.

And yet Chicken Run really hit i loved it i thought i remember being scared when they go into the chicken machine it was like for me right up there with toy story 3 where it's like oh my god these adorable characters are entering a doom machine i'm so scared uh i just love i just love Chicken Run. And I watch it probably about once a year for fun, depending on whether it's streaming places. I just watched it a couple months ago, because I remember texting you about it like fairly recently. And then and then you came up with this brilliant theme. You're welcome. And here we are back at Chicken Run. And yeah, I think I mean, there are elements of it that don't hold up for me. But I think by and large, as a movie, as a as a product,

as a story, as a romp, as a romp, I mean, I think it holds up extraordinarily well. And I still love it. And I tweeted about loving it today and then you get five trillion people be like, but what about Mel Gibson? It's like, I am aware that Mel Gibson is in this movie. We will talk about it, but I'm not going to let Mel Gibson take away Chicken Run from me.

I really love this movie and fuck Mel Gibson. Two things can be true. What's your history with chicken run um i haven't seen it as often as you but i i too love this movie i saw it when it first came out in 2000 i think i saw it like a couple times i think that was my first introduction to that type of like stop motion from that studio specifically because i i don't think i saw anything wallace and gromit until after this yeah i think that i didn't see any wallace and gromit

until unless they i don't think they showed the shorts and i don't think i saw it until like curse of the were-rabbit and then i went back and saw the short cartoons right everything from this studio is so fucking beautiful like all of the art and studio stuff is just like incredible yeah and i always get so i get and people might drag me for this but i get this studio's content sometimes confused with laika content oh I mean they also do blame you thank you so much I just have to bully uh yeah no I mean like the because Laika is like Coraline and shit like that right yeah but like similar like especially with what did I see recently um Missing Link that came out uh-huh like 2019 or something um I was like oh this is probably the same studio as chicken run and then i was like oh wait no it's the other one so looks very similar yeah the laika movies do look quite

and i feel like there's a lot of like they're also all very british yes and so i feel like it's also the tone to the movies i'm sure that there's some overlap creatively, but they're like, yeah, they're very British stop-motion movies. If anyone bullies you about that, launch me out of the chicken... What is it? The catapult? Yeah, the chicken catapults. I'll attack

them. More like the chicken pult. God, the sheer resourcefulness of these brilliant chickens i know oh i can't wait to talk about it there's so much to talk about even in it's the areas where it is not amazing there's still a lot to talk about like this movie now that i was paying attention to the politics of the movie and not just being like i love these chickens which is usually where i'm at when i'm watching chicken run i'm eating a plate of nachos and i'm like these chickens are

so cool um but this is like this movie is like if animal farm had gone right basically yeah like it's it's animals like seizing the means of. I have a whole thing about that. But they're seizing the means of production. They are overthrowing the oppressive force. But there's not enough infighting that the whole operation gets sabotaged. They liberate themselves. It's beautiful. It is beautiful. So we recently were guests on the podcast creature feature talking

about b movie and i feel like this is what b movie was like maybe trying to do and then like utterly fumbling and failing every step of the way yeah b movie just ended up being like wow capitalism it's awesome no no no it rocks although i was thinking i was thinking about b movie when larry king died because i'm like wow what was his name b larry king b larry king that was like maybe his best maybe his best work um his best credit yeah iconic yeah no so larry king's not in this um although i wish he was instead of mel gibson um seriously the mel gibson of it all it's so it fucking sucks that he's in this movie man because other than that it is like such a fabulous movie at least we don't have to see mel gibson's face it does make it easier to to i mean it's i hate that he

got paid to be in this amazing movie yeah yeah at very least he's playing uh an evil fraud but then also he's forgiven at the end oh don't get me started there's a lot to be taught i i'm just like you know what he should have just left and stayed gone and stayed gone exactly i don't know why like i thought i i really thought because i've been thinking so much about um when we redid Beauty and the Beast and we had that whole conversation about the burden of forgiveness on female characters. And I didn't totally, I don't know. I'm never paying super close attention to the plot points of Chicken Run. And so I was like, Ginger comes so close to subverting that and being like fuck you get out of here

you coward right but then he shows up and then she i'm like ginger i mean live your life don't let me tell you how to live ginger but like oh ginger i feel like we can just do better we can do better ginger can do so i'm not opposed to ginger finding love but like sure rocky really literally it sounds like my mom of just like my mom's like you're gonna go off with some guy from rhode island which is literally who rocky is he's some guy from rhode island true ginger do not just go off with some guy from rhode island I mean, that whole thing. We'll get there, but. Yes. Yeah, we'll get there.

In the meantime, she'll. Hey, everyone. It's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch and I'm exhausted. But turns out the end is near right in time for a new season of my podcast. Next question. Starting October 3rd. This podcast is for people like me who need a

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Are we recording? Are we good? Oh, we push record, right? And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba, and the piña colada from Puerto Rico. So, all of these... We have, we thank Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the 9th century B.C. B.C.?

I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available 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.

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My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationships with each other all that on the happiness lab listen on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts we recap it yes i'm sorry i like, so excited. I have like a full glass of wine and I'm so excited to talk about chicken run. Oh my goodness. I love it. Uh, let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back for the recap. So the story is as follows we open on a chicken farm the chickens are uh they talk and they're they're people but they're chickens the most horrifying thing i mean not horrifying i don't

know how the animation gets away with not being scary but giving a farm full of chickens full sets of human teeth is such a like a decision that it should look scarier than it does and i feel like it speaks to the animation that that is not extremely because wasn't that like the reason that they completely reanimated the sonic the hedgehog movie is because they're like why does he have human teeth oh i thought it was because his like proportions were all wrong wait let me hold on i think maybe it was a combination because that sounds right as well because he was like his like proportions were just like like his leg the length of his legs and arms were just like really bizarre and they were like this looks terrible so we're both right. And I forgot how scary the first Sonic was.

Yeah. So he both looked too much like an animal. And his proportions were, like, too uncanny valley photorealistic. Like, he just looks like a blue cat. But he has, like, a full set of, like, Joe Biden veneers, Pete Davis veneers, whatever. Whoever. Walton Goggins veneers. Like, just really scary stuff for

some reason the chickens and the roosters they're allowed to have full sets of teeth it doesn't bother me yeah why not i'll allow it so one of the chickens our hero ginger is organizing a mass escape for her and all the other chickens to basically do a prison break and i also read that when this movie was like being developed they were just like let's do the great escape but with chickens which is like holy shit right what a what a wide swing why didn't i think of that you know yeah exactly um so we meet some of the other chickens. There's Babs, who is always knitting. There is Mac, who is the brainy chicken in stem. She's a chicken in stem.

A chicken in stem, and you'd love to see it. At last. At long last. She's also Scottish, which is constantly made a joke of. And I'm like, I can't tell if this is offensive or if I just don't live in the UK. But she's very Scottish. She she also wears glasses she wears glasses well because she's a woman in stem of course exactly yeah yes um there's bunty who lays a lot of eggs i think that's kind of the main thing that we know she's very fertile yeah very fertile full bursting at the seams with eggs yeah um there's also an old

rooster named fowler who's like a former military man and he's always carrying on a bot in world war ii yeah or he says he did he was actually just a chicken right he was just he's just a chicken this whole time yeah but he's always carrying on about his glory days right um so ginger is trying to escape and she gets caught by mr tweety mr tweety's dogs and mrs tweety oh and iconic villain so scary i when i was a kid i was so scared of her but i think you know jen we'll have a more full discussion about her but like where older women are so often fully demonized with Mrs. Tweedy it's not because she's jealous of the I think she's very logically motivated and I true and I also think that she

is I forget where I thought this as I was watching and I'm like you're reaching Jamie but then I saw someone else wrote about it I was like I think that she's supposed to be like low-key Margaret Thatcher um oh she styled kind of similarly I think she's supposed to be like rural Margaret Margaret Thatcher that's my working theory that at least I have their name written down here that at least one writer also thought but she's at least she's she isn't she is like she looks kind of like an evil stepmother but she is a very highly motivated capitalist yes villain yeah iconic iconic scary and voiced by miranda richardson yes btw so ginger gets caught and is thrown into solitary confinement and as soon as she's released

she plans another escape and another and another we get a montage each one ending in her getting caught and put in solitary they're all funny yes i like when they dress up like mrs tweety and almost escape oh and then it's just a dress full of chickens. Oh, I'm laughing. The visual comedy in this movie is outstanding. Genius. It's so good. Yeah. Like these chickens, they are cracking me up.

