The Bechdel Cast - My Best Friend's Wedding

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

On this episode, best friends Caitlin and Jamie attend each other's weddings where they discuss My Best Friend's Wedding!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. 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,

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Start changing it with the Bechdelcast. Hello, Caitlin. Hello, Jamie. So in spite of being my best friend, you haven't talked to me in a month. You ever think about that? I think that is normal. I think it's also normal that I didn't know about your wedding until just now, even though it's four days from now. Yeah, but we're best best friends and you know that we're best friends because we are always saying it that's really the only but we're best friends do we have chemistry no no i would say not no do we know what's going on in each other's lives no not even a little bit

and i would bet caitlin that you're probably sitting across from your actual best friend right now but the movie we're in will never acknowledge it right it's so wild george is her best friend like yeah what and she does admit that at some point she's like well my best friend these days and it's like yeah and you're like sorry it's he's just your best friend like you and michael don't know each other you guys are horny chaos machines and i wish you the worst welcome to the bechdel cast this is my best friend's podcast oh wow yeah and my name is jamie loftus well what if someone comes in here and tries to break up this podcast? Because they're in love with us.

They want to make a podcast with us more. Oh, wow. Anyway, I'm Caitlin Durante. And this is our podcast where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens. And we really have been dragging our heels on this one, but it is a movie that simply begs to be discussed on this podcast. It sure does.

Okay, here's something that doesn't pass the Bechdel test before we tell you what it is. As I was watching this movie, I was thinking Shrek would be having none of this you know what I mean what do you mean killing Cameron Diaz is being mistreated the whole movie oh Shrek would be having none of this well cut that joke well there's another Shrek connection, too, because a construction. A construction. Wow. That's every dessert we ever have.

A delicious construction. Rupert Everett voices Prince Charming. Oh, Rupert Everett is a delight in this movie. I think he's one of the movie's few high points. Yeah. Now, on the other hand, Dermot Mulroney uh-huh I can't with this guy this motherfucker he is a fucking dud he is a dud it is he's just too much he's not too I wish he were more I wish he were more yeah Dermot Mulroney I feel like this is not our first encounter with Dermot Mulroney and it's just never been pleasant for me encountering Dermot Mulroney who I'm gonna probably accidentally

call Dylan McDermott because I don't know the difference between those two people Dylan Mulroney I mean and the names certainly don't help. Right. I mean, it is interesting. Whenever you watch rom-coms or movies, you know, generally directed at or marketed towards women and femmes from any era, you have movie stars who have endured. And then you have sort of like the white guy flavor of the month who 30 years from now, your daughter is like, who the fuck is Dermot Mulroney? Yeah. You know, like every generation has their D dermot mulroney yeah you know like every generation has their dermot mulroney's what if he was a listener oh my god what if he was crying

well i'm sure he's fine as an actor or whatever it's his character that's i'm sure he's fine i would issue a notes at papology if if i knew that that this slander got to Dermot Mulroney. Yeah. I'd be like, I am so sorry, Dermot. I didn't realize the power of my platform. I mean, he's our biggest fan for all we know. We're in the top 100 movie podcasts. Wow.

And I'm assuming Dermot Mulroney is listening to all 100 of them so you know whenever he gets around to this my apologies sir but boy what a flop character i mean although it did make me laugh a lot because well no wait okay what is the vectal test caitlin oh right right um it's a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. It was coined as a goof first appearing in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. It has many versions. The version we use is, do two characters of a marginalized gender have names do they speak to each other and is the conversation about something other than a man and we especially like it when it's a

narratively meaningful conversation right so we'll talk about that later but in the meantime i have to say one more thing about dermermot Mulroney. Yeah, please. Well, so this won't pass the Bechdel test. No, it won't. It won't. No, I was just thinking about it was making me laugh the surface level similarities that the Dermot Mulroney character has to my own dad in that he is a sports writer named Mike. Yes. Who sometimes struggles to emotionally connect.

And I was like, wow. But also I was like, was my dad like a supervillain? Was he a Dermot Mulroney type? No, I did love, I loved the detail that he worked at Sport Magazine. It was cracking. I didn't even notice. I couldn't stop noticing it.

I mean, it didn't come up that many times but the first time i was like thermit mulroney you clown you said sports wrong but no he works at sport magazine because later when julia roberts is sending her evil email she sends it to like editor-in-chief at sportmagazine.com. Oh, yeah. Like, you're just like, not sport magazine. Give me a fucking break. I love fake movie companies. They're the best. Yeah.

Today we're talking about My Best Friend's Wedding, a 1997 movie about two people who, like, should really just, like, they deserve each other. They deserve each other. Get out of here, you know, and let's let Cameron Diaz finish college, for crying out loud. Seriously my gosh they had me rooting for a billionaire's daughter this movie had me in the in the trenches what's your history with the movie Jamie so this is not a movie that I grew up with which is weird

I feel like I'm very hit and miss with irrational attachments to 90s and 2000s rom-coms, some I ride for. This is just not one I ever watched growing up. So I didn't see it until a couple of years ago. And I really did not care for it. And I still, sorry for fans of this movie. I understand objectively that this movie, and then reading a little bit more about the production history of this movie, made me at least appreciate what they were going for a little more. But I don't like it. I do think it is, on its face, a subversive and fun idea

for the movie star of the movie to be playing the villain of the movie in a rom-com. That's a fun idea. I'm on board for that. And it almost feels like Julia Roberts Olympics to play someone so deeply hateable and still be so likable due to being Julia Roberts. Interesting conceptually but I just like it just totally flopped so many things and even in a lot of the contemporary criticism or you know this movie turned 25 in 2022 so there were some reflective essays on it but I still don't see people calling out Dermot Mulroney's fucking character for being so like.

So I think that this movie was, you know, it written by a very like probably one of the most successful screenwriters of the 20th century, weirdly. But like it just doesn't come together. It just doesn't. And it doesn't come together in a way that I found like pretty confusing and aggravating and gross because for all of the discourse that has apparently been going around on around Julia Roberts and Cameron Dia it's the michael character where he is i think bar none the most evil character in the movie yeah and there's like you know i've seen criticism of it but not the degree i was expecting to over 25 years later it still seems to be like julia roberts is evil and it's interesting because of the ending it is interesting because of the ending. It is interesting because of the ending, but I still feel like at the end of the movie, Michael and Kimmy getting married is a terrible ending for especially Kimmy.

I found it so aggravating. Aggravating. Because there were moments where you're like, oh, maybe it's about to, but then it never does. And it has no interest in being critical of Michael. don't like it I found it very frustrating because there's elements of it that I thought should have been interesting and maybe under a more confident writing team could have been interesting but um yeah I think ultimately a waste of Julia Roberts time, in my opinion.

What's your history with this movie? I similarly did not grow up with it. This movie came out in 97. And that was famously the year Titanic came out. And so I didn't really have time for anything else besides Titanic. Oh, yeah, yeah. What else would you have been doing? Even though Titanic came out at the very end of 1997 i cleared my whole year in anticipation you were getting so hyped what else came out in 1997 i think it was like a kind of fun movie year oh you know what i take it back um you know you could have been seeing a hercules you could have been seeing disney's hercules you could have been seeing goodwill hunting or something sure one of my favorite movies also came out in 97 which is the full monty oh yeah but other than that it's kind of a flop

year for movies i think my favorite brother came out in 1997 and so that's important okay i just looked up 1997 movies and i remember do you i don't know anything about the movie as good as it gets i've seen it several times i'll answer you all your questions do you like it it is not my kind of movie at all okay so it's more that like i acknowledge that it's probably a good movie or i know it's a movie people like, but I am not a fan personally. So I've never seen it. But I for some reason had like the DVD cover is emblazoned in my mind, maybe because it was just like on sale a lot. I was like, Oh, yeah, that movie about Jack Nicholson falling in love with a little dog, because that's the cover. I was like, what could that movie be

about? It's just Jack Nicholson looking absolutely in love with this tiny dog. Okay, here's what I remember. He hates that dog and he puts it down a trash chute. This is the opposite of what I thought As Good As It Gets was about. I thought he loved that dog. Okay, I'll do this as quickly as I can. But good. This is going to be a chaos episode.

