The Bechdel Cast - Ingrid Goes West

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Caitlin and Jamie *log on* to chat about Ingrid Goes West! Check out Jamie's new podcast, Sixteenth Minute on Cool Zone Media, and grab tickets to our Shrektanic Tour at linktr.ee/bechdelcast See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

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

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

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

or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Podcasting. It's a way of life. Hashtag living. Hashtag blessed. Hashtag podcast life.

Oh, this is me posting a screenshot of our Zoom call right now. Podcast co-hosts more like siblings hashtag podcast life wow beautiful hashtag sisters we are hashtag sisters oh my god anyway hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast my name is Caitlin Durante we're definitely not gonna kill each other my name is jamie loftus and this is our podcast where we take a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens using the bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion but caitlin my sister hashtag sisters podcast sister what is the hashtag bechdel test? Oh my gosh. Hashtag cinema, hashtag discourse.

The hashtag Bechdel test is a hashtag media metric created by at Alison Bechdel. Actually, I don't know if that's her handle or not off the top of my head. But anyway, it is a media metric that requires our version that two characters of a marginalized gender have names, they speak to each other, and their conversation is about something other than a man. And ideally, for our sake, we like it when it's a narratively substantial conversation and not like throwaway dialogue. And today, we are covering a movie that we got a lot of requests for when it first came out. And we said no, but now we're saying yes. And here's why.

I am starting a podcast, hashtag brave. Whoa, hashtag another podcast. Another hashtag podcast. It started releasing on may 7th and it's a weekly show where i profile a character of the day on the internet so think for the first couple of episodes we're talking about antoine donson we're talking about the dress we're talking about the boston slide cop who slip slop flip flop down the damn slide. So it is a half-reported, half-interview show where each week we take a look at not just the character

and what happened and why they were so notorious, but also getting into internet history, why did the algorithm serve you, this person, at this time, and a little bit of like a look or an attempt at a look into why did this person suddenly enter your life to try to upset you on social media, even if they didn't usually completely unintentionally. So yeah, it's a little internet history show. I'm really, really excited about it. It's also produced by Sophie Lichterman. We've been cooking on it for a while and it started

to come out. I'm really excited. Yay, me too. Thank you. The trailer has dropped in our feed already. But if you haven't subscribed. Hashtag subscribe. Hashtag like and subscribe. I'll say it.

Hashtag like and subscribe. And follow me on Instagram for weekly updates about the new episodes. And so we wanted to put together an episode that would sort of jive with the idea of the show about being extremely online. And there are not as many movies about this as I thought there were, I'll be honest. So this was certainly the movie we've gotten the most requests for that is about the internet. There's a few others. A lot of them are like,

do you remember that documentary that came out on Netflix in, it might've been 2020, scary, that was called The Social Dilemma. Remember that? Yes. I didn't watch all of it. I started it and then I was like,

I don't feel good about this it was so corny i feel like there's like always sort of this overly simplistic message with movies like this where they're like phone bad and person who used phone bad as well and you're like so anyways there's like some documentaries about it there's a movie I haven't seen called Not Okay that came out a couple of years that also touches on this theme. But we had not seen it and we got no request for it. So we are covering today a movie that it was really interesting to revisit for me. Ingrid Goes West, which came out in 2017. Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen, both firing on all cylinders.

Caitlin, what's your history with Ingrid Goes West 2017? I didn't see it in theaters, but I saw it within a year of it coming out. And I will say that, and this is just a kind of personal taste sort of thing, but I tend to really struggle with movies where every single character is unlikable. And just like you're cringing at them the whole time. And I know that that's the point of this movie and we'll talk a lot more about it and I think there is some interesting commentary on social media and its effects from this movie but it's such a stressful movie for me to watch it's so like it's like a thriller like yeah truly I think it is like when the movie ended I felt like I didn't realize how tight my chest had gotten. Which, even though I don't love everything about this movie, I was like, well, I guess it was effective at making my first watch of this, I was like, I don't think I can watch this again. I'm too stressed out. But I did anyway. So you're welcome, listeners. Brave. Hashtag brave.

Hashtag so brave. But yeah, it's a very stressful movie for me. So I didn't revisit it after seeing it that first time back in either 2017 or 2018, even though I think it has like good performances and, you know, it's a good script and things like that. But yeah, too stressful. But prepping for this episode was interesting and I'm excited to talk about it. Me too. What is your relationship with the movie? I saw this when it came out-ish, same deal, within a year. I don't think I saw it in theaters, but I am an Aubrey Plaza fan. She was like working a lot during this time. But I

wanted to see it because I was like, oh, I've never seen a movie about this before. And I feel like it is kind of doing a talented Mr. Ripley thing but for the internet you know I was like okay this is a cool concept but I really didn't like it the first time I saw it and as I was watching I was trying to remember exactly why yeah and I do think there's still things I don't like about this movie and there are still things that feel very like yeah two men wrote this movie for sure but I liked it but when I say liked I mean it's like hard to enjoy this movie because it is trying to give you a panic attack in the same way that I feel like Uncut Gems is trying to give you a panic attack yes yes which you know means that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing

and you know the whole time I was like I remember what happens with Ingrid, but I'm so scared for literally everyone on screen at all times. Right. But I liked it more this time. And I feel like this movie is aging in an interesting way. I feel like at the time, outside of the criticism that I think is still valid of like la la la women are so petty on the revisit I like the script more everyone in this movie is petty to some degree and I think I hyper focused on that at the time and it makes me feel like old but i think that at the time i saw this i was like this is so cynical about the internet and i think i just had more faith in the internet when i saw this movie for the first time than i do now like i think that that was a big thing i was like yeah of course everyone is lying on social media it was true then it was true now it's not like I didn't know that but I just felt like I still felt some kind of optimism about the internet that I that I no longer feel so I think that the story just in general

kind of worked better for me this time yeah but yeah it's a tricky little movie i uh sure it is i really enjoyed writing for this especially like yeah because i've been spending the last couple of months thinking about you know like what makes an internet character of the day how do these like conversations online go i was going back to like letterboxd reviews at the time and i was not alone in thinking that this movie was like maybe dismissive towards millennials in general of like oh a lot of the reviews i was seeing from people i know people i didn't know were like we get it phone bad too much instagram blah blah blah but it felt easier to brush off then And maybe that's just because social media has gotten so much worse since 2017. And this movie has obviously a very uncharitable opinion of social media. I feel like people I know who didn't like this or like rolled their eyes at it at the time might like it better now. I think i don't know yeah yeah i i would be curious because i don't think that i mean it wasn't a popular enough movie that i don't think anyone has really revisited it but it's

weirdly like one of the only movies of this genre at least that i've seen same yeah it's quite unlike most things. Yeah. I said brilliantly, hashtag brilliant. Hashtag genius. I also think I didn't know who Wyatt Russell was the last time I saw this movie. I think the main thing this movie did for me at the time is made me a fan of O'Shea Jackson Jr. Yes, I think this was also the first thing I saw him in. I can't remember if I saw, when did Straight Outta Compton come out? That came out in 2015. Okay.