84 minutes straight. Even the scene where like they're trying to escape like a trough. They're like covering themselves up with it and then they flip over and all their legs are just sort of flailing about like just the visual of their legs is the funniest thing i've ever seen yeah like anytime they're on the chickens are on like stationary bicycles i'm laughing like it just chickens are funny and um and they're also you know a matriarchy seizing the means of production so they're also very inspirational here it's it's true oh dress full of chickens like who's gonna no i can't write a joke that good dress full of chickens hilarious so mr and mrs tweety this is

an egg farm not a poultry farm yet, but they're keeping track of the chicken's egg production. And if a chicken doesn't produce enough eggs, the Tweedies chop that chicken's head off, which we see, not like the gory details of it. It's so sad, though. A chicken gets murdered within the first 10 minutes of the movie. Talk about steaks i mean yeah immediately the it's life or death for the chickens because of what's her name oh her name is edwina chicken edwina at this on this view at least i'm like at least she didn't

like it would have been even because this is a g-rated movie which is wild for how many times they almost knife the chickens right but edwina at least edwina didn't i was worried that she was gonna go like ah like but it's just silent you just hear like the thunk of an axe i wonder if they're like if she clucks when she's beheaded it It's PG or something. I don't know. That's too much. Right. Oh, my goodness. And also Mrs. Tweedy is sick and tired of the farm's minuscule profits. And she sees an ad to turn her egg farm into a goldmine by producing chicken meat rather than chicken eggs meanwhile ginger is trying to

hatch a new plan to escape get it hash ginger in these scenes reminds me of like every dsa meeting i've ever been to where there's like one highly motivated person trying to get like 50 well-meaning people to pay attention to a good idea and everyone's like wait huh what huh what it's literally ginger is a branch leader of the dsa and no one on the zoom call is listening to her exactly so basically she just keeps pitching ideas to escape because her whole thing is she's not happy with the expectation to lay eggs every day until she is what is it plucked roasted and turned into chicken dinner or some some i forget the quote exactly but right because it's like the tweedies even before they sell poultry once you don't lay eggs they will just eat you correct yeah so she's not satisfied with this being her fate and that's

why she is longing to be free but the other chickens are like well you know what if we don't try to escape because it never seems to work right it's exhausting i'm tired and then oh that line where ginger is like there's not just fences outside of the coop. There's fences in your mind. And you're like, whoa. Like, exactly. Oh, she's amazing. What a speaker. Truly.

And yeah, there's stuff to talk about with the complacency of the other chicken. Oh, my God. I love it. It's literally, it's just it's a marxist tale okay so the other chickens are like well let's maybe not escape so ginger is hopeless until a rooster named rocky this is mel gibson boo yeah flies into their farm and Ginger gets the idea for the chickens to escape by flying over the fence and out of the farm. And she wants Rocky to teach them to fly. But Rocky is not interested in that, but he cannot leave because he broke his wing crash landing into the farm.

And then there's a great scene where they have to like negotiate of like what services he's going to provide because at first he's like, no, I'm not going to help you. He kind of reminds me of like Chicken Han Solo a little bit where he's like, screw the collective. I'm just a guy and I'm just a horny guy wandering the earth and screw you and and then she you know she kind of she's got him she's like i'm not just going to this is where i feel like there's a really cool something set up that the ending doesn't really follow through on of like she does not have sympathy for him just because he says that she should like in to establish their relationship which is such a strong way to establish a relationship between like in in a kid's cartoon right oh i just wish it stayed that way but i love that i love that first scene where he's like what you're not gonna help me because i'm cute and she's like fuck you right to the guillotine sir oh and then i mean this is like this is just like a good screenwriting comment but he's's like, okay, fine.

I'll teach you everything I know, which he doesn't know anything. Because spoiler alert, he doesn't know how to fly. But he just like omits that, which is the same thing he does to the two rats that we see later on. The Timothy Spall. More Timothy Spall. Like, let this man play not a rat for once in his life. He might as well have been playing scabbers. Yeah.

Literally. I'm just like, this man is being typecast as a literal rat. And that's not nice. He was a really good Mr. Poe in Series of Unfortunate Events, which I am. I think I am going to choose that for my birthday this year on the Matreon. Ooh. Fun. Yeah.

But yeah, poor Timothy Spall. When I was like was like wait a second it can't be and i'm like god damn it they're still making timothy spall play a british rat maybe this is how he got cast in harry potter yeah this would have been before the first harry potter movie that would be really yeah because he doesn't even come into like the later movies right like the third or fourth or something the third one yeah so that. The third one, yeah. So that would be really sad, but also kind of funny if they were like, well, you know who can play a British rat? Old Timmy Spall. Weird.

Yeah. So back on the farm. So some men show up from the circus to collect Rocky the rooster. So like he's a runaway from the circus. Ginger realizes this. So she makes a deal with him that the chickens will hide him if he teaches them to fly. And he agrees. Amazing negotiation by Ginger.

Incredible. Yes. negotiation by ginger incredible yes then the next day rocky starts training the chickens to fly by not doing anything related to flying and they don't seem to be making any progress because chickens can't fly yeah it's kind of like evoked i think that these movies were made too close together but like it evoked the uh be a man sequence sequence from Mulan for me of just like an insecure man leading a group of soldiers for a mission that they will fail at. I guess that's where I was coming from. Sure. Yeah. I mean, a training montage is a training montage is a training montage. You know, they're all I guess I just don't watch many movies with trade.

I think these are the these are the only two movies I've ever seen with a group training montage. Oh my gosh, really I Have seen other movies with training montages that are like a big group of people Cuz I'm like I've seen movies with training montages, but I just feel like these movies two years apart I think that's why I'm just like, uh-huh. Oh, yeah Insecure guy leads a group of soldiers that don't really know what they're doing I mean just like any sports movie where like the whole team is training there's you know dozens of those I've seen Remember the Titans I haven't seen many sports movies I think that's why i'm like wow look at these two iconic movies borrowing from each other mulan and chicken run there's no way but um that was what i thought

sure well you know gotta watch more training montages they're great apparently i guess okay so the chickens are trying to learn to fly no progress is being made and then the equipment for turning the farm into a poultry farm arrives and we're like wow those stakes that we thought were already pretty high guess what even higher now they won't stop rising they they really won't no so some of the chickens including ginger are growing skeptical of rocky because nothing seems to be happening she wants results but he's also this like pompous shitty guy who's just like being dodgy about everything classic then mrs tweety doubles their food rations to fatten the chickens up so they produce more meat which ginger

figures out and tells the chickens and then everyone is all sad because they realize they're about to be murdered and then rocky to cheer everyone up throws a party right and ginger's like wait a minute maybe i was wrong about him maybe he's actually this good nice guy after all and his wing seems to be better so she's like okay tomorrow you can fly for us and show us how it's done and he's like yeah yeah definitely i can definitely for sure definitely do that uh-huh uh-huh god he's such a coward i always i always forget that he never even like admits There's no scene in which he's like, okay, I actually can't fly. At least then he would have a shred of like-

Integrity. Yeah. Yeah. But he's just a total like weak coward. Yeah. I mean, it's nice, you know, for our purposes, it's interesting that like Ginger figures out that he's a fraud.

She finds in the next scene, finds us the other half of the poster that basically says he's a circus act he can't really fly so it's good that she discovers that but i'm like this fucking guy from rhode island is just lying lying lying and then he bails he never even he never has to face the music it's he there there are like one or two moments where it's clear that he's like trying to work up the nerve to tell her but then doesn't he you might say he chickens out he chickens out he's the biggest chicken in the movie not just physically because he's pretty tall but he's a cat he's a cowardly he's a chicken chicken yes he bails he gets his little chicken bindle and he gets the fuck out of there also does he ever apologize to her at the end no he doesn't okay i didn't think so

she there there are a few elements of like very um girl there for the most part i feel like ginger's character like manages to skirt around late 90s girl power feminism but there's a few moments where it's like he never apologizes and there's that classic i feel like this happens in every mary-kate and ashley movie where he calls her like a diminutive thing. He's like doll face, angel beak or whatever. And then she goes, my name is Ginger. And I was like that at some, if you said a sentence like that, that's feminism.