Good, good, good. So the dog, if I'm remembering correctly belongs to Greg Kinnear's character who is the neighbor of Jack Nicholson I didn't know he was in it I thought it was just Jack and the dog so no and Helen Hunt is in it as well of Twister fame okay and Jack Nicholson he's like a romance novelist but he also hates women he's like super misogynistic okay funny because it's true yeah and I think his neighbor is Greg Kinnear and Greg Kinnear is gay and I don't remember the relationship between him and Helen Hunt I don't know if they're friends I don't know the relationships I don't remember exactly how the dynamics work but I think Jack

Nicholson is in love with Helen Hunt and the reason I watched it so many times is because the Jack Nicholson character has OCD but it's depicted in a very like Hollywood way like touching the doorknob kind of way, like flipping on the light switches and things like that. But I like did a research project in high school on OCD. And I watched the movie as research. I hope that I was like, and the movie depicts it in a way that's not necessarily very authentic for most people. I don't know what I said. Who knows? It was the early 2000s. But anyway, you can't be held accountable. No. Point is, he hates the dog and he tries to kill it, basically. Well, that's certainly not what I thought As Good As It Gets was about. And I will not be watching it. I don't think it's the movie for you. Anyway, a disappointing movie overall in cinema. Right. But okay, so you were you were watching Titanic that year.

You were not watching My Best Friend's Wedding. OK, exactly. And I also want to acknowledge that this is generally a beloved movie. It was at the time. It was well received by critics. It was a huge box office hit. Yeah. People still ride for this movie.

I don't want to take that away from anyone. No, you're wrong, but it's OK. people still ride for this movie. I don't want to take that away from anyone. No, you're wrong, but it's okay. I think this is a rancid little bastard of a movie. I feel like we haven't like mutually ragged on a beloved movie in a while. This is going to be thrilling. And there are things I think that aren't necessarily redeemable about it, but are interesting. The various versions you pointed out. A gay character is a character that is explicitly gay.

I mean, I still have notes, but you know, like there's some things, but overall I'm just like kind of tired of being asked to empathize with or root for characters, especially awful men like Michael in this movie who are horrendous and I don't want to do it yeah that's the thing it's like Jules I don't know like regardless of gender I think it's the interesting gendered point is that we are rarely asked in the space of any movie to this day to root for a lead who is a woman and also is clearly in the wrong and

is being conniving and evil especially in this genre like I get it that's interesting Jules never won me over like there was no I don't know if it's like 1997 there were people who were rooting for her anyways or if they were just like it's interesting to watch and I know that there was like some cultural discourse over like people being overly critical we can talk about that in the production area where they were like if my daughter did this I would kick her out of my house and you're like all right relax but yeah being asked to root for two horrible people in a romantic comedy in a love triangle means the only character i like ends up with someone horrible and that is a non-starter for me that's not why i come to this genre i would watch like a erotic thriller if i wanted to watch a likable character get completely

fucked over well i was gonna say it's interesting that we're covering this movie right after his girl friday because they are both rom-coms that involve a love triangle with one character trying to you know win back or steal their ex-lover from their current fiancee it's true but i think my best friend's wedding is like almost less progressive than His Girl Friday, which is a movie that came out nearly 60 years earlier. I agree. I agree. I mean, you can listen to our His Girl Friday episode. I just everything about that movie just works for me better.

It's at least in part a performance thing because Dermot Mulroney, he's no Cary Grant, unfortunately. I just yeah, if Julia Roberts can't win me over, like we've got a problem at the base level of the movie, you know. So, yeah, well, I guess let's talk. I feel like people are but everyone's blood is boiling. Well, they're like they don't get it. They don't understand the subversive nature of 1997. And maybe you're right. Maybe you're right.

Who knows? Let's take a quick break while we all mull it over, shall we? 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 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. 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.

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It feels so good to be back. I know. Yes. Here is the freaking recap of My Best Friend's Wedding. All right, let's hear it. What do you got? We meet Julianne Potter. She's played by Julia Roberts.

Doing one of my favorite things, which is having a name so close to the actor so that they don't get confused or scared yeah she's like i will only play characters with my name but maybe plus a few extra letters i know i'm like have some faith in julia roberts she can remember a second name but they weren't ready no she is a restaurant critic basically she's the critic from ratatouille i wrote that too i was like it's like if the ratatouille critic was obsessed with my dad like it's such a weird movie for me she's in new york city ever heard of it and she gets a phone call from her alleged best friend michael o'neill who needs to talk to her urgently and she is at dinner with her friend george her actual best friend her actual best friend uh played by rupert everett of shrek 2 fame yes and jul Julianne tells him about how she and Michael had this like hot months of romance back in college,

although she broke it off, but they stayed best friends. And they swore an oath that by the time they were both 28. And then you're just like, oof, if they hadn't yet gotten married to other people that they would get married to each other and you're like brutal 28 you guys you guys even in 1997 it's a bummer that feels yeah but again one of the subversive things that like it maybe speaks to how binary gender swaps of movie tropes rarely ends up creating anything progressive, really. Because there's a lot of lines that Julia Roberts says that you would normally hear out of. I kept thinking I was like, oh, she's like doing Freddie Prinze Jr.

And she's all that kind of line reads where it's like there's not a bet but there is like these series of deceptions that she is driving at every single point she lies every word out of her mouth is a lie so she is the deceptor yeah that doesn't make it i don't know i just didn't it didn't win me over but it is interesting which is what we say about movies that we don't like uh-huh yeah anyway so she tells this to george and he's like well what if michael is calling you because you're both about to be 28 and he wants to marry you and she's like oh my god so she calls him back and she's like teehee remember that night that we made the oath about getting married to each other and he's like yeah but i'm calling to tell you that i met someone

and she and i are getting married this sunday four days away this movie is not shy to introduce a plot contrivance that much is for sure and it doesn't need to make any logical sense with like what is happening or what we're told people's relationships are something that really bugs me about this movie and a reason that his girl friday works for me in spite of very similar plot dynamics where two out of three people are evil and the nice person does get fucked over. But you understand that the two characters who are evil have this like unbelievable chemistry. Like, so even when they suck,

it is at very least interesting to watch, but I feel like we are only ever told that they're best friends. We're never shown why they're best friends. And so it's just like impossible, or at least it was, it was like impossible for me on every viewing of this movie to get on board with the fact

that they're actually best friends because they just feel so clearly not. And also he's trying to cheat on his fiance the whole movie, the whole movie. And they're like, Julia Roberts was really fun. And you're like, they're both fucked up. They should have ended up together. They deserve each other.

I kept getting hung up on the logistics of the wedding stuff because again it's like if you have a wedding you generally unless you're eloping which fine sounds like a great idea this is a billion dollar wedding literally this is like a rich guy's wedding right so cam So Cameron Diaz's family, her character's family are billionaires. They own the Chicago White Sox. White Sox. Wild. Plus like a media empire or something like that. They own Sport Magazine.