So maybe I had already seen him in that. I had seen him in that, but that movie just like wasn't very good. Yeah. I love F. Gary Gray, but I don't think anyone thought that movie was very good. In any case, this movie,

I just wanted to shout out an oops all nepotism cast. You've got O'Shea Jackson Jr. Yeah. Who is the son of Ice Cube Jr. You've got Elizabeth Olsen, the older, younger, younger sister, I think, of the Olsen twins. I don't know. Yes. She's younger?

Younger. She was born in 1989. Wow. She is younger than i thought and then wyatt russell who's double nepo kurt russell and goldie hawn's oh i did not realize that yeah so this is majority nepo cast no judgment i'm just saying it's funny and i don't think i knew that at the time i knew who o'shea jackson. was. I don't really care about Marvel movies. So this might have been the first movie I saw Elizabeth Olsen in as well. Well, other Marvel connection is the actor who plays Harley Chung. Her name is Pom Clementife is maybe how you say it. She plays Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy

and the other Marvel movies she's in. Boy, does she. I did not connect that at all. Wow. So we've got a lot of Marvel. We've got a lot of Nepo. We've also got Billy Magnuson, who I think is an either.

But I like him. But boy, is his character a piece of shit. I was like... Sort of rooting for Ingrid to finish him off. Yeah. Anyways. The movie. The movie.

Well, let's take a quick break and we'll come back to recap. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session session 24 hours bpm 110 120 she's terrified should we wake her up absolutely not

what was that you didn't figure it out i think i need to hear you say it that was live audio of a woman's nightmare this This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new

horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha Libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance.

It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Santos!

Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we're back. All right. So here's the recap. I will place a content warning at the top here for suicide. We meet Ingrid Thorburn, played by Aubrey Plaza. She is crying and scrolling through Instagram photos of a wedding of someone named Charlotte. Then we get the reveal that Ingrid is at the wedding, crashing it, and she walks up to the bride, Charlotte, and pepper sprays her and says,

like, thanks for inviting me, you fucking cunt, which does pass the Bechdel test. I thought that too. Yay. Okay, so then we see Ingrid in a psychiatric hospital, and she's still attempting to contact Charlotte via a letter, I think, in which we learn that Ingrid's mom has recently passed away. Then Ingrid is released from the hospital, and we see her continue to obsessively scroll through Instagram. Then she sees a magazine article about someone named Taylor Sloan, played by Elizabeth Olsen. Taylor is an influencer with over 250,000 followers on Instagram. She lives in LA. She's very attractive. She has cute stuff. And she posts photos of her life on Instagram of her clothes, her meals, her husband, her dog, you know, typical influencer stuff.

I remember vaguely and listeners, let us know if you agree that it felt a little dated even in 2017. I feel like it's like sort of like early, early Instagram where it's like heavy on the filters, a lot of food, a lot of hashtags. And like even by 2017, that wasn't really happening. But it did feel like going in like a little social media spaceship into the past because people don't really do that now. They're like conspiracy theorists or podcasters or both or both i can't super speak to it because i've never been very active on instagram and i only started using it around the time this movie came out what if this

inspired me to start an instagram i think i started using it like in earnest in like 2015 okay but even that was like a little bit after i feel like this peak kind of influencer but it's interesting yeah it is interesting yeah i was not and i'm still not a big user of the platform and mostly i just use it to get news and look at cat videos so those are my influencers i mean same okay so ingrid is reading about taylor sloan and scrolling through her instagram and she is mesmerized by what she sees you know this glamorous southern california life and ingrid comments on a post of taylor's which is a photo of avocado toast hashtag millennials that's how we that's how our generation ruined the economy i loved that storyline that's why we aren't paying back our student loans because we're spending all of our money on avocado toast.

Yeah. Damn. We're so messy. Anyways. Right. So then Ingrid is out getting groceries and she overhears one of Charlotte's friends talking about Ingrid, saying that she and Charlotte weren't even friends, that Ingrid basically Instagram stalked Charlotte. And we're like, friends, that Ingrid basically Instagram stalked Charlotte. And we're

like, hmm, that's interesting. And Ingrid is crying about this. But then she sees that Taylor has responded to her comment, recommending that she try out a particular restaurant the next time she's in LA. And Ingrid is thrilled. And this seems to prompt Ingrid to move to LA, especially after she receives somewhere around a like $60,000 inheritance or like life insurance payout or something of that nature after her mom passed away. So she arrives in LA and rents an apartment from Dan Pinto, played by O'Shea Jackson Jr. He is an aspiring screenwriter who is obsessed with Batman. Hilarious. Yeah, I mean, great character. And also, oh my god, like, again, just another anxiety-inducing person. Yes. also oh my god like again just another anxiety inducing person yes like aspiring screenwriter

slash landlord is such a stressful description the thing though about all of these characters is they are not even really caricatures of a lot of la people like everyone in this movie i'm like yeah i've encountered someone pretty much exactly like that here in LA. So there's that. Anyway, so Ingrid is now living in LA, and she starts going to the shops and restaurants and salons that Taylor posts about on social media. She reads the same books as Taylor. She buys the same stuff, all of that. I like that Taylor is so us in the sense that she lies about reading books. I was like, oh, we're supposed to be mad about that? She's busy.

Yeah, we find out that she's never, she claims that The Deer Park is her favorite book. And then we find out she's never read it. And we park is her favorite book and then we find out she's never read it and we're like wow oh well oh well we don't read books either taylor it's okay so then one day ingrid bumps into taylor at a store and ingrid is trying to act cool but also like trying to get taylor to notice her and tay Taylor definitely does notice her, but it's because Ingrid is not acting cool. She's being very awkward. She almost, like, absentmindedly shoplifts, you know, stuff like that. She's doing Aubrey Plaza.

This is what Aubrey Plaza characters do at this time. And still kind of. Yeah. do at this time and still kind of yeah so then ingrid stalks taylor to her house and stays there all day and then when taylor leaves to go out that night ingrid kidnaps her dog so that she can return the dog to taylor and seem like a hero which works taylor and her husband ezra played by wyatt russell are so grateful and they're like oh my gosh let us make you dinner so ingrid stays for dinner they're having a nice time and ingrid does whatever she can to endear herself to them she buys a piece of Ezra's art, which is ugly. It's bad. It's not good. If we can't say that men's art is bad on this show, why did we even start it? Yeah, this is where she goes full Mr. Ripley

mode. Because even though she's socially awkward, she's really great at intuiting. Although at some point, I will say, I i mean it's just it's not a feminist criticism of the movie but at some point during the middle of this movie i'm like would she continue to get away with this like if i'm elizabeth olsen once i see that she has a gun with her i'm like i'm gonna get out of here i I'm going to leave. You would think. Yeah. But anyways, she's Ripley-ing. She's working on another level. Because she also offers to haul their trailer to the house they have in Joshua Tree because they need someone with a truck. Only Ingrid doesn't have a truck, but her landlord, Dan Pinto, does. dan pinto does so she asks to borrow it and he is reluctant but he also has a crush on her

and agrees to lend ingrid the truck if she plays catwoman in an upcoming table read for his unauthorized batman screenplay they are so stressful as in like she does him dirty time and time again she's the worst but it is also so mean to ask someone to do a batman table read with you true although i was kind of taking inventory of all of the characters and then i was trying to think like of these people, if I had to be friends with one of them. Oh, him. Who would it be? And it would be him. And we would just talk about Batman, I guess.