And like there was a time where I feel like there's, that happens in like Disney's Hercules as well, where it's like, at least with Ginger, she genuinely is like i think a really feminist iconic character yeah but i feel like sometimes that's a shorthand for men writing quote-unquote empowered female characters like that's not my name this is my name and you're like that's all we get it's like don't it happens in my name yeah it happens in transformers with megan fox where like her boyfriend is like come on little bunny and she's like i can't tell you how much i'm not your little

bunny meanwhile she's like humping the hood of a car don't ask don't ask me why uh this is the only thing i remember about new york minute starring mary kate and ashley but that happens for sure i think Dean from Gilmore Girls is like hey kid and then Mary-Kate or Ashley is like my name's not kid it's Mary-Kate or Ashley whatever the fuck yeah I'm Mary-Kate and or Ashley and he's like whoa what you said back there really made me think like you're just like that so that happens but at least other things happen in chicken run you know sure but that whole thing that was like my little 90s feminism antenna went up when she's like the name is ginger mister like that whole thing whatever yeah

it's still chicken run do you think ginger was named after ginger spice i was thinking about as told by ginger and then i looked did you ever watch that cartoon no oh my god it was a really good like okay who's is someone meowing yes there's this cat it's not hungry for his chicken dinner oh it's a different cat no it's flea sitting at the window because there's a lot of alley cats in our air our neighbor feeds and fixes and really like it's like a cat trivulity system but there's cats around and flea will talk to them but there's this one cat that we have checked on them multiple times and they seem fine but they just keep they just kind of yell and then we're like are you okay and we like if given him food or her i don't know what the gender of the cat is i like i secretly i'm like what if the cat is pregnant oh uh greg

gregs and just is like uncomfortable because she's full of gregs i don't really know what's going on but it's been going on for a week and every time she starts screaming flea gets stressed out oh i don't know i'm just thinking of a bunch of little kittens named greg little greg's running around 500 anyways chicken run right yes so um where do we leave uh oh um he's a fraud yeah he's a's a fraud, but Ginger doesn't know that yet. Meanwhile, Mrs. Tweedy has gotten the equipment together, and it's basically just this machine that turns a chicken into a packaged chicken pie. And she wants to test it out, so they grab Ginger and put her in the pie machine.

Rocky goes to save her. The two of them go through the machine they manage to escape and fuck up the machine and now everyone's like wow rocky what a hero even though he does nothing at least because i was like oh god we're damseling ginger but then it's like rocky truly does not help in any significant way and that he just kind of joins the distress like you mean like when they're inside the machine yeah i mean main i mean i guess it seemed more like a group effort and it wasn't like she was damseled and now oh no he has to like single-handedly rescue her and it was at least like a group effort to get out of the machine in one piece.

Well, I was paying super close attention to this because I was like, okay, is it like he saves her sometimes? She saves him sometimes? How does that dynamic play out? And it felt to me like he does do a few things to save her from certain death she does one thing to save him but it felt to me like the scales were tipped into like she is being damseled territory and he does have to save her a few more times than she saves him or that she's able to save herself interesting i was i was not doing the exact math on it i was at least i guess i was more expecting like oh we're damseling her.

And then it's going to be a clear cut, like end of the Little Mermaid. Like I'm going to defeat the villain. And then, you know, it's at least a little more subtle than that. But yeah, I mean, I totally trust that. I wasn't keeping count. I just love Chicken Run too much. Disappointing. Disappointing Chicken Runappointing Chicken Run.

Do better, Chicken Run. Seriously? So he emerges like this heroic, you know, wow, I saved her. And then he and Ginger have a little moment. And we're like, uh-oh. Don't like where this is going. But you know. You know.

I'm like, in the year 2000 you know it's so fucked up she doesn't need him no no she really doesn't but the next morning it's time for rocky to show them his flying abilities but he's nowhere to be found and this is when he leaves behind like the rest of the circus poster showing him being shot out of a cannon, revealing that he cannot fly and never could. And we're like, oh, wow. Have we arrived at the low point of the movie much? Yes. Sounded like a second.

And what's more, Ginger's lost all hope. It's the end of the second act, honey. Until Ginger gets the idea, inspired by Fowler's time in the Royal Air Force, to fly out of the farm by building an airplane slash giant flying chicken apparatus. So they get to work on building this, while Mr. Tweedy gets to work repairing the chicken pie machine yeah and he finally fixes it so now it's like okay it's now or never the chickens roll out their flying chicken plane they take off rocky comes back to help but but Mrs. Tweedy is there trying to stop them. She grabs on.

They have to. Scary. Very scary. Scary. They have to fight her off. And they do. And then they, you know, finally fly over the fence toward their freedom. And then the movie ends with the chickens living in like a grassy nook paradise.

It's like chicken Themyscira, basically. Hey, everyone. It's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch and I'm exhausted. But turns out the end is near, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question, starting October 3rd. This podcast is for people like me who need a little perspective and insight. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out, like Ezra Klein, Van Jones, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon, and political strategists

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Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We should record, right? Okay. And this season, we're taking in a bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history. Saying that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba, and the piña colada from Puerto Rico. So all of these... We have, we think, Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the 9th century B.C.

B.C.? I didn't realize how old the hot dog was. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available 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,

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relationship with each other all that on the happiness lab listen on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts like yeah except that there's like a few men allowed to be there yeah they end up in chicken paradise the end so let's take another break and then we'll come back to discuss where do we want to begin um i think i mean i i would like to kind of get the you know touch on the mel gibson stuff at the top and as well as the stuff we've been just like alluding to the whole time of like for me two of the most crushingly bad things about this movie are the fact that mel gibson is involved and i don't i don't even want to like rehash his crimes here but he's i mean famously his career has been more or less like unfortunately not stopped but right you know

impeded significantly by the number of anti Semitic and misogynist and violent things that he's said over the years. And so, unfortunately, we we've had a discussion of this sort in our what women want episode as well, because I think that's the other big Mel Gibson movie that we've covered. Yeah, but, but nothing nothing it's it's fucking inexcusable and no matter what we say about this movie there's there's no excusing mel gibson and the fact that he's still cast and shit today like is inexcusable like inexcusably bad he should not have a fucking career at the very least so i just wanted to touch on the mel gibson stuff at the top like no matter how much love that we have for this movie doesn't excuse anything mel gibson

related right but going off i i guess the the number one thing or not the number one but up there of like the things of this movie that don't hold up for me is the the chicken love story you don't need it why is there a chicken romance why it's also not like i feel like it's interesting because recently on the show i think we've encountered actually like a few different heterosexual love stories that felt earned yeah but this is not one of them this is not earned this this love story sucks and it feels very it feels very studio notesy to me because it doesn't really fit into the story uh-uh yeah for a number of reasons uh one that rocky spends a large chunk of the movie lying to all of the chickens classic 2000 rhetoric yeah and specifically

ginger because she's the one you know kind of orchestrating him teaching them how to fly she's negotiating with him so he's like kind of directly lying to her first and foremost he is negging her and like you mentioned calling her you know sexist names and it's kind of dealt with in a very i mean i think it's unfortunately it's dealt with better than a teen movie of this year would deal with it because at least she doesn't like she i don't know the first half of this movie i like how she responds to his bullshit like she is using him for a very specific purpose and wants nothing to do with him outside of his immediate use to the collective that she feels beholden to and then it's like the last half hour of the movie that whole like i thought really subversive setup

just totally falls apart and i'm like and then it just becomes fucking like she's all thatty of like or or 10 things i hate about you of like oh this person who like has been nothing but cruel to me actually loves me and i don't care that they lied and i don't and i i do who care apology never heard of it like right just oh god why does rocky have a redemption arc like get rid of it get rid of yeah he he abandons them in their like their moment of dire need like he does everything wrong every step of the way does not deserve redemption the fact that ginger just like forgives him and yeah that whole like burden of forgiveness applies here like why because again he doesn't even do the bare minimum really he just throws a party to like cheer some people up and he does that selfishly too he does that to distract from

the fact that he can't actually help them right i just it's so frustrating because it's like the burden of forgiveness thing bothers me even more in the way it plays out in this movie because this isn't saying much for beauty and the beast but you know when bell meets the beast she's gonna forgive him 100 no doubt in your mind there's never like oh is she gonna go her own way here because bell is not beholden to any collective there we have yet to see a feminist theme or her interact with a woman we have no reason to believe that she wouldn't like and it's a fairy tale going in so you assume that okay the main woman the title woman and the title man are probably going to get together at the end exactly

yeah it's like beauty and the beast it's not like beauty like bails on the beast because he's a fucking asshole like that should be the title but chicken run chicken run chicken run so wait toxic character like there it just it would have been so easy and more more like i think like thematically satisfying to have her it just seems like it doesn't make sense with her character like the way she said she set up so distinctly and so strongly as like a character who would not i keep almost saying a person she's a chicken she's a chicken who would not have any patience for this kind of shit and then the second that he like lies in a way that means he is no longer useful to her collective mission she would never talk to him again like