Do they not? Probably. So she doesn't know about the wedding of her, again again alleged best friend until four days until it's about to happen would they have not planned this wedding many many months in advance if not years yes spent all the money it would be a very opulent wedding you would think they're billionaires also billionaires are obviously evil horrid people and they don't like to mix class with other like this guy's a pretty working class guy like they would have like vetted the shit out of him I don't think they would have approved of the Michael character I'm just like see I originally because I forgot

the like minutiae of this movie but I thought like he was just inviting her really late because he wasn't sure if he wanted her there because he secretly loved her so I thought like he was just inviting her really late because he wasn't sure if he wanted her there because he secretly loved her so I thought it was like a last minute invite you're like well that's kind of interesting that could be the source of conflict between the two of them why didn't you invite me sooner but then yeah what less than 48 hours before the wedding Cameron Diaz has not yet chosen a maid of honor like this is and and you know obviously goes without saying you don't need a maid of honor but this is a very conventional wedding story we're being given this character would have a maid of honor and the reason that we're given she doesn't

have one makes no sense she's like I have no. She said her maid of honor fractured her pelvis. Yeah. She had one and then she got an injury. She had one friend. She had one. And then her only friend broke her pelvis, which just the way that Cameron Diaz's character was written was so all over the place because it was like, why does this 20 year old college student have not a friend to her name if we are told as the movie moves on that she's a very lovable person like why wouldn't she have friends of course she'd have friends if she's as nice as we understand she is by the end of the movie it makes no sense rich people buy friends she could have bought a maid of honor it just doesn't literally yeah i don't get it like why and again you're totally i didn't even think of that.

But like, yeah, how restrictive, you know, like this is like this rich family's royal wedding or whatever. They wouldn't let her get away with no maid of honor till two days before. They wouldn't have even let her marry this guy. Like, they should. You know what? Now I'm on the side. This is the other thing that was

getting frustrated I'm like I keep siding with the billionaires where I was like leave this sweet family alone well because they're not written to be billionaires no they like written to be like middle class from the midwest right they're not succession characters yeah I don't think the writer of the movie like understood what billionaires are like. Anyway. Well, as we'll talk about, there were so many changes made in this movie that I feel like stuff from past drafts were just not updated to reflect who the characters were supposed to be. That or they're like rich people. They don't have a thought in their heads, which can be very true.

Yeah. which can be very true. But in this way, it was like, it made me feel deeply sad for Kimmy. The way that like, we're told like, here is this woman who it seems like is a very sweet person. And then also in the like, conventional power broker sense has everything going for her, but has no friends.

She's surrounded by this wealthy family, none of whom have any interest or insight into her interior life. Because as this whole emotional journey is like, this pretty like fucked up thing is happening to Kimmy. No one around her seems to notice or care. And this is her beloved family. Care that her fiance is forcing her to drop out of college and follow him around the country.

That's something that like His Girl Friday is more progressive than that. Like it wasn't that we could listen to the episode, but there was never a point where it's like the idea that the lead woman in His Girl Friday, if you will. Hildy. Hildy. Yes. That Hildy was going to leave her profession. The movie feels that's not right.

And by the end of the movie, you know, whatever, through some blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, listen to the episode. But she is returning to her career. And she seems happy with that. But that like that detail that Kimmy is being forced to drop out of school because she's 20 years old and we are told she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to at all. And at the end we have no reason to believe

because Michael the character changes not a lick. Not at all. At least Julia. This is like at least Jules she's despicable. She's horrible. She does only horrible things. But at least she grows a little by the end and she has toicable. She's horrible. She does only horrible things, but at least she grows a little by the end. And she has to apologize. She apologizes.

She admits faults, things that male characters in her position almost never do. Whether you like her or hate her, I don't really like the character, but at least she does grow by the end of the movie. Michael stagnant. He's still going to make his 20 year old wife drop out of college. And it's just like,

I hate this guy. Okay. Sorry. We're at the beginning of the recap yeah all right so after this phone call with michael where he tells her that he's met someone and is getting married this makes julian realize that she's in love with michael and now she has four days to break up his wedding so that he will hopefully choose her. Stakes, stakes, stakes. Then we meet Michael.

This is Dolmert. Dolmert. He's crying again. Dermot. Our number one fan is crying again. Dermot Mulroney. And we meet his fiancee. Kimmy. Playmy played by Cameron Diaz also of Shrek fame who upon meeting Julianne asks her to be Kimmy's maid of honor because of the thing we just

discussed of her original maid of honor being injured And so they go to a dress fitting together. And then Michael walks in on Julianne in her bra and underwear. And he's like, awooga, hubba, hubba. And then you're just like, I, no matter what happens, I will never like this character. Nothing will make me like this character. Nothing.

She's visibly uncomfortable he barges in he doesn't apologize he stays and then he hits on her meanwhile his wife in the future it's like in the next room but because he expresses this like hint of attraction toward julianne she's like oh okay i got this i can pull this off so julianne decides to try to sabotage kimmy and michael's relationship julianne tells him that she's super comfortable showing affection now she reminisces with michael in front of Kimmy to make her feel jealous and excluded. She takes the couple to a karaoke bar to humiliate Kimmy because she knows that Kimmy's a horrible singer. But her plan doesn't work because everyone finds her horrible singing to be endearing. Then something with Michael's job happens and it's kind of confusing but as we said he's a sports

writer and julianne orchestrates this plan to convince kimmy to get her dad to offer michael a job at his billionaire company which julianne knows that michael will be insulted by and he'll think that well yeah because he's her best friend which we're told every 10 minutes or so to justify the like whole chasm of like no chemistry between these two actors right right so he proceeds to act like the biggest asshole in this scene which i want to unpack a little bit later but basically he's screaming at kimmy being like oh you think i'm not good enough this scene is awful and i feel like it's made out to be maybe a class issue but it's not a class issue he's being terrible to her he's berating her he's telling her my ambitions are more important than yours and if you can't accept that we can't get married and like you're just like this guy needs to be put through a human-sized shredder

and like i cannot believe that he and we can talk about because it's not that women did not have hands on this script as we'll get to but the fact that this movie was like written and driven by men is so obvious because it's like imagine a woman doing anything that michael does throughout this movie they would be eviscerated. Like he is worse than Julianne, but there is like nothing in 1997 that I could find that was critical of him. It was all critical of Julianne, who is bad, but it's the,

oh God, he's so terrible in that scene. I found it very upsetting. Cause, and also like Kimmy is like crying, bawling. Julianne, this asshole is like sitting to the side, like, ha ha ha, it's working. And you're like, I hate you fucking clowns. You guys are clowns.

He's being emotionally and verbally abusive to Kimmy. In public, too. You're like, oh my God. It's really upsetting. I hate this character. But this plan of Julianne's also ends up backfiring because Kimmy apologizes and grovels and said, you're right. I was so wrong. We'll do things your way. But like as someone that young in an emotionally abusive relationship, like that can happen. And it's presented in this very lighthearted, like, I don't know.

I just was very upset by their relationship dynamic, like consistently. Yeah. And the scene ends with like, oh, no, Julianne's plan was thwarted because Michael and Kimmy kiss and make up and everything seems fine again you're like i hope the bean falls on her i hope the chicago bean which i don't even know if it existed then but i wish it just uprooted and rolled over on her and crushed her i'm saying michael too what if they got killed by the bean and that was the end god well because like everything's fine between michael and kimmy what that actually means is that michael will keep the job that he has but still force kimmy

to drop out of school kimmy's still dropping out of school kimmy's still being like i think forced to move away from her family something like that it reminded me of the first twilight movie where bella the reason she moves to forks washington is because her mom gets that baseball player boyfriend and so he's always going to be on the road and her mom wasn't going to be around because she was going to travel with him so bella was like i have to go meet some vampires i don't know if we had the brain cells to talk about it at the time but it's like if bella's mom was in that secure of a relationship like i would have waited for my daughter to graduate high school come on it's not an emergency it's not a fire it's a minor league baseball boyfriend grow up anyways okay then julian's friend george shows up to help julian and he's like just tell

michael the truth tell him that you love him and she's about to do that but then she sees an opportunity to try to make michael jealous by pretending to be engaged to george and now we have a classic dated contrivance where we're laughing because he's gay he's gay right and she goes along with this lie for a while including during a very long scene of a rehearsal lunch where everyone is singing i say a little prayer by diana warwick good for dne Warwick. I hope she got a fat check for this movie. But like, I mean, it has no bearing on. I understand why like it was like funny and jarring at the time.