It would be him. Yeah, you would see him like once every three months and be kind of exhausted at the end of the hang. But be like, he's a nice guy, whatever. Yeah. Wish he wasn't a landlord, times are tough i guess like yeah well he's not selling his illegal batman scripts that he's writing so he's got to make money somehow it's true god landlords with dreams gross anyway so ingrid gets the truck and takes Taylor and her trailer, which I think should be the name of a hashtag podcast, maybe? A Taylor Swift themed podcast.

She takes them to Joshua Tree, except that she pretends it's her truck slash that she's borrowing it from her boyfriend, Dan. She makes up a story about how Dan is actually her boyfriend. I do like, this is just like something I think is fun in movies where for no reason at all, a character is almost always referred to as their full name. And like Dan Pinto, it just like, it just trips off the tongue and people just love to say, they don't want to just say Dan. They want to say Dan Pinto.

Dan is not enough syllables. You need the whole thing. Dan Pinto. It's true. You need to keep the momentum going. Exactly. He doesn't seem bothered by it. So whatever.

Yeah. Okay. So on the way to Joshua Tree, Taylor is like, oh my God, Ingrid, you're so funny. I love you. You're my favorite person. Let's take pictures together. And obviously Ingrid is loving this. And Ingrid bails on Dan Pinto's Batman script table read in favor of spending more time with Taylor.

They do cocaine. They go out dancing. They're bonding. And on the way to the Joshua Tree house, Ingrid fucks up Dan's truck because they're so distracted by singing Casey and Jojo's All My Life to each other. And so the truck is all fucked up and taylor's like don't even worry about it everything's gonna be fine and then taylor tells ingrid a secret that she plans to buy the house next door in joshua tree and open up a boutique hotel where everything inside is for sale which sounds i hate it but yeah well no it sounds horrible horrible i mean horrible yeah that's like something that changed between my first viewing the first time i saw this movie and now you're like oh everyone in this movie is horrible yes because maybe i felt like the

writing was on the side of her husband. But on a rewatch, I actually think that movie is on the side of nobody. It's pretty cynical. Yeah, like everyone sucks. Her idea for an influencer hotel is horrible. Truly. It's gross. But I'm sure it would have worked.

I mean. For sure. I mean, like that feels very like joshua tree gentrification vibes you know for sure yeah and ingrid is like oh my god it's the best idea i've ever great idea taylor and taylor doesn't want her husband ezra to know about this because of financial reasons so now they have this little secret the next day they return to la and ingrid drops off dan's truck he's furious at her for bailing on the table read and leaving this huge scratch on the truck this is the point where you're just like does she really get out of this

scrap in real life but i guess i never underestimate a horny straight guy like maybe i don't know right it causes like he says eight thousand dollars of damage to his truck and he forgives her because she's like let's go on a date and he's like okay i like you and i want to have sex with you so dudes rock but he's like yelling at her in this scene, but she doesn't even freaking care because she has just gotten a notification that Taylor tagged her in a photo on Instagram. So Ingrid is on cloud nine and she keeps hanging out with Taylor. She's spending a lot of her money on clothes and home decor to impress Taylor. Then Ingrid meets Taylor's brother, Nicky, played by Billy Magnuson, who comes to LA for a visit. And Ingrid is jealous that he's commanding a lot of Taylor's attention, especially when Taylor bails on plans that she and Ingrid have to hang out in order to go to a party with Nikki

and this fashion influencer, Harley Chung, played by Pom Clementife. Ingrid tries to go to this event, but then like can't get into the VIP area. And they're like, ooh, sorry about that but hey why don't you come to a pool party this weekend that harley is throwing and bring your boyfriend dan because they were joking behind ingrid's back that her boyfriend is imaginary oh god one of the many scenes that oh like just made my chest tighten i can't write like that to like find a moment like that where it's like Taylor is caught in a lie. Being like, oh, I didn't say your boyfriend doesn't exist. And Ingrid knows people are talking shit around her back,

but she's just like, I gotta make it through this interaction. And you're like, oh, it's just so painful. It is. And they're not even wrong because Dan isn't her boyfriend. No, it is wild how easy it is for Ingrid to be like, you're my boyfriend. He's like, totally. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So now Ingrid has to make amends with Dan Pinto, who is still pissed for the truck fiasco and the table read thing. But she buys him some Batman gifts and some weed. And she takes him out to dinner. And it's like kind of a date. And then they start making out and then they go to his place and have sex. And they're doing like Batman Catwoman roleplay. And he's like, woohoo. And she invites him to this pool party, and he agrees to go.

So at the pool party, Ingrid is being very unchill, because she keeps feeling like Dan is embarrassing her. Dan is bonding with Nikki, who Ingrid still hates. And most importantly, it's obvious that Taylor is less enthusiastic about her friendship with Ingrid, because Taylor has clearly moved on to Harley as her new, like, BFF of the moment. And Ingrid is very jealous. So she betrays Taylor and tells Ezra about that secret they had the you know boutique hotel idea yeah and Ezra is like oh so typical because his wife has become so phony recently not like me he's an artist yeah there's somebody interesting like yeah how he talks like his wife like that taylor bullied him into being i'm like you have agency here as raw yeah okay yes and he sort of resents her for being supportive i don't know yeah right but he's also like pretentious and yeah he's

shitty in his own way. They're the worst. Yes. But in different ways. Okay. So then Ingrid can't find her phone because Nikki had swiped it and he finds all of these photos that Ingrid took of stuff in Taylor's bathroom and photos of Taylor sleeping and notes of all of Taylor's favorite things. And Nikki is like, what the fuck? You creep. And he claims to be looking out for his sister, but then he's like,

I won't tell Taylor if you give me $5,000 a month. So he's trying to extort her. And she then pays some guy to punch her in the face so that it's more believable when Ingrid hits him over the head with a crowbar or something and leaves him there. It's very, like, hijinx-y. This movie sort of deviates into hijinx occasionally. For a moment here and there, yeah. Do we know why Dan Pinto has a gun? It's not a real gun. It is a paintball gun. Right.

Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah. Because I was like, he is a dork. Why is he? Okay. It's a paintball gun right right right right okay yeah because i was like he is a dork why is he okay it's a paintball gun yes yes so dan ends up in the hospital after this altercation with nikki and taylor calls ingrid and she's like um hey do you know where my brother is and she's like definitely not but i'm sure he's fine let's get avocado toast girly and then ingrid finds out that taylor has taken another trip to joshua tree so ingrid drives there

to stalk her yeah but then finds out that taylor is not actually there and that she doesn't want to see or talk to ingrid anymore because she found out what ingrid did to nikki her brother and i think kind of like massively underreact yeah not that i would advise involving the police but i just didn't make sense to me it seems like taylor would have no issue calling the police you know what I mean like right I was surprised at how generous she was in that situation because I'm like I if I were Taylor I would be like I don't feel safe for sure that's scary there's some comment that I think Ezra makes to the effect of if Nikki didn't try to extort you you you'd be in jail right now. So I think that because Nikki did something illegal, that's why they don't go to the police.

But I don't know the logic of these choices. It's confusing. In any case, Ingrid makes this situation even worse by calling Taylor many times and leaving a bunch of voicemails. Then Ingrid puts a down payment on a house in Joshua Tree, the house next to the one that Taylor owns, aka the house that Taylor wanted to buy to turn into the boutique hotel. But this is the last of Ingrid's money.