it just doesn't make sense none at all it just doesn't make sense other than they talked on a roof once which is another contrivance that is like oh god come on yeah especially like you said the way that she is characterized in the beginning is just like having these you know strong values and wanting to be autonomous and not be a cog in the egg machine right and not that like someone who you know a woman who is like strongly convicted couldn't and wouldn't end up with a romantic partner but like she seems to like have a good chicken head on her shoulders yeah you know she she doesn't tolerate bullshit from anyone right much less a shitty man who again lies and negs her and abandons her and like just like all he does everything wrong. There's nothing about what her character had been established to be that would make you think that she would be at all willing to forgive him right and yet that's what she does even though he does not apologize or hold himself

accountable at all for anything he did no i mean in the way that he's like i don't know yeah the the whole i i want to give the writer of this movie who's written a lot while committing the sin of being a cis man has written a lot of like iconic children's movies that i really love wait what else has he done i forgot to look him up uh his name's carrie kirkpatrick he wrote james and the giant peach the movie he wrote honey we shrunk ourselves he wrote chicken run he wrote the little vampire iconic. He's written a lot of classic kids' movies. And he also wrote and directed Smallfoot, which was one of the animated Bigfoot movies

that came out a couple of years ago. And it is the good one. Is it the one that was, and Zendaya is me, she. Is that me? Yes yes it is that one uh he wrote i mean had he not written and directed smallfoot we wouldn't have zendaya is michi so there's a lot you know there's a lot but he's like he's written kids movies that at very least have stuck with me that seem to be like pretty different for their time at least they're not just like you know fill in the blank kind of movies sure i wouldn't

be surprised and maybe i'm giving carrie kirkpatrick too much credit here but like i wouldn't be surprised if like in 2000 mel gibson is this big star if if notes come back of like well we have to have the Mel Gibson rooster character redeemed by the end of the movie and there should be a love story because because that's pretty standard for these kinds of movies but it just it I don't know it sticks out extra unfortunately in a movie that it has so much like really power like the first half of this movie is like incredible and then starting at the point where ginger is low-key damsel i feel like that's one of the first cracks you sort of see of like

oh no oh no contrivances are starting to happen but i don't know like a good half of this movie i'm just like fuck this is really cool like yeah yeah so so the the the love story in this one i can't can't defend it in any way doesn't make sense with the character there's no earned redemption there's no apology i don't want to see chickens kiss period and especially those human teeth and their beaks are all clacking around nasty where are those teeth rooted they don't have gums you know like hard to know why these dentured chickens are kissing and i didn't i know why why well i know why they have teeth oh oh it's because go on it's because jerry bruckheimer was like get these chickens some veneers oh that's great foreshadowing for our coyote ugly episode

jerry breckheimer that i mean i knew i wish i didn't know is a jerry breckheimer movie going in because the second you see someone's mouth you're like well i know who's behind this uh breckheimer teeth lauren michaels and Jerry Bruckheimer. Like someone's got to, someone's got to hold these men to account about the whole teeth issue. Like what is wrong with you? Like, sirs, creepy old men being like,

why don't you get a new mouth? Young lady, like, get away from me. I mean, they don't, they don't discriminate by gender of who they will force to get a new mouth anyone will get a new mouth for these at least there's that so that's yeah

they are uh god so creepy um anyways yeah the the relationship aspect sucks hate it get it out of there you could easily remove it the movie would be even better than it is and yeah i hate the chicken romance no chicken romance please another thing that i felt was in the same vein of like why is this here and why did you make this choice because it goes against everything that had also been set up about like ginger, especially was when they're rolling out the chicken plane at the end of the movie, see where you're going. They engineered it themselves.

They designed it themselves. They build it themselves. And then they're like, okay, we're ready to take off Fowler. Go get into the pilot seat because you have to fly this thing. And he's like, well,

I don't know how to do it. I was on, I was a mascot in the, in the air force so i can't fly a plane first of all you're like the chicken was a mascot for the air force in world war ii what you know what sorry to all of the um uk listeners but i would not put it past that's really mean that's so funny that's so funny yeah sorry uk listeners but um you've got some weird mascots yeah i also found this plot point really frustrating yeah okay so what happens is basically they're like fowler you need to fly this thing and he's like well i don't know how to do it and they're like but you're our

only hope and it's, he has no more experience than any of the other chickens. Why wouldn't Ginger fly it? Or why wouldn't Mac, the brainy stem chicken, fly it? I thought Mac was the more logical choice for this, especially because it's like, it's one thing, like they could have, I don't know. It's just such a weird choice.

Because on one hand, it's's like I like where that scene is going where there's kind of this theme throughout Chicken Run of men overcompensating and like men putting their pride first and being deceitful because of their own insecurity and because of their own pride and like that's a theme with Rocky and that's a theme with Fowler. And I like that. I think that that's like an interesting dynamic to play around with. And so Rocky is exposed as being a fraud. He bails, right? Fowler is exposed as being a fraud. And it's like, okay, I like that they made that choice. Because it's like his character kind of is reflected that the whole time. He's always like, look at me, look at me. And then if he has to do anything, he's like, Oh, I don't know, ask Ginger, because she's like his character kind of is reflected that the whole time he's always like look at me look at me and then if he has to do anything he's like oh i don't know ask ginger because she's the only as told by ginger it's the only like she's the only person that knows

or chicken not she's not a person she's a chicken um she's the only person chicken in the oh my god so stressful she's the only chicken in the coop that like is, she's like the organizer, right? And so I like that his character is kind of exposed as a fraud, but then it's like, if you're going to do that, why immediately in the same scene offer him a redemption arc? Like that's such a weird choice.

Yeah, this should have been like- Mac should have been at, I mean, Mac at least had an integral, like it seemed like she was like command control inside of the plane. But she should have been driving the fucking plane. Come on. Yeah, I would have liked it way better if maybe like Fowler sort of like of his own accord gets into the pilot seat. Like realizes he can't fly.

And then like Ginger's like, wait, you can't fly? Well, ginger's like wait you can't fly well then get the hell out of there hey mac you engineered this thing surely you know how it functions you fly the plane and then she's like yeah here i go i wanted to i wanted to see mac and ginger in the front seat of the plane doing the damn thing like i it's yeah it's frustrating because it's like and it's not i'm not even saying like kick fowler off the plane like just put him on a bike just put him on a bike yeah you know like i i think that you know fowler it seems like he's the kind of character he is very flawed he is like very pompous but he can be worked with in a way that i don't think rocky can right right like he has like loyalty to the chickens of the coop at least and it's like don't toss him off the plane but

don't tell him to drive the plane he just told you he can't drive the plane like what and then i feel like there that was another thing that like god most of my problems with this movie are in the last 10 minutes and which is frustrating because i'm just like it's such a chicken run is so good but like if if we're if we're if we're pecking it apart uh wow i know it's catching cock-a-doodle-doo uh cock-a-doodle do tell more uh there uh what are the cock-a-doodle do's and cock-a-doodle don'ts of chicken run oh my god wait now i forgot what i was gonna say so sorry or no we're just making so many uh perfect hilarious jokes um wait there was something wait i'll get the chicken pun chicken instead of chicken run the okay wait fowler you're talking about fuck i don't know i don't know it had something to do

with fowler i don't know sorry oh i i it's i'll figure it out eventually. I just, I got so taken in. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it just seems like this movie was making really interesting points about masculinity and the expectations of masculinity. But then they just kind of offered all the male characters who had displayed those traits an immediate redemption arc at the very end for no reason for no reason completely undeserved right like they did nothing to earn i think like honestly i think that like i would have accepted a fowler redemption act if he had had to work for it and if he had had to like accept oh i remember what i was gonna say uh but if he had had to like be humbled in some way instead

of being constant like that was his arc was that he was not humble even though he didn't know how to do anything right like so that should be the resolution of like okay we don't hate you fowler but like sit down you know like yeah that's but that doesn't happen. Oh, so that was OK. So what I was going to say is in the majority of this movie, I thought it was interesting and like generally kind of cool how the chickens are not like Mary sued at any point where it's not like they suddenly know how to get out of the coop. They suddenly like they pick up whatever and all of a sudden they're superheroes and they like you see them working closer to their goal you see them try and fail you understand kind of what their journey is but then at the end fowler is mary sued where all of

a sudden he's like i don't know how to ride a plane two seconds later he's like i'm driving the plane and it's like how though like it's i for for a movie that seemed pretty conscious of like showing the character arcs of like how they're getting closer and closer and closer to knowing how to do what they need to it's such a weird last minute choice to just be like all of a sudden this character that never gets his ego checked once even though it seems like that's where the character is going right can suddenly magically drive a plane like it just it's just weird yeah yeah yeah like you said mac we it's established that mac is the brainy chicken and

stem she does complex you know calculus and physics equations and all, you know, geometry. Who knows what all she's even doing. She's doing all sorts of shit. It's out of my pay grade. I don't know. Right? We're like, yeah, but she understands thrust. You know, she like designs this catapult.