I as someone with no nostalgia for this movie, I think that seems annoying and weird. So long. So this movie is written by Ronald Bass, right? Very, very famous writer has won a lot of awards and written a lot of influential movies some of which we've covered some of which we probably will have to at some point I'm talking Rain Man Sleeping with the Enemy at the Joy Luck Club Waiting to Exhale Dangerous Minds My Best Friend's Wedding Stepmoms How Stella Got Her Groove Back like very influential writer who and the reason I say that there were women's hands on this,

where he famously had a small writer's room of younger women who would work with him who were called the Ronettes and the Ronettes, which is like a, whatever old timey Motown joke. But anyways, Ronald Bass, who was older this way, he wrote this movie in his 50s the reason i think that he was in some ways able to write contemporary movies is because he had young

writers collaborating with him i don't know what the full deal with the renettes is i know that we've brought it up before i know that i've like talked about it on the show before. I don't remember what movie we would have been. It might've been when Stella got her groove back that the concept of the Ronettes first came up. But anyways, this scene was a huge point of contention for the director, PJ Hogan, and Ronald Bass and the Ronettes. Ronald Bass and the Ronettes were like,

why do you want to add a full musical number in the middle of a scene? And PJ Hogan was like, trust me, it'll be awesome. And ultimately, I mean, I guess audiences loved that scene, but I think Ronald Bass and the Ronettes were correct. I thought it was annoying, but I'm a hater for this movie. If I was enjoying this movie and then that happened, maybe I would like it. Maybe.

But you're telling me that a family of billionaires goes to a wedding rehearsal lunch at some red lobster ass seafood restaurant called Barry the Kudas? No. Well, the thing is, like, speaks to how little we know about Kimmy, because if I'm being generous, if they're a family that's like new money, right? And like new money, like Molly Brown, Molly Brown style, Molly would go to a red lobster in spite of being very wealthy. So like, maybe they're a family that came from humble beginnings and then got a lot of money. But we never have enough insight into the family to understand is this like old money generational wealth? Like could this make sense?

But I just found it weird for how many of these characters there are. Yeah, Kimmy's, I mean, not like I was like, I need to't Kimmy that could better characterize this family vibe wise would be really helpful like I just don't understand why she is the way she is unless it's just like she seems pretty emotionally neglected by her family but we're also supposed to be like they're so funny because they're written like cartoon characters especially like the weird cousins or whatever I what was going on there? Anyways, sorry. That scene, it's annoying. So frustrating. Okay, so then George leaves and Julianne tells Michael that she and George are not actually engaged, that she had broken it off with George a while ago. And so, you know, another lie.

But Michael is like, well, that's good because I actually got really jealous when I thought you were going to marry George. And she's like, OK, maybe this is working. Then Julianne and Michael are on a boat together. The vibe is very romantic. They're slow dancing. They're talking about their feelings and their past relationship. She almost tells him that she loves him, but does not. Then the thing with Michael's job comes up again, because this obstacle has to happen twice for some reason.

I don't know. Where Julianne sneaks into the office of Kimmy's dad, Walter, and writes an email to Michael's current boss from Walter at Sport Magazine at Sport Magazine, asking him to basically fire Michael so that he'll accept a job at Walter's company. But then Julian decides against sending this email. But the email accidentally gets sent anyway. This fucking plot-ass email, like, it's so silly where she, I don't know how hard it was to X out a window or, like, to not save the draft or, like, whatever. It's a very, whatever.

It's very plotty. And I know that this movie is, like, operating on farce logic. And so, like, when we put it under a super close microscope, like it's supposed to be a farce, but it's not working as a farce. So all of these plot logic things stick out like a sore thumb. Why is the email stay open to sport magazine? Come on.

Yeah. Well, cause she saves it for later. And then Walter is like, I had some email drafts. I had saved. Hey, assistant,

send them all out. And that's how it gets sent. But like, I just have to move on. Okay. Yeah. Michael finds out about this email that he doesn't realize Julianne had sent. He thinks it's coming from his future father-in-law. And he thinks it was Kimmy's doing that like she put her dad up to this and he gets

so furious that he calls the wedding off but nobody tells Kimmy's family that the wedding is off so Michael goes to the wedding brunch I guess to handle things face to face with Kimmy although he decides he will marry Kimmy after all after a series of like hey Julianne go be my messenger and like you go talk to my future wife and then like she's just flying back and forth and I'm like you're adults well Kimmy barely is but like yeah Kimmy I would say is she is an adult I don't want to like treat her like her she is an adult but she's 20 like her brain is still developing yeah julia robertson dermot mulroney they don't have any such excuse they're just grown people fucking around with a college student's entire students entire life. And for what? For what? Anyway, it's decided that the wedding is back on. But then Julianne finally works up the courage to tell Michael that she loves him. And then she

surprise kisses him, which Kimmy sees. So she runs off. Right. And it's the rare surprise kiss where the surprise element of it is of consequence, which I thought was interesting. Right. And it's the rare surprise kiss where the surprise element of it is of consequence, which I thought was interesting. Right. Yeah, true. So now Michael is chasing Kimmy through Chicago. Julianne is chasing Michael. Julianne catches up with Michael at the train station. Kimmy is nowhere to be found. And Julianne confesses to writing that email and so he's furious and he's like you're puss and pond scum and blah blah blah but the way he's furious is still like flirtatious where he's like you're like it feels like a kink discussion where it's like you're a piece of shit you're a fucking scum and you're just like what is going on with you guys just

get on a train and go to hell like drive take the next amtrak to the core of the earth you fucking losers um yeah i hate them uh anyway julian realizes that she lost. Right. And that she needs to set things right. So she helps Michael to find Kimmy and they bring her back to the wedding place. And the wedding happens. Michael marries Kimmy. And then Julianne is at the reception. She's like, wow, I did the right thing, even though for the past 90 minutes i did everything wrong and then she gets a phone call from george who surprise is there at the wedding and then they

dance and that's the end of the movie so let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss 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 unhurts

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Where to begin? Well, if it's okay, let's begin at the beginning. The beginning of this movie moment one i don't like it the beginning of the movie makes no sense to me it is you know it is like a vibes kind of

introduction but it's just like brides with bridesmaids singing wishing and hoping and there's no it's nothing it's about nothing And it's presenting this very, I mean, I guess you could say it's presenting this very idyllic idea of like the white American bride. And that is like the rug pull of this movie is that who we think is our heroine is not going to get that. But like, I found that, again, I just didn't like it. I didn't think it did anything. But, okay, I wanted to offer context for this movie. And I say that with also knowing that I think it's interesting. It doesn't really change my opinion of the movie, but I do think it's interesting.

This was published in Vulture. It is an excerpt from a book called From Hollywood with Love by Scott Maslow. I haven't read it, but it is a book about the production and the subversive elements of My Best Friend's Wedding. It is interesting because I didn't realize another movie that's been on my to watch list forever is Muriel's Wedding. We've gotten a lot of requests for it. So many. And this movie was directed by the director of Muriel's Wedding. So he's also kind of Mr. Wedding. And I guess that he got this movie in part because Julia Roberts had really liked Muriel's Wedding. So he's an Australian guy who directs movies about weddings. Something to know. This was a Ronald Bass script.