So now she's broke. She's living in squalor. She sees then that Taylor's having a Halloween party next door. So she puts on like a white sheet to pretend to be a ghost. Aye, aye, aye. And crashes the party. Yeah. And Taylor and Ezra and Nikki are all like, what the fuck are you doing here?

Leave us alone. So then Ingrid goes back to her house and records a video of herself saying that everything she's posted in the past few months has been a lie. She has not been living this glamorous LA life. She's a loser. She knows that something is wrong with her, but she doesn't know how to fix it or how to change. She feels lonely. She feels despair. And she posts this video to her followers on Instagram, which she's accumulated, I think like a few thousand, I'm guessing because of her proximity to Taylor and like being tagged in photos of Taylor's and things like that. This video is effectively a suicide note. She posts it, and then she attempts suicide.

She wakes up in the hospital having survived because Dan had seen the video and called 911. And so she survives, and she learns that the video she posted went viral. And now she has tons of followers and people who care about her and who have sent her gifts and all of this stuff. She's even a hashtag. And so the movie ends on this note, or at least my interpretation of it is that she has learned nothing and she'll continue to seek validation from social media and other kind of like superficial sources the end so that's the movie on that awesome note

let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha Libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha Libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar.

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We're back. Okay. Yeah. This, Vufi, is really challenging. We're back. Okay. Yeah. This movie is really challenging. Okay. So I want to talk about some of the criticism of this movie that came out at the time, because I think a lot of it is valid. And I also kind of want to revisit it a little bit, because I think that this movie does

not do great on the subject of mental health. Agree. I think that that is like one of its major flaws. But the way that it fumbles it, I think I feel differently than I did when I first saw it because it feels like Ingrid is a destructive. She's struggling with mental illness and grief the entire movie. And we know this about her and she is unable to get the help that she needs and it feels like she is stuck in this i think i originally was like

my first viewing of this i was like oh we're supposed to hate ingrid but it i didn't really feel that way this time i felt like it and maybe i'm giving the movie too much credit but it was it's like because social media was and is such an under explored addictive process it's like every time like she has the drug in her hand at all times and no one really acknowledges it as an addiction and as a drug that can exacerbate and make the mental illnesses that she's struggling with even harder to deal with. And so I don't know, it's tricky because she does so many unforgivable things. But I did find myself like empathizing with her because I've struggled with mental illness and like OCD specifically and social media is designed to make that worse and designed to encourage that and attach social

currency and the concept of acceptance to that so like I while I cannot relate with kidnapping Billy Magnuson and like you know completely up completely uprooting my life. I did feel like it was interesting to see a character who is struggling with obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors and how social media is absolutely designed to make that worse. The way it's handled from moment to moment, I feel like is all over the place for me. Right. Because like the movie's agenda is very clearly to examine what social media can do to people's mental health, how it can encourage an impulse for people to compare themselves to others, how it can breed loneliness. And then on the kind of influencer side of things, it shows how their job is to hawk stuff, whether that's like food at a restaurant, apparel, accessories, makeup, whatever, or just like a general like image or lifestyle almost and how doing that basically

encourages that impulse to compare yourself to others and and feel insecure and feel lonely and how it's just like this cyclical mess and the movie acknowledges that and explores it but like you were saying as far as how it handles it and especially handles mental health as well as like suicidality i felt like i'm not thrilled with it yeah on one hand i do think the movie could be a lot more judgmental of people who are like influenced by influencers, especially for a movie that was written and directed by men, because men often have a habit of observing women and kind of misinterpreting what is going on. So I feel like it would have been very easy for, you know, most male filmmakers to observe women who are on both sides of the like, influencer, social media phenomenon and cast a lot of judgment on them. The way that men constantly cast judgment on women for things like feeling pressure to adhere to societal expectations that men largely reinforce.

The movie doesn't quite do that, but it does not seem to have very much empathy for the mental health issues that Ingrid is dealing with. Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel like in the effort to get their message across about social media, the way that mental health is treated is undercooked in service of that point, which sucks because I think it's a really hard needle to thread. Yeah.

And one that I would rather, I mean, this, honestly, this movie just made me want to see movies about social media addiction, not by men. And not to say that men can't be addicted to social media. They absolutely can and are. But this was like talking about a very particular gendered form of plucking the show again, 16th minute on cool zone media i was just talking with friend of the cast bridget todd this morning yes of course who hosts there are no girls on the internet and talks about these topics a lot and you know she was speaking to the point that i

think is done more thoughtfully in this movie which is that social media is designed to make women feel like shit. And the content that the algorithm favors tends to be very aspirational to make women feel like shit about their body, about their class, about their lifestyle, about any number of things. And I do like that, again, the easy choice here would have been to make Taylor the influencer be a supervillain who is lying in a less complicated way than she's actually lying. But it doesn't. And I do appreciate that, you know, like, Taylor is in sort of this trap of maybe not of her own making, but sort of her own making where it's

become her job to perform feeling great. And she doesn't like she has any number of problems, like normal people would, but can't say that I am interested in like the monetizing yourself and your personality. And I think that that is just like always a more slippery slope if you're marginalized in any way especially like before there were any conversations around it like so easy to get trapped in like a rigid self and if you act outside of this self you're acting off brand and that's bad and like i think this movie does do some stuff to acknowledge that you know the influencers are also in a different kind of mental prison right and it doesn't mean that the actions of influencers are universally forgivable

because you know taylor is still not great right but i like that she is not great in a way that still feels very human and i just felt like her character was generally better thought through than ingrid's at times which is frustrating because i think ingrid is we're given the ingredients to have a lot of interesting discussions in this movie around grief around mental health and around how you are with a tiny computer all the time that says it's helping you with these exact things and almost always isn't like but it's an interesting movie to go back to because you're like they didn't quite get it but I think it's aging better than I expected right I mean again the thing that it's always going to boil down to

for me is that the Ingrid character it's not necessarily unsympathetic or unempathetic toward her, especially when you learn the director's and the writer's intentions with the character. So I will share a quote from what I think might be a press release. I don't really know what this was, but it's possibly a press release from Mongrel Media, which is the film distribution company that i believe distributed ingrid goes west and in this document is a an interview with matt spicer who directed and co-wrote the movie and he was asked how did this project originate and And he says, quote, my co-writer, David Branson Smith,

and I have been friends for many years, and we're looking for something to work on together. We were having lunch and talking about our mutual obsession with Instagram and how it brings out the worst in us, making us feel bad about ourselves while also being wildly entertaining and addictive. He asked me if I thought there was a movie there, which I did. The obvious choice was to make single white female for the social media generation with Taylor as the helpless victim and Ingrid as the obsessive cold-blooded stalker. But the more we talked about it, I actually found myself relating more to the Ingrid character. The quote goes on and there's a bunch of other questions and he talks quite a bit about developing each character and the thought that went into it. And so they are

approaching Ingrid, the writers and director, with a sense of empathy. Like they do kind of understand what it is to be addicted to social media and how that does affect your mental health and so they're not necessarily not approaching the character with any intentional malice or right anything like that but the fact remains that ingrid though it is unidentified is dealing with a mental health crisis and i mean not identified like by specific name she's never diagnosed which i'm not mad about right but yeah something that fosters compulsive behaviors right and on top of that she's dealing with grief over the loss of her mother. And the movie, I think, is pretty much constantly assuming that you will or encouraging that the audience will be cringing at her behavior and laughing at her. And so for that to be the case, and people might disagree with me, but I feel like the movie is like constantly like, oh, God, no, Ingrid, don't do that. Not again. Oh, you're so cringy. Or she's doing something that you're laughing at, or that's supposed to

be funny. And for that to be true of a character who is, again, dealing with a mental health crisis. That's the thing that rubs me the wrong way about this movie that makes sense to me and that was like so what i didn't like about it the first time and i think that that makes a lot of sense and yeah i'm unclear on exactly what what they want us to feel about her at certain points, because it feels, I feel like, and maybe this is just grounded in Aubrey Plaza's performance, but like, I want to be on her side. Like I want her to be okay.