And then she's put in charge of engineering this thing babs who is seen constantly knitting is in charge of manufacturing and like other chickens are you know getting the material they're like all doing something and contributing which i appreciated that that was paid off on too that like her because the knitting thing it's like oh you could i i was like is this a reductive thing what's happening what's happening what's happening? But then like that plant in payoff, baby. She's like, she's a textile manufacturer. She sees the means of productions in her little chicken hands. I love her.

Yes. So yeah, that was disappointing to me that they did that whole thing with Fowler. And then the other thing that we already talked about a bit, and we don't need to rehash it too much, was just the, you know, women need to be saved by men, even when they're all chickens. So, like, just that whole... Which is frustrating, because it's like,

Ginger is so set up to be able to do it that there's really, like... I was able to get as far as like okay i understand why ginger would enlist rocky's help but the second she finds out he's a fraud i have no like we no longer have any narrative excuse to like have him even in the story like right yeah i don't i don't mind that she enlists his help because he seems to be able to fly and they need to learn how to do that and we've already seen them try and fail so many times that it's right oh okay like narratively it like she will you know anything that seems promising she will try yeah so i don't mind that at all. I'm talking more just specifically about the, she gets put in the chicken pie machine

and Rocky like goes in after her. And yeah, like her feet are stuck in the dough. He has to pull her out of the dough before she gets crushed. They're about to get splatted by gravy. He takes like a vegetable and like crams it into the gravy machine. At the very end of that sequence,

she does pull him out of the pie and get him out of the oven so she does one thing but it's mostly him rescuing her and the thing is like there see i i wasn't yeah i mean we already kind of hashed out i wasn't keeping track of like who was doing how much in that scene but the whole time i was watching that scene i was like this should be like mac or this should be like i guess that it's that's okay i guess that that's kind of like the last kind of issue i have with um how the the chicken collective is written at times right of they are sometimes written to and it's like god everyone take this with a grain of salt because it is funny like a grain a grain a uh of chicken feed can feed um but like the chickens are i think framed as being like quote unquote hysterical at times where they are put in i mean

the thing is like the stakes are very high uh and so it's not like they're overreacting but they are often like ah like they're they're always panicking which which makes sense very funny to look at it's so the thing is it's so funny to watch the chickens panic and so i'm like haha but then i'm also like but wait a second wait a minute this podcast has destroyed my brain i can no longer enjoy cartoon chickens running around i have to be like but what are the implications of the cartoon chickens running around uh what's the inherent sexism here yeah but i think there is some like there is like the the chickens are sometimes made out to be like i think like humorously overreacting.

If we're saying that a lot of these chickens are drawn from life, human life. So we were to imagine a group of women panicking and running around. And I think that it's kind of most egregious when Rocky's like, I've got this. And no one kind of stands up to be like, well, Ginger's our like leader. Like she's our leader. Like no one offers to go with him. There's no like it just seemed almost like they like volunteer him. Right. They're like, you have to go do it, Rocky.

Which strikes me as like a little cowardly of the chickens of like Ginger is addicted to putting her life on the line for all of you chickens like why are none of the chickens like let's make sure like i just kind of wish that in that scenario i don't even like hate i think that it's like plot wise seeing the how how dire the chicken machine is and how scary it is like that is a valuable plot point but you know it's like maybe fowler could have been kidnapped or or one of the chickens could have gone to like navigate their way out with ginger like i just ultimately the fact that the chicken knife machine pot pie scene ends up serving the romantic narrative i just didn't like i don't hate that the scene happens yeah i was so scared of it when I was a kid.

And I would have been just as scared if it was like Mac or Babs or like whomstever else. And it also makes more logical plot sense to me that one of her like lifelong chicken friends would go. I don't know. Yeah. I think my fix would be if, well, then Mr. Tweety is like, I know, I know just the chicken because he has a vendetta against Ginger. So it makes sense that Ginger is the one. He's putting her in solitary.

Right. Exactly. I think my fix would just be like Ginger is able to save herself because we've seen her be very resourceful this whole movie, can't she just save herself and get herself out? Because, yeah, the function it serves in the story for Rocky to save her does sort of ignite their romance, which doesn't need to be in the movie. They're trauma bonded chickens. You're like, I don't need this. Or even if we need to have Rocky show up up maybe he shows up and he's completely useless

because that's kind of his thing and then she's she's like oh great now it's twice as hard for us to get out of this chicken machine you fucking loser like they're i don't know i just like yeah i don't like because it's i think that that's such a scary effective scene um and to have it service this like i don't know romantic subplot that we both hate i was just like man don't love it um um should we talk about things we love about yes okay um i i read a lot there's like kind of a stunning amount of think pieces about chicken run oh which i do love because i had all these notes that i'm like are these irrational am i and and some of them were and i won't bring them up but but others were okay so i do feel pretty confident and i'm pulling i'm going to be reading from uh two pieces one is from bitch media by dejan jatinovic and the other is uh from film

school rejects by brianna ziegler that kind of comment on the um either the like hyper feminist or because i kind of went into chicken run being like oh this is like a really feminist movie but it's also a really like um i i'm gonna quote the piece because i always like it's a very anti-capitalist piece of g-rated children's art which is so fucking cool like yeah yeah and and brianna ziggler in particular gets like full-on into like marxist theory which is like low-key out of my pay grade but like she is she is right where it's like i don't know did you read animal farm in high school i did yes so like there we were we're confronted with kind of an animal farm style situation here right and it's based on literally

a movie called the great escape about people like escaping a prisoner of war World War II camp and so it's like pulling from some pretty dark stuff so I just want to read a section of Brianna Ziegler discussing the Marxist themes in Chicken Run because I truly do firmly like yeah Ginger reminds me of every DSA chapter leader I've ever interacted with. Okay, so here's what Brianna says, quote, the Tweedies farm and their chickens mirror the oft maligned working environments and practices of our modern day capitalist society. We're only valuable to our bosses as long as we can provide them with labor and therefore profit. As soon as we aren't profitable, we're disposable and replaceable. Thus, this idea of Marxist theory inherent within

chicken run, the objective of Marxism being the self-emancipation of the working class, i.e. the chickens. German philosopher Karl Marx believed in a socialist revolution in order to bring about control of political power for the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat, as he called it, would give the proletariat public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. I'll skip down a little bit. It gets pretty dense. Part of Marx's theory also includes this idea of seizing the means of production means of production being what is used to produce goods and seizing them as in taking control and using them for the greater good instead of personal gain as with

capitalism thus the chicken's entire bodies are the tweedies means of producing goods as well as being the goods themselves in the end the chicken's ultimate way of escape relies entirely on their bodies hand powering a plane they built all by themselves unquote so it's like also this incredible labor story where like you know I feel like Mrs. Tweedy is kind of like a classically evil hyper capitalist villain right and i think that if framed even slightly differently she's basically a girl boss right where she's like i'm gonna start my own business and like yes ladies let's grind these chickens to death like that kind of vibe where she is motivated by personal profit yeah and then

the chickens like they are basically performing some form of like unpaid prison labor they are held captive they are used strictly for what they can produce which at first is their eggs which are immediately seized from them with the only exchange being food you know the ability to continue to live and produce which already you're like, okay, this is a labor story. And then when they are no longer useful to produce eggs, they are then harvested for the personal profit of Mrs. Tweedy.