He obviously was already very successful. He'd won Oscars. He'd written all of these very successful movies with the Ronettes, question mark. And there is a passage in the story I think is interesting because it does boil down what at least on its face was subversive about this movie at the time. So I'll quote from the piece. It's describing when P.J. Hogan got the script.

When Hogan sat down to read the script, he discovered to his surprise that my best friend's wedding was a closer cousin to Muriel's wedding than he had expected. What really surprised me was that it wasn't really very romantic, he says. In fact, my experience of reading the screenplay was, wow, I'm not sure I like her very much. And usually in romantic comedies, everything the main character does in order to win love and find happiness is totally justified, even if it's kind of awful. What Meg Ryan does to Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle is kind of awful. And as I was reading it, I was thinking, God, it's that damn romantic comedy problem. She's kind of awful. And I got to the end and she didn't get the guy. And I thought, oh my God, that's the point. This takes the form and smashes it on the floor.

Most romantic comedies are about how all's fair in love and war, which is something I've never really believed in. And this was a screenplay about how all is not fair in love and war it was a romantic comedy that wasn't very romantic i think that this is on its face basically true right like yeah i'd agree but again it just feels like every discussion i've seen of those elements of this movie are undercut by a lack of insight into who these characters really are, the tropes that do still appear, and the fact that I think that the male lead of this movie is just like irredeemably horrible. And so I like the fact that he and I would rather he end up alone. And like, not ideal for Kimmy either way.

But I would like a more just outcome to this because I feel like, you know, Julian ending up alone was perceived by audiences at the time as, wow, a sort of unusually just outcome to a romantic hijinks kind of movie. For sure. And the other thing that i learned about the production from this essay was that they had to reshoot the ending more than once and that test audiences originally there was a lot of pressure put on ronald bass to have julianne end up with someone so every draft of the movie does end up with her not getting the, you know, Dermot Mulroney. Okay. But the original ending had her meeting.

Oh, my gosh. What's the guy from Sex and the City and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, John Corbett. Oh, yeah. So in the original ending, John Corbett shows up and she meets John Corbett. She still calls George and she's like, oh, this sucks. I'm lonely. I lost the movie. And he's like, maybe there's someone awesome. Like George doesn't come to the wedding at the end. She just meets a guy named John Corbett. It kind of reminded me of the end of 500 Days of Summer, another annoying movie. About a villain who is positioned as the

protagonist. Yeah. Yes. And at the end of that, you know, he meets a girl named Autumn. And you're like, great. Now he's going to ruin her life. Be weird to her. Like, yeah. So that was the original ending because there was a lot of pressure from producers of like, it's Julia Roberts. She has to end up with somebody, which is an inherently sexist trope.

But audiences, test audiences hated that ending, which again is kind of complicated, but they were just like, in a way that felt like maybe a little sexist as well, where they were like, this woman deserves nothing. Like, you know, maybe an overcorrection, but they didn't like the ending. And also in the original ending,

there is never a scene where Kimmy stands up for herself. I guess that that baseball stadium climax was added, but audiences didn't like that Kimmy never advocated for herself the entire movie. So I guess that that was because of poor test screenings that that scene was added, which I do think is interesting and says, know how you feel about it good bad or indifferent is up to you but like does say something about 1997 like the things that people were responding to because I think that like the scene where Kimmy stands up for herself it's not enough because it's still ultimately undercut by the plot of the movie which I guess makes more

sense once you know that it wasn't originally there. But I am glad that that scene is there. You know, I just wish that Kimmy's character was able to recognize how this was not the fault of one person. That like Julianne certainly deserved to have a new asshole ripped for her, fine. But the fact that it is very much presented as like julianne's the other woman and the other woman narrative always erases any fault

of the man that she's going back to and so that scene was again i see what they were trying to do but it's still like this movie just like doesn't work if you treat michael as as on the chopping block for morality as kimmy or julianne is but he's not so it just yeah but anyways that's the production stuff yeah very interesting shall we kind of go character by character yeah let's do it starting with i guess julianne not julia julianne not julia roberts no julianne she's presented as a bit of a guy's gal definitely yeah she's not like the other girls she they spell this out in dialogue that she's not up for anything conventional or that's assumed to be a female priority, including marriage, romance or love. She hates weddings. She's only cried three times in her life. And this is again.

Yeah. Just like quality is frequently attributed to men. Not based in nothing. Comes from somewhere. But like being like, isn't it cooler when it's a girl? I mean, and it's weird because I sort of, you know, not completely remembering how the movie goes specifically. It's very weird that like Julia Roberts is presented as a guy's gal. And then Cameron Diaz is presented as no one's gal. And so there's just not room for any friendships between women by design. Like it's so I thought that Cameron Diaz was going to be presented as a girl's girl pejorative.

But they can't even do that. They're just like, for some reason, no one likes this sweet wealthy conventionally attractive model everyone hates her you're like what what are you talking about it's more just that she's so undercooked as a character that yeah there's no rhyme or reason to why she doesn't have more friends i just feel so bad for i feel i'm overreacting with Kimmy because I just feel protective of her well because she's also 20 and she's not even of legal drinking age and she's still in college

she can't even drink at her own wedding this should not be happening a plot contrivance that I felt neutrally towards it's just a rom-com thing is that Julie Roberts is of course a writer her love interest also a writer her actual best friend george also a writer does this ever come into the plot are they ever seen writing

other than one evil email no these are the jobs there are three jobs these kinds of people can have. Writer with infinite PTO is one of the jobs. And also her boss is taking PTO to do various hijinks. Yeah. He flies from New York to Chicago twice in a matter of two days. There is no one I love in the world. Once? Sure. Twice? there is no one I love in the world at once sure twice but that's because that's because in the original script he doesn't fly back the second time he never comes back and then

Rupert Everett's character was testing so well that's why they ended up deciding to bring him back which I think is one of the more effective subversive things that happens in the movie is that like whatever that like friendship can be just as fulfilling a thing as what you're told you're supposed to be doing at a certain stage in your life and there are other ways to find joy and fulfillment and I appreciate that message but it was added basically in post. Like it was kind of there because people really liked Rupert Everett versus anything else. Yeah, right. And back to the Julianne guy's girl only has friends who are men. And then when she meets Kimmy, the rest of the movie hinges on I mean there's like varying

degrees of what we see here where there's like the scene at karaoke where Julianne is like deliberately being cruel to Kimmy and like trying to exclude her from the conversation trying to make her feel jealous things like that other times she's being more pleasant to her but it's because julianne is like conspiring and needs kimmy's help but really she's just using kimmy to try to get michael to hate his own fiance like there's all these things that she does any way you look at it it boils down to like this is a narrative about two women who are competing against each other over the affection same of a man loser exactly because there's that scene where and this is understandable but like i mean not kimmy's

behavior in the scene where she like stops an elevator to be like i'm jealous of you right but like she expresses that to julianne which i think is honestly like an interesting thing right i don't hate that and i feel like the way it was actually written and the way it's introduced in the movie i thought like the direction of it was weird but like on its face it's not something you're expecting like i feel like that was the first indication that like kimmy is smarter and more emotionally intelligent than we are being encouraged to give her credit for because we're seeing all of these tropes she's young she's friendless she's a bad driver because question mark like women because she's too rich or a woman to drive like i don't really know what the joke was there.

But like, you know, we're basically being thought like she's a spoiled brat. Right. And she doesn't even realize what's going on. She's a brainless. Like, I feel like they're just playing on blonde tropes. They're playing on rich girl tropes. They're playing on young woman tropes. And then they do bring that to a screeching halt. And we know that Kimmy, of course, she's 20, but she was not actually born yesterday.