And it's like scary and sad and frustrating to watch her not get the help that she needs. Again, it just, yeah, I felt undercooked and under explored because we see that she has spent some time in inpatient treatment but that doesn't seem to have been especially helpful for her which can be very true but like again it's just like that's there and she goes to

i mean yeah if you're having a mental health crisis definitely don't move to Los Angeles it's like the worst possible place you could be take it from me but it's hard because I feel like I can't exactly put it into words I think that that read is so there of like it's funny that this is happening but I also felt like going back in this time I just felt terribly for her yeah and part of why it's such an anxiety inducing movie and maybe it's just like where I am now versus where I was then but like watching her be around people who don't necessarily have bad intentions towards her, but they just are not equipped to be able to give her what she needs. And yeah, I think the mental health point that really didn't sit well with me, again, I understand from the message, cautionary message about social

media point why the character makes a suicide attempt but I really don't that's just a personal preference thing maybe I just don't like that I especially don't like when that's put on screen that was what gave me pause I feel like you can end the movie the same way maybe not you know with that same really stomach churning impact. Yeah. But I feel like you could end the movie with the same feeling without having done that. But that's kind of a personal preference. But I just don't like when attempts are put on screen.

I feel like it's usually unnecessary, especially because it's an Aubrey Plaza movie. A lot of young people are going to see it. And I just don't like it. I wanted to go back to original criticism of this movie yeah because i just wanted your take i really don't know what to make of it now especially because we were already doing movie criticism in 2017 when this movie came out but i feel like it was very different we were hashtag babies back then. Hashtag podcasting toddlers. But it was an interesting like look at what the criticism of this time was like.

So this is from a Ms. Magazine piece from when the movie came out in 2017. While the film has been heralded as a timely warning against social media, this so-called warning is only possible because of the filmmaker's representation of Ingrid as unstable, obsessive, and quote-unquote hysterical, depictions which have historically all been used to devalue and control women. Taking a cue from Single White Female, the film relies on the trope that women's friendships are toxic and unstable. Taking another from films like Swimfan and Black Swan, it predicates its entire plot on the tired notion that women are jealous, irrational, and obsessive by nature. The film's investment in these depictions paints mental illness into an inherently female danger. Indeed, it seems that Ingrid is a stark and visual warning about the mentally ill woman we should make sure to never become. As Sarah Khan writes in a piece that no longer exists on the internet, the film's

unresolved ending is particularly harmful in that, quote, it only reinforces the incorrect and ignorant narrative that people only talk openly about mental illness to seek attention, unquote. I think this is interesting. I don't totally agree with it now, honestly, but I do, I think, agree with that last part a little bit again i think that like from the year 2024 i cannot comfortably say that everyone on the internet discussing mental health is doing so in great faith i feel like that is not necessarily true however the majority are, I think. And I feel like if this movie wants to make this point, we should maybe see other examples of how people are good faith engaging. Yeah.

See, but now saying that, I'm like, do you feel that Ingrid made this attempt for attention? I sort of didn't read it that way. I didn't. Well, I don't know. I mean, like, maybe that's me being naive. And like, I don't see the game of like 7000 D chess she was playing. But I guess I read that attempt as sincere. So that kind of negates that point for me. I don't know.

I do think that it would have been helpful to clarify whatever they were trying to say around mental health to have another character navigating if not the same issue because you know everyone has their own mental health journey to go on right but navigating those same issues in a different way from ingrid right i do think it was not like an attention seeking attempt. I didn't think so either. Yeah, I do think that she was legitimately attempting suicide. And what she says during that video seems, I mean, it's devastating, because she's acknowledging how her life has been a lie and how she feels so lonely and she feels like a loser and pathetic and all of these things. She misses her mom. And like, see, now I'm like, but now this movie review doesn't believe women. I'm confused.

I'm confused. Yeah, I didn't read that i mean and listeners like obviously open season on if you did read it that way but yeah it felt like if that was the intended read of the movie then yeah ingrid is you know being shown as essentially a super villain but i guess i just didn't yeah I didn't read it that way. will fall back into the same cycle because once she survives this attempt and learns that she has a following now that people are reaching out to her and chances are she'll never meet any of these people and not actually form any lasting or meaningful connections with any of them but she's addicted to this internet validation. And it seems as though because of like the grin on her face when she's seeing all of these expressions of love and

support from people commenting on her Instagram, that she, again, will have learned nothing and will fall back into the same cycle right what i wish would have happened maybe i'm talking through this in real time but like we see her being hospitalized in the beginning of the movie but it's in like montage right and we don't get a whole lot of sense of what is going on and like is the system failing her like is the health care system the thing that's right and it kind of seems i guess again that was like the conclusion that i jumped to but we're not given that explicit reason right because she makes a comment of i know something is wrong me, but I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to change. And I'm curious, like, what was i agree like that it's important i think to yeah demonstrate like why it didn't quite work otherwise i feel like it is a viable read for it to be like you know inpatient treatment doesn't work which is obviously not true

right yeah again it's just like because it's like this satire-y feel, it sometimes feels like there's too broad of a brush with certain issues. But anyways, I just wanted to share that because I thought it was interesting. I'm like, I feel like I would have really wholeheartedly agreed with that criticism at the time. And, you know, time keeps moving and it's just interesting because I feel like yeah I was able to have a little bit more of a generous read of this movie than I did six or seven years ago I do want to say that Elizabeth Olsen joined Instagram right after this movie came out there was a funny kind of iconic of her kind of fucked up but kind of iconic this is from the cut in 2017 elizabeth olsen recently joined instagram for the first time she learned the ropes while playing an instagram influencer and her

upcoming film ingrid goes west but in an interview with the la times she reveals that her newfound social media savvy isn't simply because she needed to share photos of her breakfast with the world she's just in it for the cash so she said it's so funny that people this is elizabeth olsen speaking it's so funny that people like this is Elizabeth Olsen speaking. It's so funny that people like to pretend that they're maybe or maybe not getting paid to post something. Financially, it's a brilliant opportunity. Like I'd really love to be a brand ambassador.