So yeah, I just thought it was like a really heady but fascinating point that like the means of production at first are the chicken's abilities to produce eggs and then eventually the means of production when once it becomes clear that it's actually more profitable to just mercilessly harvest the chickens the means of production becomes their actual bodies and so then using their bodies to escape is also seizing the means of production. Like strictly by having bodily autonomy, the chickens of Chicken Run have reclaimed the means of production and they can self-determine what they want to do with their lives on Chicken Island. I just so shout out to Brianna Ziegler. I will send you this link. So so we'll have it in the description as well but

it was phrasing things that I didn't quite have like the Marxist vocabulary to say but it's like fuck yeah it's an incredible like on top of the fact that we are living in a chicken matriarchy they literally like liberate themselves from capitalism it's yeah it's amazing it's amazing i like the commentary too on um so not only is mrs tweedy this like you know capitalist stooge bourgeois owning and controlling the means of production villain she also she's like explaining the branding that she wants to do for the chicken pies that she intends to sell and she's like yeah they're going to be called mrs tweety's chicken pies and her husband her husband is like mrs and she's like yeah a woman's touch makes the public seem more comfortable so she understands like marketing

but also like she understands like the patriarchal structure that her chicken pies are going to be like distributed and sold to she's literally a girl boss she's a she's a chicken girl boss like she understands the patriarchal structure and instead of using that understanding to liberate herself and other people she's operating she's continuing to operate inside of it in order to turn a profit for herself personally she's a girl boss and i i really like that her downfall is underestimating the chickens like she that's where i'm just like okay carrie kirkpatrick are you a socialist because like the especially with how the tweeties talk like the chickens the chickens do they are the chickens are socialists but it's kind of like worded a little more ambiguously for them uh

but when the tweeties are talking i'm like this guy took a couple courses because like Mr. Tweedy is because mrs tweety doesn't believe that the chickens are intelligent enough like the underclass chickens being built beneath humans that the underclass is like intelligent or motivated enough to organize and rise up and so i like that that's like that's made explicitly clear like a bunch of times that mrs tweedy does not believe that people not people they're chickens that living creatures she views as lesser than and less intelligent than her could possibly outwit her which i feel like you can apply that i mean that applies to a wide array of historical uprisings but right i i like how i i think that mrs tweedy and and mr tweedy i mean they're both

kind of villains in that you get kind of two kinds of capital as villains you have like this the super motivated one and then you have the kind of the bystander right so just sort of like passively participating and like to mr tweedy's credit he does notice that the chickens are organized no one believes mr tweedy um yeah mrs tweedy's gaslighting him the whole time like it's all in your head to her own detriment yeah she should have just listened believe mr tweety believe mr tweety's believe all mr tweety's how did you feel when mr tweety okay this was kind of i was like oh how did you feel when mr tweety was very willing to let his wife die at the end i was like kind of i was just like i guess she's not nice to you but you're like

benefiting from everything she's doing like i i kind of didn't i was like mr tweety that's like fucked up you're just gonna let your wife get all ground up i think he is he's had it up to here with her gaslighting him and just being cruel to him and making unreasonable demands of him the whole movie and she's and he's just like you know what i've had enough off of their head i just like i i i guess i i i i don't know not that i have this like well of sympathy for mrs tweety but i'm like damn the one person who she thought was her ride or die was very willing to let her get turned into a pot pie yeah she does live that also felt very g-rated she doesn't get ground up she lives but then she also gets crushed by a wall so maybe she does die so maybe she does

die hard to say I have three jokes that I love in particular in this movie one of them is toward the end when Mr tweety goes to collect all the chickens to put them through the chicken pie machine uh they're like what's the plan ginger and she's like attack so they all attack him and he's like in the background flailing around all like all covered in chickens and he's like the chickens are revolting mrs tweety and she says finally something we can agree on. The wordplay. Oh, that is really funny.

Amazing. Iconic. And then also my two other favorite jokes are when the chickens are trying to learn to fly and they're just sort of like falling everywhere. One of the rats is like, it's raining hen. Hilarious. Right. I love a pun.

And then this one, unfortunately, works because Mel Gibson being cast as Rocky. So I'm, but after Rocky is exposed as a fraud, I think it's Bunty says says i knew he was fake all along in fact i'm not even certain he was american which is funny because mel gibson is also not american but he's doing an american accent i didn't realize that that i don't know if that's intentional but i was like i wonder if that's so oh god that's such a peak mel gibson joke that it's like you had to be there there i also had a whole section that about how rocky the rooster represents um the hollow promises of the american dream enlighten me i won't take as long as i did for the chickens being socialists which they were but that's fine i have i have my own little allegory that i'd like to share but okay great go on um yeah i also had a

little thing that i i wrote down and i was like okay if i can find one writer that has mentioned this i will say it on the show um so okay so i i you know we're on a chicken farm somewhere in england right somewhere in the uk at least because we know that there are scottish chickens there so it's kind of ambiguous where it is anyways um an american chicken shows up right he kind of flies out of the sky quote unquote and he promises all these amazing things and he he's like, I can do this, I can do that. I've seen everything. I've been everywhere. I've lived this really rich and satisfying life. It turns out that he has been deceitful and that there's nothing behind all these huge promises that he's made to them. And he's kind of like made off on this you know reputation of

being this like intrepid american when in fact you know he is completely lost in his life and he is strictly running on this like hyper masculine american image and it ends up being false and all the layers are pulled back um so i wrote down uh rocky the rooster better example of false american dream than great gatsby oh hot take oh wow hot take i think my goodness 84 minutes and you get the message way easier than reading the great gatsby i like all of our references to orwell we've read a book we've got an f scott fitzgerald in there okay we haven't read listen we went to an american high school okay but don't get used to it because i won't be reading any more books that's why we're not doing jane austen january because I won't be reading any more books ever again. That's why we're not doing Jane Austin January because we don't want to read a book. It don't make us. Oh my god.

No I yeah I like that. That works for me. What was your allegorical connection? I'm excited. This is maybe me reaching. Okay. I'm perfectly willing to admit that. But because, you know, I was rewatching this through the Bechdel lens, I was also thinking that the chicken farm could be interpreted as like an allegory for the patriarchy. And by that, I mean like the institution of the farm, like not its occupants, but the farm as an institution and how it's like physically made to be very restrictive, like a prison, especially because the expectation for the chickens is to use their bodies to produce something that this institution wants, much like the way the patriarchy, historically for millennia, has expected that the role that women take on in society is to bear children and raise them.

And that's not exactly what the chickens are doing in this movie, but it's still this like patriarchal expectation for anyone with eggs in their bodies to use their bodies to incubate either like the eggs themselves or like human babies that come from egg cells. And, you know, for human women, historically, that's been the role that we've been ascribed and that's what value we have been seen to have in society yeah and not much beyond that um and obviously that's less true for human women today but i still think this allegorical patriarchy argument works oh for sure i think it's like run by a woman but it absolutely is a patriarchal structure like yeah just because a woman's at the top doesn't mean it's feminist for the last time in people right uh women can still uphold patriarchal standards we've said

it before we'll say it again and that kind of echoes like um turf ideology too of like defining womanhood by the ability to reproduce which is how a lot of you know like turfs kind of continue to perpetuate harm towards trans women and like you know saying that being a woman is defined by your ability to reproduce which obviously intentionally excludes trans women and it excludes people with wombs who don't want to have children like it's just such an absurd yeah and i totally agree with you like it goes back to like oh your value is determined by your ability to perpetuate xyz in this case food life right whatever and then if you're not deemed useful enough then we'll just eat you yeah so that was my whole thing because like the chicken farm is

extremely restrictive it is sort of like based on these very rigid gender roles and expectations for the chickens and i was like what is this but the patriarchy it is yeah it's also like the the the turf patriarchy on top of that like where it's like you know if you only define an animal by their ability to reproduce you're excluding so many out of sheer you know does either prejudice or desire to profit or often both yes so you know we should have you know we i think that they should have you know let mrs tweety die she should have died she was she was uh you know what if if nothing else i'm like we've gotten this far like let's do the guillotine yeah we're here i don't care if it's pg make it pg and drag out a chicken guillotine um yeah one thing i liked in

this movie was i that i wish we had more of and i think if rocky had rocky's storyline had been treated differently we would have gotten more was uh ginger and max friendship and their collaboration i really thought that there was kind of more to kind of mine from that relationship because you do get a few scenes with them they are like they're both friends and they are like co-organizers where i i liked i always love when there is I mean there there is sometimes internal conflict at the coop but it is not it's it's I don't know it it is like I thought pretty logically driven conflict it wasn't just like well there's a lot of women in this area so of course they're going to be arguing with each other like right I really liked that especially with ginger and mac they both brought

something different to the table ginger was like an ideas person mac was a logistics person chicken i keep saying person uh i mean they're personified chickens they're based they're people chickens are people too i'm pita now oh my god stressful uh there's like you know we have our right brain chicken and our left brain chicken and they're collaborating and i like that they sometimes disagree with each other but it's never like and now we're fighting and like everything is over like there's even one scene where ginger is kind of like well rocky's gonna teach us how to fly so don't worry about it and max like i believe that but has he flown like the the way that they approach conflict to each other is very respectful

yeah um and seems true to their friendship and i just really liked it i felt like that could have been an example of like a needless argument between two female characters in a story that is treated in a pretty grounded way of like max sort of knows that ginger's drinking the rocky kool-aid too much but isn't you know isn't aggressive about it you know she's like you definitely could be right i believe you but like but consider this you need to know it but like have you considered we've never seen him fly like i just liked i liked that i thought that was like a really positive subtle dynamic that i wish we had gotten more of a look at yeah but like you said i appreciate that there wasn't just like all this chicken infighting because oh women, women, female chickens be petty.