Like she does realize that this is a weird dynamic and that her asking Julianne to be her maid of honor is kind of this overcorrection made out of insecurity. And she's honest about that which is more emotionally intelligent than the other two demonstrate the entire movie where it's like yes is admitting to i mean it's kind of a confusing too because it's like she's also not wrong it's not like she's being paranoid or i don't know but like right then that introduces like she is threatened by this other woman, which is such a frequent thing that like there are two primary women characters in this movie and they are pitted against each other. And also in the world of this movie, that is true. Like he's like emotionally cheating on Kimmy with Julianne in several scenes with the elevator scene i think that yeah it was over the top but at its core what happens in that scene i wish it had just happened in maybe a room but it's a rom-com it had to

happen in in a stomped elevator while julia roberts was having a panic attack but what kimmy communicates there is pretty vulnerable and reasonable and yeah just demonstrates like she can read the room like this is weird and it is the scene that pissed me off the most is when I forget what they're on their way to but like all three of them are in a car and then Julia Roberts and Dermot Moroney just get out of the car and go on a date yeah and kimmy feels weird about it she's like are you sure should we should we do this are you sure yeah and they're like yeah we're gonna go on a date see you later sucker and i was like what the fuck like it i felt so horrible for her where she clearly did not want them to, and understandably, did not want them to get out of the car and go on a date due to they were getting into a monogamous marriage the next day.

Yeah. But then Dermot Mulroney just goes on a date. Where are the essays about that? Because, yes, yes, Julianne is being 4D chess pto ratatouille critic like she's being bad she's acting out but like dermot maroney is not being dragged out of the car he's like yes i would like to go on a date on this the evening of my marriage like he's being bad and he's being flirtatious the entire time they're together openly in front of her his fiance and her family and you're like a true billionaire family would have him killed yeah like they would just have him die under mysterious they would chapaquiddick him

like off of in the like chicago river he would get chappaquiddicked yeah it's just so frustrating the scene that really and we already alluded to this but just the worst thing I've ever seen is this is the scene where Kimmy pitches oh why don't you work for my dad and the way he lashes out he screams at kimmy accusing her of lying he's like why don't you start by being honest for one second and she's like i am you're like excuse you what about the rest of the table right and to kimmy's credit she says what like all of a sudden i'm supposed to drop out of school forget forget my family, forget my career, forget about all the things I had planned for my life. And he responds, well, forgive me for screwing up your plans. I'm just glad that I'm hearing about this before it's too late. What am

I supposed to do with my life, huh? I work a low paying, zero respect job, which I happen to love. And then Julianne tries to interject saying like hey michael maybe this is actually a good opportunity for you and he's like oh yeah well how come you never took some sellout job that's because that's not you and that's not me either just say it i'm not good enough for you kimmy and she's now crying at this point. She's like, I never said that. And she didn't. She didn't. And then he continues to lay into her. He's like, fine, I'm the sexist and sensitive asshole.

And it's like, yeah, correct. And now Kimmy is bawling. She's pleading, like groveling at his feet, being like, you're so right. I was so wrong we settled this i reneged it wasn't fair you have to forgive me blah blah blah and it's just like no kimmy you like you started out like it's this started out in a way because she's again she's advocating for herself which was at julianne's suggestion though too it was like it wasn't even really her idea to advocate for herself which just sucks and it's like how whatever inherently anti-woman the character of julianne is where she has no issue with like the only relationship we see her have with another woman

is an attempt on her life basically it's just so sad it's so sad so upsetting and then this is followed by a scene where julianne tells george how wonderful she thinks michael is and it's like if i saw my best my quote-unquote best friend speak to their fiancee the way that michael speaks to and treats kimmy i'd be likeified. I have to get a new best friend because this person is evil. Yeah. And the fact that like the subtext of that scene is that this dynamic has been was like Julianne's idea. I feel like a lot of why the movie is encouraging us to think Michael is a good guy is first of all, because it was written and directed by men. But also because I feel like there's this implication that his emotionally abusive behavior is only happening because Julianne set him up to do that. And that's just like,

not how people work. Because the question that she quote unquote, like tricked kimmy into asking was not even irrational like it was it was julianne being like oh i know what will trigger my emotionally abusive friends abuse tactics let me do that and then she does and it happens and she says nothing and you're like i hate her and it's so miserable it's miserable i hate it um and meanwhile like in that scene kimmy is once again being the only honest character in the movie which also introduces kind of this dichotomy where michael ends up with i don't know it sucks because it's like julianne is objectively an asshole like i don't think that like i think that some of the over-the-top reaction to her of like burn the witch was like well no no let's not kill her she's an asshole i'm not like eager for her to have a reward for all of this bad behavior

but i feel like it also does introduce this like because there's no criticism of Michael and he goes with like the woman who is more demure and more willing to bow to his will. And like things that we know Julianne Julianne's not giving her career up for a guy. Of course not. Like there's nothing about her that would indicate that. But Kimmy will and so that sort of makes her a like morally superior like it just felt like the things that Kimmy was willing to sacrifice because she never ends up getting those things back it like is pulled into this idea of like what is a morally good woman look like in a way that feels really regressive? And again, like you're saying, like behind his girl Friday that came out 60 years or so before this. And you're just like pretty fucking bleak.

Yeah, because the movie ends in a way that we are to assume Michael is making zero compromises. He's expecting his wife to make every compromise. And we're all just supposed to be okay with that. I mean, it doesn't make anything that Hildy does to her poor fiance, who she's just like, batting around like a fucking cat toy the whole movie it doesn't make it less emotionally abusive or like less shitty what she does i think why it works is a number of things first of all the two assholes end up together and good for them she is not forced to give up her career and at least at very very late also all the performances are better the direction is better the script is better this always helps um but at least you know the person who she's fucking over is an adult you know like right it does feel like ultimately someone who has very recently become an adult

is being forced to sacrifice their future for someone we understand to be an emotionally abusive emotional cheater but again the thing with the surprise kiss right the surprise kiss and the whole george like well did he kiss you back did he kiss you back which is the first time i've heard a surprise kiss interrogated on screen which is interesting yeah but the fact that he doesn't kiss her back is made as a wholesale everything else he's done doesn't count because he didn't kiss her back and you're like that is just like ridiculous that sucks yes he's given such a carte blanche i have another thought yeah you're ready i'm sorry if like i'm talking too much. No, I'm ready. This movie got me worked up. It got me pissed off.

Okay. In defense of Julianne. Okay. I can't defend any of her actions, but something that I think is interesting, I noticed it, where part of what is subversive about this movie, and I think effectively subversive,

is that the villain is the main character, is the movie star, and is a woman. These are all things we don't normally see in a movie in this genre. True. Okay. I am glad that Julianne was, like, had to confront the severity of her actions.