I'd love to do a campaign. I think sometimes working with brands or different cosmetic companies, that can help people recognize your face and then they go see your movie. I was only hurting my opportunities by not participating. Which honestly, I think that that is like, even if you don't agree with it i appreciate that she's just being honest

about it because i feel like that's the fault that the movie is trying to criticize is that influencers and this happened i mean it's worse now even though there are disclosure laws in place that there didn't used to be about saying when you're doing spawn versus when you're not there are some influencers that like their whole account is spawn you're like how did we even get interested in you in the first place like you're just selling shit it's weird yeah i've never quite understood that but i do find it interesting that the way Taylor describes herself and her job, because Ingrid very blazingly is like, what do you guys do for money? You know, on the first night she meets them. But people should be more transparent, I think, about their income and how they get it.

But anyway, yeah, she's like, what do you do for money? And Taylor's like, oh, I'm a photographer. Right, right. do you do for money and taylor's like oh i'm a photographer right right and then we find out that she's like well you know it's not as glamorous as it seems sometimes brands pay me to like post photos on the thing and so she's basically like she's describing being an influencer in very creative ways because we don't ever see her with a camera any other camera besides her iphone camera she's not doing the type of photography that yeah it feels very like prior i think that those disclosure laws they might have existed by the time this movie came out but maybe not when

it was written i forget exactly when but like, it almost feels like I honestly used to feel this way when I would tell people that I hosted a podcast for a living. I actually would not say that. And I was actively like, oh, this is a career that is still like, not quite a thing. And I'm kind of embarrassed to say I have a job that I'm not sure is considered to be real or not, you know. And it feels like that's kind of what Taylor's doing with an influencer. Like she's trying to make it sound like a respected job where influencer clearly at the time this was written

or filmed or I don't know what the production timeline was, wasn't considered a job. Whereas now like most influencers are pretty straightforward about what it is they're doing because it's considered a legitimate job I mean the same as podcasting like it's considered a legitimate job now and so people are just like yeah this is my job but she's like oh well it's not what it seems like and also like clearly at this time she didn't have to disclose anything which is scary and that like whether the influencers doing this were especially cognizant of this or not because i

do think that there is like a lot of naivete around social media usage at this time they're like yeah selling you a fake it's advertising it's lying it's lying it's making stuff up and we see her lying about other stuff such as like yeah she never read the books she's claiming to have read she claims that her husband is a very popular artist and we find out that the only sale he's ever made is that one to ingrid and basically we just see every character lying or manipulating or thinking that the Joel Schumacher Batman movies are good. Okay, what? The greatest sin of all.

I love Joel Schumacher. I was very surprised to hear a Joel Schumacher. You just don't expect to hear his full name spoken in a movie. You don't but yeah i mean i thought this movie did a better job than i remembered both clearly pointing to the fact that the kind of influencing that taylor is doing is lying but there is like a gradient of like it doesn't make her the world's worst person but it doesn't i feel like there was at least some fairness with how that was shown like she wasn't completely demonized but she wasn't made out to be like oh

i'm just a girl i don't know what i'm doing like she does know what she's doing yeah and she seems a little ashamed of it but not enough to not do it right there is more nuance to, I would say pretty much every character we get to know. To some extent, there's more nuance to them than, again, I would have expected from filmmakers who are men writing about women. I'm not saying they did an amazing job. But they did something. There's something. And there's more nuance there. Because again, I think it would have been very easy and the kind of default for men to write female characters and female influencers and people who are susceptible to influencers in a way more judgy way. But I am curious as to why these men,

and again, I'm talking about director Matt Spicer and his co-writer on the script, David Branson Smith, why they chose women as the main characters when they could better speak to the experience of men being affected by social media because they are men affected by social media, as they say in that interview. Which is interesting because we like, we do get a feel for that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, I don't want to be like, people could only write their own experience. But I would just be curious to know. And I would just be curious to know and I would also want to know and I wasn't able to really find anything on this to like to what extent they spoke to women about their experiences on social media in building out these characters because that

feels like it would be a very important component of building out this relationship because I don't really agree with the Ms. Magazine criticism that sort of indicates that like Taylor and Ingrid's dynamic is indicative that these writers think that all women's friendships are dysfunctional and toxic like I think that that's kind of an overstatement I feel like we understand why this friendship isn't working it's because they're both lying and one to a wild degree yeah and that you know one is in mental health crisis and the other is not equipped to handle that and taylor is like a people pleaser to the extent that it's dishonest and like i feel like you're given maybe my brain is broken it didn't feel especially

gendered because you do get a taste of like how social media affects men but not as I don't know like I think that the shared quality across the cast is that everyone is in fake it till you make it mode which is I, just how LA characters are very frequently written. But like Dan Pinto is a fake screenwriter and Taylor is a fake photographer and Wyatt Russell is a fake artist. And, you know, Billy Magnuson is a fake,

I don't even know. He's like a real con artist. And he's very racist. We should point out. Yes, there is a horrific racist joke in this that clearly turns you on this character. I don't think it was necessary at all to turn us on this character. And it also makes it clear that Taylorlor is okay with this totally in a room full of white people she's very okay with laughing at an extremely racist joke and i think that the only person in the room who really says something is her husband her husband ezra yes so a single point for him there but he also like i don't know what did you make of him because i think he definitely sucks he's a pretentious asshole yeah right and he seems very resentful towards taylor for the way

that she's making money for sure and it's not clear if he is like intimidated by her success the way a lot of men in relationships with women who are like making more money than them is very threatening to those men it's not clear if he's feeling that or if he's just like on his high horse about you know self-promotion and being super online because those things are clear but we don't know if there's like an underlying like misogyny thing happening or i would guess it kind of seems to me like there definitely was like yeah he's like the kind of person that sucks even when he's saying the right thing you just feel like he's saying the right thing for the wrong reason which i guess a lot of people in this movie are true and that is a very

common internet behavior right but like yeah he's acting like he's too good like he's trying to have everything both ways and resenting no matter what the situation is he resents taylor as a result and i don't even like taylor but i feel like he is an because he's like oh self-promotion is so gross blah blah blah but why aren't i making money as an artist like he just wants everything to be handed to him because he is a man and look at my art and everyone's a poser and a faker except for me and meanwhile you know his wife is paying all the bills because she is working but he doesn't consider what she does. I mean, this is maybe me getting defensive,

but like he doesn't consider what she does real, even though what she's doing is funding his lifestyle. So he can shut up or like not be in this relationship if you're not comfortable with that, but you can't just like be angry and passively benefit from it all the time. True. Also, and I'm not criticizing all like upcycled art

because I think some of it is very, very cool. But his art is... It's right up there with Magic Mike. It's bad. Magic Mike's awful furniture. Yeah. It's bad. Magic Mike's awful furniture. Yeah. All that Ezra is doing is taking existing paintings that he bought from thrift stores and then painting text on them that says like hashtag blessed or hashtag squad goals or

any of those. Which was a thing. Like I remember that shit and like they were right to make fun of it. It was ridiculous. Yeah. But yeah, he's a thing. Like, I remember that shit. And like, they were right to make fun of it. It was ridiculous. But yeah, he's a poser. He's a faker. For sure. Like the worst kind of poser where his whole personality is predicated on the fact that he's definitely not a poser, which is like the worst, the worst kind of person. The movie is recognizing the irony of him being like, I'm a real artist. My art speaks for itself. I do art. And then you see his art. And it's something that someone else made. And then he just painted some letters on it. It's like, okay, are you good at art? Question mark. I do think that like, very least like his character because i did not remember