So they have to be constantly arguing. Any conflict within the chickens felt justified. And that kind of brings up the complacency thing I mentioned earlier of like, again, if you're looking at this chicken farm as like a capitalist machine or as the patriarchy, and honestly, what's the difference? You know, that there's often complacency with like among the masses, because when oppression is normalized, as it often is in capitalism and the patriarchy, you don't often have the tools or resources to break out of it. Or, you know, sometimes you don't have

the full awareness of what's even happening. Because, you know, maybe the oppression is kind of subtle, or again, like, it's just been so normalized. And you have yet to unlearn the toxic ideology. Or it's just like a conflict averse. Like it's, you can't not see where the chickens are coming from there. Because it's like, their fear is like it's you can't not see where the chickens are coming from there because it's like their fear is like if we quote unquote overreact to this maybe we'll just get killed or like maybe our predicament will somehow worsen exactly yeah i don't know i was like i was full like galaxy brain meme watching the complacent chickens because it does like it almost i got into an argument with someone uh for reasons right like a few weeks ago about the two thousand dollar checks that we

we here in the u.s were supposed to have received and then all of a sudden the biden administration was like actually you got 600 so now it's going to be 1400 1400 plus 600 equals 2000 so shut up like you should be happy and how there was like a lot of kind of infighting online about like you know people who are like just take the 1400 dollars like just take it and then other people are like but we were promised a lot more and like we feel justified in arguing that we should get at very least what we were promised instead of having to accept these kind of piecemeal things and i know that that's not exactly what's going on in chicken run but i did think of it because it's like you know the chicken's legitimate fear is like if if we rock the boat too much we are putting ourself in danger which is true and and they even like say that explicitly

towards the end where like ginger full-on like beating her chest battle cry like we're gonna die oppressed or we're gonna like we're gonna like die trying in this effort and then she's able to like get the energy she needs to get the chickens to revolt yeah but it makes sense that it's like i always appreciate because i feel like a lot of times every day like the your everyday chicken type character is made out to be like not smart when that's very often not true and i feel like it's not even productive to tell a story that way of like anyone who is like oppression is normalized is not smart like that is kind of a ridiculous precedent to set i like that as far as the chickens go we at least do understand in story why they are you know nervous because they've seen what happens to

chickens who step out of line they get fucking beheaded edwina gets her head chopped off so i don't know yeah i found that like that part to be like really affecting of yeah of like they're not just like sheeple you know in the way that i think some like large groups of people or like towns people in movies are made out to seem they're not total sheeple like they're they're chickens with legitimate concerns right and just because they're like it i i agree that they should rise up and that the time has come and i'm glad that ginger was able to motivate them but you also see where they're coming from at the beginning i'm just like oh these are just people who are like let's take the the $1,400 check. Why are you so mad?

And it's like, I don't know. I was like, okay, $1,400 check chickens. Got it. Wrote that down. Fuck. And that also just reinforces Ginger as this feminist icon. She's the one who's like, you know what? Yes, the stakes

are high. Yes, we might die, but we are going to die regardless. Exactly. It was just so bleak. Right. But yeah, I think her, her, the quote was like, we're gonna die free chickens, or we're going to die trying. And then Babs is like, those are only options. Hilarious. Yeah, it's uh she's like you know what i've had enough of this i'm fed up and we're gonna revolt yeah yeah and it's like and by that point it's like they are so they're like literally if they don't do anything they're only extending their lives by a short amount of time and so it's like okay the time has come like uprising we're building a plane and then the one man here is going to magically know how to fly the plane don't love

that but the right i don't know i just the way that the uprising was like orchestrated you're just like shit i got all i got all worked up i was like damn she's, she's right. She's right. Yeah. Ginger is amazing. Ginger is so amazing. I hate that she has to date Rocky, some guy from Rhode Island at the end. It's so not okay. He has nothing going for him. I liked how we kind of alluded to this earlier, but I like how Babs is seen doing like she's knitting.

She's like a nervous knitter and she's doing kind of like traditionally domestic work and i think that's another thing that sometimes we see in movies that are like trying to present themselves as feminists where they're like fuck domestic work when that's actually really reductive to people who perform domestic work of any gender like i like that it's not just a joke of like the the work the traditionally feminine work she's doing ends up like being a big part of the reason that they're able to fly yeah that's great love it i love that this like this coop this revolution is inclusive of all sorts of women and all sorts like any everyone is welcome to the revolution including rocky which

is like well let's where are we going to draw the line but like draw the line somewhere but i do like i like that the we haven't really talked about the rats because who really cares but like the rats sort of redeem themselves to some extent they sacrifice something that's important to them in order to join the revolution and there is some sort of like like hesitate to say there's like restorative justice applied to the timothy's ball rat but it's like kind of true like they they are welcome to the revolution if they are willing to contribute in a meaningful way and not be assholes and like that is kind of it seems like that's kind of the line of like who's welcome and

who isn't is like will you act in favor of the collective if you will get on the plane baby jump on a bike i love it yeah let's build a plane and get out of here seriously um here's something else i like which is that bunty is voiced by amelda staunton aka aunt lucy from paddington aka um she's gonna play the queen in the last season of the crown oh cool cool cool yeah you haven't watched the crown yet but it's boring it's boring but i've seen every episode which is a lot of things um also how is fowler not voiced by john hurt yeah i was like oh that's for sure john hurt and then i looked it up and it's like it's not john hurt and you're like what it's whoever you call when john hurt isn't available benjamin withrow i guess that's very very British sounding yeah right um and then speaking of

voice acting okay so oh yes saw this or not but a sequel of Chicken Run is in development I think it's slated to come out in a couple years this year actually it comes out in 2021 oh no kidding oh my goodness I looked it up on imdb and it said that it was tentatively to be released 2023 but also idk maybe maybe the the pandemic has has pushed it maybe it was originally 2021 but the pandemic pushed it back i don't know pandemic has pushed back all i don't they're fun industry insider info because i work in stop motion animation um stop motion animation that makes sense yeah stop motion animation is kind of impossible to do without people in the same room so yeah makes sense but anyway so the sequel is in development and the voice actor who

plays ginger julia sawala i have never tried to say her name out loud. Yes. So apologies if I got that wrong. But she revealed in July 2020 that Aardman, the animation studio behind Chicken Run, intended to recast her saying that her voice now sounds, quote old and julia said in response to that i have officially been plucked stuffed and roasted which is the quote from the movie that i butchered earlier butchered um love that she was like listen you think i don't deserve to be in chicken run here i am quoting chicken run this is such a bullshit thing yeah that they're and it seemed to be done because it's it sucks because it's like mel gibson is rightfully not coming back for the next chicken run movie and so they kind of use this as a blanket

excuse to get rid of julia sawalha as well when it's like but she didn't do anything like she this is her this is an iconic i always like it's it's so frustrating how like if there's any area of acting where ageism should particularly not come into the mix it's fucking cartoon voice acting seriously like that is a level of ageism that is just like almost inconceivable because you're just it's i there was like a similar discussion going on where this was like five or six years ago but when the new powerpuff girls cartoon was coming out they were like we're getting the old powerpuff girls are not coming back because they're 40 now and it's like well they were 25 when they were the powerpuff girl like what are you talking about it's so it is so like bizarre and frustrating

that there's ageism in any area of entertainment right but like in particular voice acting it's like on what grounds yes on what grounds not that any of it makes sense but like that makes the least amount of sense we're in such a level of fantasy where it's like she is voicing a claymation chicken how are you too old to voice a claymation chicken yeah that was that story is so fucking bright especially because it's like we should just now it's like we can't purely be thrilled for a new chicken run because it's like what at first when i remember when that came out when it was like oh chicken run but this time no mel gibson sign me up but it's like but you can't i i really i'm curious if there's ever going to be especially if it's being pushed back to 2023 i wonder if um that prompted any

discussion in the right direction because it's like there's no reason to recast ginger absolutely none especially like a movie going to netflix where you don't need to promote it like on what grounds yeah ginger is an icon and i'm i'm also very glad that Julia Sawalha spoke up for herself. There was backlash. I mean, I read this on Wikipedia, our favorite scholarly journal, of course. And it didn't go into a whole lot of depth about the backlash that the recasting received. The people saying that, you know, this is extremely ageist. Why is this happening?