I am glad that Kimmy, like we were talking about, it only goes halfway because Kimmy is only calling Julianne out as if she is the only perpetrator here when there are two people perpetrating this. And the more consequential person is about to ruin her life. Yes. But, you know, I'm not upset that Julianne was called out for her behavior. I think that makes narrative sense I do think that most men in that same role and position would not have to answer for this so severely and I don't think that a man in this character's position would have to meaningfully apologize I mean like they have

Julia Roberts on her knees being called the worst piece of shit who's ever taken breath and like as a rom-com viewer seeing a woman in this position for like if not the first time but one of the first times it feels like okay so if we're putting a woman in the villain role she's going to have to spend the last 15 minutes eating shit at unprecedented rates where you know if you put freddie prince jr he's like yeah so i've been lying to you and that's why your life sucks do you want to be my girlfriend like it might be i don't even really have a like moral thing because i don't think that this character deserves to be let off the hook for what she's done but i do feel like the reason that,

or at least part of the reason that she, we're really meant to sit in the consequences of her actions is because it's a woman in this role. Right, and because women are expected to be morally upstanding and they're not allowed to misbehave. And just the standard for behavior for women is very different than it is for men i also think it's interesting that the apology that she gives to michael again on her knees groveling insulting herself calling herself pond scum blah blah blah versus the apology slash acknowledgement of her behavior that she gives to Kimmy in the bathroom of the

stadium is very different. She kind of doesn't really even apologize to Kimmy. She just says, like, yeah, I did all these bad things, but I lost. So, okay. And then you're like, Kimmy, like, no, forgives her and hugs her. And she's like, oh, my God, blah, blah, blah. But it's like a very different apology slash like a non apology that Julianne gives to Kimmy. And I think that she owes her a far more significant apology. I totally agree. Kimmy is owed an apology by both characters in this movie. And we certainly don't see Michael apologize for any way. And based on how he talks to her, he never will. And you're totally right. Like the point of that scene being added was for Kimmy to stand up for herself in some way and for Julianne to be called out explicitly by

the person who is hurting the most from this. But it's like Kimmy doesn't ultimately really get anything out of that scene. She does get to, you know, the catharsis of being like, you fucking suck, which is true. And like you have publicly humiliated me on purpose in spite of the fact that I am a stranger and almost a child and it works on paper but yeah if you think about the consequences how does Julianne respond she's mostly embarrassed that she's been humiliated like this it doesn't feel like she's genuinely feeling remorse for what she's done she's just upset that she's being yelled at in a bathroom and she's upset and this is why like i mean and i don't know at this point i really

don't know how this character is being written because this character is being rewritten but i don't know if she really feels bad about what she's done or she's just embarrassed that she lost you know like at the end of the movie I do sort of get the feeling that like she has grown in that at the beginning of the movie, she thought she could do this. And at the end of the movie, she realizes that she couldn't. But I still am unclear. And again, this is like a valueless thing. Like if you like Julianne, like because everyone does fuck up. Not like this, but everyone does fuck up. Like I feel like plenty of people have done things that they are embarrassed about in hindsight romantically.

Right. Sure. And sometimes it does involve hurting other people. Blah, blah, blah. Rarely this bad. Rarely this evil, I will say. There is a change in her character from the beginning to the end of the movie but by the end i was just like i cannot tell if she feels bad about what she's done or she's just embarrassed

that she lost i don't know yeah and i don't even think that like if at the end of the day she's like i'm a little evil and i'm just pissed that i lost this round like i can accept that whatever i don't need her to be morally perfect. But I just, like, it wasn't clear to me which it was. And also, I'm like, she's supposed to be friends with Michael after this? Absolutely not.

You know, like, this is the last time she'll see either of these people. Yeah. I wonder if this will affect her relationship with George because George witnessed her be pretty awful to several people and if he were any upstanding person he'd be like hey julianne uh maybe stop trying to break up a

marriage see if i'm george i would extort her for money okay i would be like you better not ever give any of my friends a bad restaurant review you're wrapped around my finger you're gonna give my friend remy the rat the best review he's ever seen wow yeah rupert everett was he in ratatouille because he should have been oh i'm not sure but let's talk about george while on this subject. So he is a gay character and is played by a real life gay actor. A real life gay actor? Yes. Oh my gosh. Which is something that I found surprising for a mainstream movie in the 90s.

First of all, that it has a openly gay character at all. Yes. And that they cast a gay actor to play that character. Because as we've discussed on countless occasions in this era, and obviously before, if there were gay characters present in a movie at all, they were often either the butt of a homophobic joke, they were written and performed using reductive stereotypes, they were not allowed to be explicitly queer, and they were just queer coded, any number of things like this. All of that is generally avoided with the George character. However, you know, he's only there to serve the story of the straight protagonist. He doesn't have any romantic storyline of his own.

No. It's a very half step in the right direction where his character is adhering to some tropes and others not. I do think that he is ultimately, he and Kimmy are the moral centers of the movie. And that George, I don't know. know i mean he's a little chaotic right like at certain points he calls julian in to reflect and then other times he's like what if you did this convoluted email scheme you know like so he is a little all over the place he's flawed like any of us and he does yes like you're saying have unlimited pto to assist his straight friend in various nefarious schemes um which is another very tropey type of trope but i agree that it is a i don't even know

if it's a step in the right direction certainly unusual for the time that there is an openly gay character played by i actually i don't know that Rupert Everett was completely out at this time I've seen different versions of the timeline and I didn't want to pathologize about it but he had played many gay and queer characters in the past it was something he was known for and he also because of how gay actors are typed played a lot of villains so that was something kind of interesting about the casting process where i forget who it was but someone was like oh rupert everett has to play george and they were like why he always plays a villain who dies and they're like listen he has to play george and then

he ended up getting cast and i think he's like very much a high point of the movie there are all these trips i mean even at the beginning of like the thing that had me rolling my eyes the most outside of the fact that obviously, the thing I'll say that's good is that we know he has a life outside of Julia Roberts because we see him at dinner parties he's throwing. We see him at events. We see him doing different things,

but he's not allowed to have a relationship. Well, he mentioned someone as though he's talking about a partner yes i forget the man's name but he's referring to we never see him right or if we do see him we don't realize that's his partner because that's how under thought that relationship i don't even think it's under thought i think it's strategic about how gay characters could or could not be shown in mainstream movies at that time but i don't know because you also think about the birdcage came out around this time too it wasn't like a time like 90s popular movies were kind of a crap shoot we're about to cover uh priscilla queen of the

desert like it wasn't verboten but they're clearly i don't know if it's i'm assuming it's the studio but like there clearly is a line that like well well, this is as much representation as we'll allow. We would not allow a visible partner. Right. Certainly they can't touch or kiss. That would be. No. The thing that like really solidified like, OK, this movie is has I remember George's character because he is one of the more fun characters, even though even Rupert Everett can't save how annoying I find the karaoke scene not the karaoke actually I like the

karaoke scene with Cameron Diaz the Dionne Warwick yeah that scene the lunch singing the song yeah I thought that the Cameron Diaz karaoke scene is very charming anyways even though she should divorce him I do feel like Kimmy is like sort of a future Real Housewives cast member. OK, maybe five, like 20 years down the line. Anyways. Yeah. With George, the thing that really sold me on like, OK, this movie is not going to cross a certain line of representation is when in the introduction scene or no, I think the

first time that she's in chicago and he's in new york and they're on the phone he says the word gay whispered while he's at home he says even though i'm gay and you're like you're at your apartment like that's that is the values of the movie that's not you it was just like okay you can say gay but quietly you know and that's how this is represented unless he's like making a joke about how he's had to conceal that part of himself i could maybe see that i think that that's even likely but i just feel like the representation of a gay character in this movie is gay, but whispered instead of stated. But again, whispered in 1997 wasn't nothing. that had openly gay characters in a relationship that did tremendously well and were very loved

because the birdcage came out the year before this movie so i think that it is still very like more than you're used to for the time certainly but also like this i think goes below the bar for even 1997 in terms of representation just because of the lack of a life that George has outside of it. I do like that he's kind of the moral center of the movie. I kind of like his and Julianne's relationship. I like that he's her boss. I like that he is like they're they're both a bit nefarious, but like they're just kind of trying to i don't know i don't dislike their friendship i think they'll stay friends forever and i think he'll be like this is julianne she's my friend who's kind of evil you know like when she goes to his wedding in the future when it's