it's a very very racist joke about virtually any asian person because it is that vague and cruel and i still don't think it was necessary because it does happen i'm glad that his character calls it out said something yeah yeah and i understand i mean like i think he's an interesting character to have there it's like i recognize the type of person and it sort of contributes to like showing what and this is like kind of a mealy-mouthed point that we've seen made in a lot of things with like social media is not real but that's the point this movie is trying to make to some extent. And their marriage dynamic, I think, is pretty interesting and unique. And even though I don't love Taylor as a character, and her weird Joshua Tree gentrification hotel sounds awful, her husband is also sexist. Her brother, I feel like, is character that like didn't really work

for me he felt too cartoonish i don't know like and also they were like well he was struggling with or not dealing with his addiction problems which is referenced several times but really only seems to be there to add another way in which taylor is being dishonest about her life or in denial about her life but it's just like he sort of became like a plot device at some point where he's like he blackmails ingrid and he gets kid like all the hijinks he stuff is sort of with his character. And he's just my least favorite character. I don't like him. That's my feminist criticism. I don't like him.

Wow. Hashtag genius. Once again. Yeah. Thank you. He is quite cartoony, but I also feel like people like him exist. So for sure. IDK.

But I just don't like him i think the last thing i have to say about this movie and it kind of goes back to the article you were referencing earlier about all of these examples of movies that center female friendship but it's like a toxic stalkery obsessive kind of thing and it's not that i think that all friendships between or among women in movies are portrayed that way because obviously there are many examples that aren't but the article does cite several movies that do show that dynamic such as swim fan i saw that movie but i can't remember much about it i have not seen it swim fan and then single white female single white female which we covered many many years ago on the show but this movie wouldn't feel like wow yet another installment in this type of friendship dynamic between women, if there were just more movies about friendship among women. Totally, yeah.

The director was citing other movies that inspired him. One of them was Single White Female, but he also references The Talented Mr. Ripley and The King of Comedy, which, Jamie, have you seen that movie? I have not seen it, no. I've seen it a couple times. It's another very, very stressful movie. Robert De Niro plays an aspiring comedian who's trying to get on like a late night talk show, like a Jimmy Carson kind of thing. Jimmy Carson? Is that his name?

Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson. I was like, whoa, we're so young. We're so young. Oh, is this the movie that like Todd Phillips Joker is kind of ripping off? Right? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So he's obsessed with this talk show host and he's trying to get like a set to do stand up on a late night show and things go horribly wrong. So there's like a few movies referenced like King of Comedy and Talented Mr. Ripley that the filmmakers of Angry Goes West were pulling from that, you know, feature men. But because every other fucking movie in the world is about men,

it doesn't feel like, oh, every movie that comes out is about men being obsessed and scary and violent. Right. I agree with you. I mean, maybe it's being older. Maybe it's just the way that the internet has continued to evolve, where I feel like I did have the information I needed. Would I have liked to see Taylor have an actual friend? Sure, sure. Like, and see what does a functional friendship work like for her but again

like across gender it doesn't seem like really anyone in this movie is capable except maybe dan pinto but we'll say like you know weird guy and i don't really understand why he's putting up with the consequences of being with ingrid to the extent that he is but I do appreciate that like he wants to know her sure and that is nice to see and I feel like that's another way in which this movie does show that it is not openly contemptuous of Ingrid and I understand why she is definitely starting by manipulating him so she doesn't get evicted but i get why she ends up wanting to be with him more even though it's like this complicated like he is a means to an end to her as far as like access to a car access to housing and access to enabling this lie but also she needs someone to talk to about grief desperately and he can relate with her about

that and i thought that that scene was i kind of wished that there was a little more done with that relationship to develop it because normally i'm like i don't need the boyfriend side plot i think it is kind of interesting here but yeah it kind of tapers off and then the way at the end i feel bad for dan pinto i'm like get out of there dan like no we need to get ingrid into good stable care so that she can recover and we need dan pinto to like i don't know like give up the ghost and move on uh well yeah the thing is every character in this movie is characterized as someone who is like not very capable of healthy human relationships because dan pinto's thing is he's a pushover who like

lets people walk all over him and he's manipulated by Ingrid constantly. And there's plenty of Dan Pintos in the world. I know. And then that scene where Ingrid and Dan Pinto are talking about losing their parents i almost read that as she seized an opportunity to yeah because she's again constantly trying to endear people to her yeah and he's opening up and talking about this grief and you know he was orphaned as a. And that's why he's so attached to Batman and, you know, really laying it all out there. And rather than being like she says a couple things about losing her mom to him. But to me, it was she sees this as an opportunity to basically further manipulate him into dating her so that she can continue using him. Because, like, she doesn't really continue the

conversation she just kind of surprise kisses him really she does yeah and then they have batman catwoman sex so yes i agree with you maybe i'm 5d chessing because i'm like but i also feel like it doesn't seem like she is at a stage in her grieving where she, it made me sad to see this opportunity for her to genuinely connect with someone. But she's so fixated on this other thing that is not real that she's just fumbling it because she's not able to, you know, and not that she has to connect with this specific person, but like it's frustrating and frustrating in a way that didn't feel uncharitable to her. on this other thing that you think is going to make you happy that something or someone who could actually provide a genuine connection passes you by because you just like are not in a place where you can see it and especially because she's an active mental health crisis i feel awful for dan

pinto who seems to genuinely want a relationship with her even though that seems like it's connected to a lot of his issues yeah but that she has this opportunity right in front of her to genuinely connect with someone and can't see it for what it is and that is really sad to me i feel bad for her this movie kind of fumbles other mental illnesses in the pursuit of doing this but like very clearly demonstrates that social media is an addiction and that it is an addiction that people don't understand that is exacerbated by any other number of factors and which for her seems like some sort of obsessive tendency and grief and depression and like i probably talked about this on the show before, but when I was probably around this time, it was maybe a little sooner, like 2016,

but I had and have OCD and it was getting so bad with specific relation to social media that I was luckily able to find a therapist who is willing to really scale his prices so that I could go into exposure therapy for social media, which at the time I didn't really talk about because it's no one's business. And also I was embarrassed by it because it didn't sound like a thing that existed. But literally what the sessions were, were I would go on Twitter with my therapist and we would scroll through and we would go through like, well, what does this bring up for you? What does this bring up for you? And I was in such a bad place OCD wise

that everything was an active threat. And I was so spun into anxiety by looking at these things and also could not for the life of me stop. And it took, I mean, we did this for a couple of months until I couldn't afford it anymore. We did it. And it really did help. And it did. I mean, I don't think anyone has a healthy relationship to social media, but it certainly did turn a corner for me. And then maybe some backsliding during the pandemic. Who among us? I mean, I'm like, maybe I should talk about this on the other show. But like, I had such a bad relationship with social media that it was like, actively, you know, not to the extent that Ingrid, ingrid is in a pretty extreme circumstance but like i'm glad to know that both aubrey plaza and the writer directors like empathize with her because i think everyone has had some experience like this and then mine like going back i'm like maybe i didn't like it the first time i saw it because i didn't like the parts of myself that i saw in her because it's really uncomfortable and also just to see it in a time where, you know,