So I don't know a this is extremely ageist. Why is this happening? Yeah. So I don't know a lot of details about it, but there was, I mean, maybe the studio will listen and be like, sorry, we goofed. Julia, come back. I really hope so. Cause it's like, I, I don't know. I know that it's like foolish to say. I just, I have such a strong love for Aardman animation. Like, don't recast Ginger, you fucking...

Yikes. Yeah, I was disappointed to hear that. I was interested. Did you know, Caitlin, that Chicken Run is the highest grossing stop motion movie ever? By like a lot. I did also read that on Wikipedia. I forgot how like Chicken Run was like a moment. Chicken Run was fully, I was curious,

but like this movie came out the year before there was an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Yes. Which was such a bummer. I was just like, wow, Chicken Run, I feel like would have had it on lock. award for best animated feature yes which was such a bummer i was just like wow chicken run i feel like would have had it on lock so yeah i was reading that it got snubbed for like because it was like it could have been a contender for best picture uh but that just doesn't happen in

animation yeah right so uh basically everyone's like gee whiz kind of sucks that chicken run didn't win anything let's make a best animated feature category the following year which was won by shrek never forget there's i mean of all the iconic things about shrek the fact that it won the first animation academy award is like wow just wow chicken run walked so shrek could run and that is a beautiful thing that is a beautiful thing i wish the chicken run had more trophies but the fact that chicken run was so rawly powerful that people were like we need a new oscar so we can give it to to shrek to shrek that's so bleak oh my god shrek is funny though so you know what can you do uh well we're covering Shrek 2 this year sometime on the main stream we spoke it we spoke it into

reality we manifested it Chicken Run is really like so iconically good and I um i i want to marry chicken run i love chicken run ah it's amazing i saw it was a playstation game and i was like what whoa i know i want to play the playstation chicken run game damn um too yeah did you have anything else i think that's about everything i know that covered i'm pretty sure yeah that was everything i had so um this movie does pass the bechdel test a lot between many many chickens so many chickens talking about seizing the means of production passes the bechdel test period when chickens talk to each other about the laws of physics, such as thrust, passes the Bechdel test. I wonder if that's like, it sounds like that's the sort of thing that I'm like, it sounds

like science. I wonder if we have any, any, any listeners in STEM. Was the chicken science accurate? Because I just wasn't genuinely curious. It sounded real to me. But anyone saying science in movies will sound real to me. Let us know. Yeah.

How many nipples we given this thing? Hmm. I would give it. I want to give it like three or three and a half it definitely gets points taken off for you know those like early 2000 era like hetero romance getting wedged into the story for absolutely no reason several male redemption arcs that are completely unearned and undeserved uh female character having to be saved by a male character that kind of stuff yeah but it's like this society of chickens who like form their own matriarchy even though they're living within this like these oppressive confines of this like capitalistic patriarchal structure they're like not for me not on not today we're gonna escape out of this and

they do and they are extremely motivated they're extremely active they're iconic absolutely iconic i think i'm going to give it three and a half nipples and I'm going to give one to Ginger. I will give one to Mac, the chicken and stem. I will give one to Babs, whose knitting saves the day. i will give my half nipple to edwina who does unfortunately get murdered maybe before we even meet her but i feel like she kind of ends up being like i feel like i wish that edwina's name was invoked more of like she's kind of a martyr for this cause like her like that is the last straw they're like okay they're taking edina. Like there should be a statue of Edwina on Chicken Island. And I hope there is. Because she like, she literally that she's kind of the inciting incident in a lot of ways of just like, we had like the stakes have never been higher.

It's we're not bucking around anymore. They took Edwina from us. And yeah, now I'm like, damn, Edwina should be like literally like a cultural chicken icon. Truly. Yeah. She's like the Joan of Arc of the chickens. Exactly. Exactly.

I'm going to I'm going to maybe overdo it a little. I'm going to give this four nipples because it is literally a feminist socialist movie that is G rated for children. And it's about chickens. so uh there i i totally agree i mean we've we've hashed out kind of the shortcomings i most of my issues with this movie are in the third act feels like a lot of studio notes of like we gotta have these chickens with teeth kissing which you don't and like we have to have all these last second male redemption arcs even though they're not set up in any way and it's actually set up for a way more interesting ending but um all that said it's literally like it's a story of a matriarchal chicken society seizing the means of production demanding bodily autonomy defeating capitalism and moving to chicken island that is amazing

that is so amazing i wish that there were more women involved in the production of this movie i will say like artman is a company that i fully love that uh is a bunch of old white british guys um and i hope that that is no longer the case I don't I haven't been keeping up with their roster of people it seems to usually be the same couple of guys much like Pixar um right but uh but all that said I mean it's this movie is like powerful and it got me all worked up uh even now when I watch Chicken Run I want to join a revolution and I think that's a great thing for children to rise up against

their oppressors and build a plane so I'm going to give Chicken Run four nipples I'm going to give one to Ginger I'm going to give one to Mac I'm going to give one to Edwina and I'll give one to Babs because she makes the textiles that make the plane fly, baby.

Yeah. Shout out Chicken Run. Really a cultural moment. This movie also, in addition to, you know, inspiring me to revolt more. Yeah. I also am like, yep, I think I might have to fully commit to veganism now. There you go. That's beautiful. Thank you so much. My current food intake is I get one meat cheat a day.

Sorry, a day. I get one meat cheat a month where I can eat meat once a month. And then the rest of my meals are vegetarian or vegan but now i'm just like damn chicken run might push me over the edge and i might have to just commit we'll see i'll keep everyone posted ginger's an absolute i mean an inspiration she really is she's a feminist i think she's entering my pantheon of all-time feminist icons because she's not a feminist. I think she's entering my pantheon of all time feminist icons because she's not a feminist that just works to liberate herself. Which I feel like she's uplifting other chicken women. That which is which is like one of the most core important things is like you're not just working to liberate yourself because then you're just a girl boss.

You're working to liberate the collective of the oppressed. Now we're fucking talking and that's what chicken run is is saying and i love i love chicken run um yeah it's it's almost a perfect movie let me rewrite the last you know half hour seriously like end of act two onward there's just some changes that could be made and then it would be perfect and there wouldn't even need to be big changes you can still make a plane and fly to chicken island just switch the things oh anyways um an amazing piece of cinema wow well there you have it folks that was our unlocked chicken run episode unlocked from the Matreon, which again, if you like this episode

and you're not yet a Matreon subscriber, you should do that immediately by going to patreon.com slash spectralcast and subscribing for a mere $5 a month. And that gets you two bonus episodes every single month that are always on a brilliant genius, incredible theme. Yeah, we've never missed. I actually and I sometimes speak sarcastically, randomly. But I actually do think on the matron we have rarely if ever missed in 150 100% hit rate only hits. Yeah, only the hits for our matrons. There's only one time on the in the history of the matron where we accidentally did not cover a movie at all and it is one of our best episodes we've ever recorded so we've never missed are you referring to the episode where we tried to talk about

the shape of water and instead got carried away talking about the 311 cruise yes and all of the hilarious ways that it would be funny for it to sink like the titanic like i just the band is already on the boat um the point is and that could happen again at any time um yeah so join us on the matriarch it's fun it's it's uh it's still the discussion you love but more of a more vibes there's vibes over on the matriarch tons of vibes yeah and if you want to have even more vibes still again if you are in the los angeles area please come and join us on sunday august 25th at 4 p.m at the los filas 3 um thank you to American Cinematheque for inviting us to participate in Friends of the Fest, even though we aggressively both did not show up at our screening last year. We had good reasons. We had good reasons. My dad was in chemo and you had

COVID. And this year, neither of those, they're non-issues. They're non-issues. And so please join us for Chicken Run. It's been 84 minutes. It's been 84 minutes. That's right. And you can grab tickets. We'll have the link in the description of this episode. You can also go to linktree.com slash Bechtelcast for those little tickets. Those little tickies.

Those little tickets for Chicken Run. Is that anything? No, no. Those little chickens. For chicken. Run. Was that anything? No, no. Episode's over. Bye. Bye. The Bechdelcast 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 Katherine 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. Hey, everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the homestretch, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question, starting October 3rd. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out,

like Ezra Klein, Jen Psaki, Astead Herndon, Karl Rove, and David Axelrod. But we're also going to have some fun, thanks to some of my friends, like Samantha Bee, and David Axelrod. But we're also going to have some fun, thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're going to take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about? Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, starting October 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. The story has been uncovered in a new podcast. All episodes are available now. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search true story of the fake zombies and start listening. In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky.

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