legal that will be her actual best friend's wedding yeah it'll be like 2018 or something it'll be yeah it'll be 2015 and they'll be getting married in new york and she'll be like oh this is my best friend's wedding not that i want a sequel another version of this movie i don't although this movie was i think adapted twice internationally like it was so successful that there was a i believe a chinese version of it and then one other what am i wait i think there's a version that came out in mexico yes just a couple years ago in 2019 yeah so it is a very enduring thing it was almost a musical and a bollywood movie was inspired partially okay by this movie so and i honestly i mean as frustrating as i find this movie it does feel weirdly old hollywood in the like internal

mechanics of it but unfortunately having just covered his girl friday it might have worked better and more subversively a half century before it came out because it was just doing nothing for me with 1997 this is not a plot that belongs in the age of computers yeah there was almost a broadway musical that came out but covid thwarted it and yeah i don't know do you have anything else to talk about for this movie it's's a very, very white movie. Yes. People of color have nothing in terms of character or even spoken lines. And in all white New York and Chicago, which is a really a two hander for famously diverse cities that in this movie are only white. I was grossed out by the scene where Juliannene they're in like the whatever like box at a white

socks game and she's talking to michael's teenage brother scott played by christopher masterson the brother of disgraced sex criminal dann Masterson. Fun fact. Julianne is like, you have to dance with me at the wedding. And she holds him really close. And it's just like, why are we normalizing adults being sexually suggestive toward teenagers? Which is objectively,

you know, give or take a couple months, what Michael is doing. He's marrying a 20 year old. I hate these. I hate these freaks. They're freaks. Yes. The other quick thing was Kimmy describing her other bridesmaids

as debutante sisters from Nashville who are basically vengeful sluts, which does pass the Bechdel test because she's describing them too i also clocked that to julianne which also again just speaks to the dissonance of kimmy's character because kimmy at the end of the movie would never say that but for some reason kimmy at the beginning of the movie would say that because we're supposed to hate her at the beginning and so she says awful things and like but there's no like this movie i feel like really i don't like

it on the first watch but on the second watch it's somehow even more frustrating because it's so obvious that really every character but basically every character that isn't julianne or michael are written moment to moment to serve the plot and there's no consistency because i really don't think third act kimmy would talk about people that way like she's the sweetest girl in the world by the end of the movie she's flawless which is another thing where it's like oh the person who deserves to get married is has to be willing to sacrifice everything it has to have no flaws right yeah also one of the bridesmaids tried to give a blow job to an ice sculpture and got stuck to it that was me i thought that was like yeah i i don't have any like i just was like weird weird joke

weird joke what are we supposed to think about this family just kind of yet another moment of like what is this family like confusing i don't know but yeah that's pretty much all i had to say yeah the movie does pass the bechdel test on that aforementioned occasion and probably a couple other times but not enough but yes yeah because mostly it's conversations about michael if julianne and kimmy are talking to each other for example but our nipple scale though yes where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens um i oh boy again i appreciate its attempts at subverting rom-com tropes yeah i generally appreciate that in a movie because there's a lot of rom-com tropes that should be subverted but the ones that especially should have been subverted such as the man being an awful person and ends up with you know the love of his life

anyway that one doesn't get subverted and there's really no attention called in the movie to how heinous of a person he is all of the attention is called to julianne and that feels gendered so that's pee pee poo poo for me yeah i think i'm only gonna give the movie like a half nipple yeah and maybe it's because i just on a personal level don't like the movie, but I just I can't find that much that's redeeming about it, honestly. Yeah. Maybe I'll bump it up to a one. No, I'm going to stick with 0.5 and I'm going to split that half nipple between Paul Giamatti, who's in the movie, and Harry Shearer, who's in the movie and Harry Shearer who's in the movie I was what yeah I was watching this with Grant there I said it who I know do you have a boyfriend I know oh my gosh it's bad it's bad he's great but yeah it was uh we were both having a bad time and the moment paul

giamatti was on screen for less than a minute it was like grant took an audible sigh of relief he was like oh i was like oh do you feel safe like he seemed to suddenly feel safe watching the movie but it is a movie that really made us both but like i i don't know it's a movie that makes you feel hostage in the present day yeah so i'm also going to give it half a nipple i appreciate the attempt and understanding a little more i really uh appreciated the essay by scott maslow that sort of detailed what the attempt was i just think again having women in the room does not guarantee you're going to get a better script because people are people. But I cannot imagine a world where the script would have gotten worse with more women in the room, because I think you're right. Like the subversive elements are interesting, but they still ultimately fall victim to very gendered tropes, which is that we are willing to inquire one character's villainy and

not another's. And that just the whole movie unravels. The way Kimmy is written, I think, is just like bad and does not like sells the character and the performance short. I don't even like Cameron Diaz as an actor, but I felt bad for her having to play this character. And Julia Roberts, I do like as an actor. So I felt really bad for her having to play this character. And Julia Roberts. I do like as an actor. So I felt really bad for her. Having to play this character. And you know. Dermot Mulroney. As we.

You know. He's crying. We can't. I can't say another bad thing about him. Yeah. Sorry Dermot. It's. Or whatever your name is.

Dermot. And again. Like if this is a movie you ride for. It's a movie you ride for. I ride for a lot of movies. Don't hold up. But yeah. So I'm going to give the half nipple of this movie to julia roberts only because i like her and also i like that it was definitely a creative risk for her to take this part she always played the uh

you know young ingenue who won at the end. I think like her being willing to take this at the peak of her career was a very cool choice. Reading about the production, I learned that she was really committed to like moments where she was being encouraged by the director to seem more likable. She was like, no, what's written on the page is like, like in the karaoke scene, specifically, I wish it was in the yelling scene. I would be curious to know what she thought about that. But like, in the karaoke scene, I guess she was being encouraged by, I don't know if it was a director or producer, someone on set with a lot of power who was like, you should be on board with Kimmy singing by the

end. And she's like, No, that's not what my character would do. My character hates her. My character is going to like sit in like getting one up on her and you know like she was just so game to play a villain and i really wish that the movie was written in a way that would have made that a more rewarding experience because it's a good idea executed very poorly so i'll give my half nipple to julia and that's all I have to say. Yeah. Well, there you have it, folks. That's my best friend's wedding. Hey, want to follow us on Instagram? Well, you can. Well, do it. Do it. And more importantly, subscribe to our Patreon, where you get two bonus episodes every month for five dollars a month and it's always on some brilliant amazing genius theme that jamie and i cook up plus you get access to the entire back catalog of bonus episodes and that can be found at patreon.com slash dot com slash Bechdelcast. Woohoo! And also you can get our merch at

tpublic.com slash thebechdelcast and we'll see it's the end of summer. Summer is waning. Summer is gone and now it's time to go back to school. Whoa!

Yeah, that's right. No, that's more you because I know you don't like to bring it up but you love to go back to school because oh my gosh yeah are you referring to back to school is your favorite you love back to school you couldn't stop i love well also because i teach school at caitlin university it's true Where I teach my screenwriting classes. And I actually have a few classes starting up in September. Because it's back to school. Exactly. So if anyone's interested in those, you can go to my website, CaitlinDurante.com slash classes. I have an intro class. So if you're brand new to screenwriting or you

need a refresher or anything like that, you can take that class. And then I also have workshop in classes for people who are in the process of writing something and you want feedback on your materials. So wow, back to school. It's happening. And this has nothing to do with school but uh listen to my other podcast 16th minute of fame as well yes it is so hard to make so please listen to it um all right shall we go uh to i mean it's kind of our thing let's go to a wedding with our friend oh my gosh it's our. We've been to so many weddings together. I know. It's adorable.

It really is. We're each other's go-to. Deal with it. And that's a true best friend's wedding. 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 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. into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Charlemagne the God.

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Manson. 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nickname Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current.