now I still don't think that there's really a lot of practical treatment. And I feel like, you know, if you're having a hard time with your relationship with social media, most people will be like, shut up, touch grass. And like very unhelpful. Right. And I just, I can't get over, like people are saying

touch grass to you on the internet. Like, shut up. You're just, you're just as bad and maybe worse. But I guess that's my last thing I have to say about this movie. didn't like how hopeless the end was because I saw myself in this character and to see her so clearly about to be sucked into the same cycle again is devastating I will say for anyone who's struggling with this or has in the past there are ways to improve it a lot of it I mean again like if I hadn't met I literally met this therapist in the hospital it was like shortly before the podcast started this would have been in June 2016 when

all this was happening but like you know if I hadn't met a psychiatrist in the hospital where I also could not afford in or outpatient treatment this hospital psychologist let me just sleep in the ER overnight because I was so worked up. And he really generously offered to give me care that I would not have had access to otherwise. And it did genuinely change, you know, not completely fix. I don't know that it's something that can completely be fixed, but improved my relationship. So there are ways, unfortunately, they're almost always, especially if you live in the US, there's significant barriers, but there's, there are ways. So if you're struggling, babe, you could be okay. You'd be okay. Jamie, thank you for sharing that.

I love to share. It's healthy to share and demonstrates the broken healthcare system in this country because care that is helpful and life-saving shouldn't be unaffordable. Jamie, is there anything else you want to talk about with this movie? I don't really think so. I feel bad, but that's what this movie wants me to do. So it's good. Right. It's effective in what it's set out to do. Yes. It does pass the Bechdel test quite a bit. Yes. Many times over. Yeah. it's women having complicated feelings about how they

perceive each other yes which i am always especially when there's even an iota of thought put into it i'm always interested in movies about how women view other women or how they're conditioned or whatever because it's like it's valid. And I think this movie gets across that misogyny is so prominent among men. Wow. Amazing observation, Jamie. Hashtag genius. Thank you. But just seeing how people of marginalized genders have internalized and project at others,

it's very common. And I feel like it is hard to write clearly and this movie is touch and go on it but i think that that is like a worthwhile thing to continue exploring for sure yeah as far as our nipple scale goes zero to five nipples rating the movie based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens i think this movie is attempting to comment on interesting things, things that are pretty complicated and that I feel like society and medical science still doesn't know that much about. The filmmakers did not approach this with the intention of wanting to cast a lot of judgment on a tendency to be influenced by influencers. They, as they describe it, were empathetic toward the Ingrid character and they related to her and they were like, we also feel bad when we look at Instagram. And again, there is more nuance to a lot of the characters than I guess I've been conditioned to expect because so many movies made by men are pretty relentless, especially when it comes to characters who are women and casting a lot of judgment on them for

things again like things that men tend to reinforce i'm always reminded of like the example of when men will be like oh why are you taking so long to get ready like they'll like right berate their girlfriend or whatever for taking so long to get ready and it's like i don't know maybe it's because if a woman doesn't put on makeup and style their hair meticulously and shave off all of their body hair and wear certain clothes and all of this stuff you'll think that she's disgusting go figure yeah like so i appreciate that the movie isn't casting that level of judgment on this but the way that it's representing mental health and someone who is experiencing a mental health crisis i wish it had been handled better slash differently and i would have liked to see this premise written and directed by

women because i think it would have been handled a lot differently i agree yeah so with that in mind i don't know oh this is one of those movies that like does the nipple scale even apply like it's challenging it's complicated i think so i mean it's hard to do the nipple scale with satire. Yes. So maybe I'll just do a split down the middle because I don't know what else to do. And also, even though this is the most important metric of all time, it also doesn't matter. So two and a half nipples. And I'll give one to Rothko the dog.

I'll give one to Dan Pinto's Batman Forever soundtrack CD. And I'll give my half nipple to the lamp that cost $1,200. I'm going to go three. I'll go three on this one. Yeah, this movie is imperfect, but better than I remembered. And I feel maybe I'm giving it more credit, but because I felt like I went on a personal journey and like was in conversation with past Jamie by watching this movie. But I like what it's trying to do. I don't think that it's doing it successfully. But I think it's doing it better than I've seen so far, which speaks to your point is that there is a need for a good movie about social media that is driven by really anyone but white guys. And I think it works in the thriller format I mean there's so many different ways to talk

about it but I think that there is like an even better social media satire out there TBD but for what we have I think that this movie it's just way better than I remembered it and it made me think in ways I wasn't expecting to I do think that yeah mainly for me the way that mental health is treated differently from sequence to sequence is challenging and i really don't like on-screen suicide attempts you know so i'm docking it for that i think that that's what i have to say woohoo jamie tell us more about where we can listen to and find well wait i didn't get to give my nipples away. Oh, sorry, sorry. Okay. I'm giving one to Aubrey. I'm giving one to Elizabeth.

And I'm giving one to O'Shea. We'll keep it simple. Nice. Now tell us. Yes. So 16th Minute, the first episode of 16th Minute came out on Tuesday, May 7th. It is about Antoine Dodson of the Bed Intruder song, Fame. Wait, was that the Hide Your kids hide your wife i remember and

that is sort of how every episode of 16th minute works where it's sort of like oh right that person and then we talk about it and i spoke with antoine dodson for this episode as well as other people and some episodes are you know more intense than others it sort of depends from story to story some of it's very silly and some of it is a little more in depth so i think you'll enjoy it if you like this show and you don't hate my guts i think that you will enjoy the show and yes it's also produced by sophie Lichterman. And I'm very proud and excited about it. So please check it out if you want to learn more about how the Internet is poisoning the world. Woohoo! And then you can follow us on the normal places.

Also, you can follow me on Instagram. Wow. At Caitlin Durante. Jamie, where can people follow you? You can follow me at Jamie Cries Superstar on Instagram where I'm constantly not. I also OK. Last point. Last point. I feel like this also came out at a time where it's like being dishonest about exactly what was going on in your life and social media was like bad. And you're like, what do you want me to do? Post to thousands of people that like Taylor's supposed to post

to thousands of people that she's having difficulty in her marriage. Like what is the expectation? Anyways, no. Anyways, you can see me misrepresenting my mental health state probably on my Instagram at Jamie Christ superstar. And you can see me not really posting probably on my Instagram at Jamie Christ Superstar. And you can see me not really posting anything on my grid, but know that I am watching cat videos and crying because of all of the stuff I'm learning about the genocides happening across the world. Got it. the genocides happening across the world got it follow us on social media at bechtel cast and we've got a patreon aka matreon that is at patreon.com slash bechtel cast you get two bonus episodes every month on a fun little theme that we cook up. This month is my birthday month.

And so we are doing some of my favorite Pixar movies. And you can also grab our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast. And our tour is very soon. It's very soon. It's in the UK and Dublin. You can get tickets at Linktree, which is in the description of this episode. So with that, hey, let's hashtag log off and touch some grass. Let's go touch grass. Off I go.

Bye. Bye bye. Off I go. Bye. Bye-bye. The Bechtelcast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan, with vocals by Catherine Voskrosensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.com.

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

Can Kay trust her sister? Or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever.

Please stick to policy. Don't get personal. But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows, that we're surprisingly more united than most people think. We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better and that we can do better. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.