The Bechdel Cast - Steel Magnolias with Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

This week steel hosts Jamie and Caitlin plus steel special guest Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins discuss Steel Magnolias (1989).  (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @ashleyblaine on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology, swaps of different meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care.

Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. always do what was that that was live audio of a woman's nightmare can k 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 iheart radio and realm listen to dream sequence on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts on the pectocast 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 effin' vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hello and welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Caitlin Durante, and I was was like we can't do a silly intro for this because this movie's too sad no so I just went into the normal thing well I was gonna say Caitlin

get in front of me Sally Field punch Caitlin in the face you'll feel better this is your one opportunity to punch a host of the Bechdel cast will that not cure your incurable grief? Give it a try. And then we all start laughing. I would let Sally Field punch me in the face. 1,000%. Yeah. And I think that that's a really dope, if your friend's going through it in a way that it's impossible to truly offer comfort, I'm going to keep that in the back of my mind to be like, I know you're going through a difficult time and nothing I can say will really help. But if you would like to

punch me in the face, I would understand. Maybe it would help. Welcome to the Bexelcast. I'll offer that sometime. Please. Yeah. I'm sure it would be cathartic if you punched me in the face. I don't know. I don't know. We'll never know. I don't know. We'll find out maybe someday. My name is Jamie Loftus. I'm the other host of the Bechdel cast. The one that just made it sound like I have a kink about getting punched in the face.

Hey, ain't nothing wrong with that. But no shame if you do. Well, cool opening. This is the Bechdel cast. I'm not yet. Really a pro kink beginning. opening this is the best really uh pro king beginning this is our first episode with a new addition to the vectal cast family little kitten casper is sitting behind me right now and i have to remember not to lean back or i'll kill him he's so small vectal cast more like vectal casper

more like vechtel cats. Exactly. Now we have the Bechtel cats. Flea's in the other room. Flea's really having a series of come to Jesus moments about the new guy. He kind of keeps staring into the distance, contemplating about how he used to be the center of my world. And now things are exactly the same. He just doesn't realize it yet well talking about my two

boy cats great example of something that would not pass the bechdel test except spiritually in which it does well i mean cats don't have gender so i feel like talking about cats does pass the bechdel test i'll take it i'll take it. I'll take it. Yeah. But we use a really amazing opening today. We use the Bechdel test as a jumping off point for discussion in a larger intersectional feminist analysis of your favorite movies in the world. But Caitlin, what the hell is the Bechdel test? Tell us.

It is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. It first appeared as a kind of one-off bit in her comic, Dykes to Watch Out For, in the 80s, examining how women hardly ever talk to each other in movies, and there's very little representation of queer women, was the origins of the test. It has since been used more widely, and there are many versions of it.

Our version is, do two people of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man? And we especially like it when it's a narratively substantial conversation and not just like throw away dialogue which we will find there's no issues with today's movie at least in that department although there's plenty of stuff to talk about we're finally doing an episode on steel magnolias before we bring our guest in i just wanted to shout out because people have asked us like where is it seems like a glaring whole woman-centric movie we did record an episode over two years ago on this movie with iconic guest aaron haynes shout out aaron haynes the audio corrupted the podcast god said no podcast zeus sent a lightning bolt and we said well, well, fine, we'll just

have to wait. And when we know, we know. And now, we know, because we have an incredible guest, and we have a lot of thoughts that we've been sitting on for years at this point about Steel Magnolias. It is very true. And our guest is an actress. You've seen her on netflix's dear white people she's the host of the podcast trials to triumphs on the oprah winfrey network and you remember her on our episode on misery

it's ashley blaine feathers and jenkins welcome back hi thank you i have like a raspy deep tone to my voice these days i don't know what happening, but I've been getting a lot of compliments on it, honestly. I love it. Okay. It's wonderful. But it's not my normal voice. So people that do know my voice are probably like, is that Ashley? It's me, everybody.

It's me. Not an imposter. The strike has changed us all. The strike changed my voice, actually. Yes, that's what's happened. I'm so fatigued from the strike that my voice has been altered. Let's go with that. I feel it. Well, welcome back. We're so excited to have you and we're really excited to be covering this movie. I guess I needed two years to think more about it because I had a very different viewing experience this time.

But Ashley, to start, what is your history with this movie? What's your connection to it? Okay, so I was born in December of 1987. So this movie came out in 1989. So I was really young, but I have a sister who's nine years older than me. My house is really my mom, me, my mom, my sister and my dad. And I come from a small family, but it's mostly women. So I grew up watching a lot of women centered films and shows.

And, you know, Lifetime was always on. We were watching Lifetime movies. Like I have such fond memories of like sitting in between my mom's legs she's braiding my hair we're watching something on lifetime but because I have a sister who's almost a decade older than me and my mom they always were showing me movies that they had watched obviously you know what I mean like but I was too young to watch and they were so excited to show them to me as I grew up so in a lot of ways I grew up on still magnolias like I if I look back it was probably a movie that was playing when I was really young and like not able to understand what it was but then it was

a movie I watched many times over my lifetime and when I think of the movie I think of my mom and I think of my sister and my nana and us watching it together and crying every time. And, you know, I think of Me Too as a young kid who wanted to be an actor. And it also was a movie, although there wasn't anybody that looked like me in the movie necessarily, it was definitely a movie where I thought, even at a young age, this is the type of movie I would want to be in, though, where it's about love and it's about family and it's about togetherness and it's about tragedy and it's about healing and all of those things. So it was a movie that I was really drawn to. And the performances are just so good. So when I think about my history with this movie,

I think about being deeply inspired by just the actors actors in the movie like no one missed everyone was knocking it out of the park and as a young woman who always wanted to act it's a movie that's always been on my list is one that's like nobody can say anything bad about it i mean god this cast is acting. Stacked. Holy shit. So I was surprised that no one in this cast won an Oscar. Wild. In my mind, Sally Field won an Oscar for this, and then I double-checked it, and she did not. Ridiculous.

Oh, was this not the, you like me, you really like me? No, I think that was like, what was that for yeah because what is that i'm confused oh she has like an iconic oscars speech that in which she says caitlin she's just like you like me you really like me oh i gotta oh that was for norma ray which we all another popular request we haven't covered i still still haven't seen Norma Rae. Me either. I haven't either. And I'm obsessed with Sally Bills and I need to see it.

She's awesome. And she's, oh my God, she kills it in this movie. That's, oh, that's so sweet that you have such a strong connection to that. Yeah. That's so cool. Like I truly grew up on it. Yeah. Jamie, what about you?

What's your relationship with it? I did not have an extensive relationship with this movie until we first watched it a couple of years ago and i have returned to it it has become kind of like a comfort movie because it's usually streaming somewhere i think i've watched it i watched it once with my mom over the summer because she hadn't seen it and then i watched it again to prepare and i also watched the 2012 queen latifah version of the of steel magnolias also liked that one and there's so much to talk about with this movie but i i really enjoyed it i think that it's obviously rare to get especially a story written by a man that is so generous to showing such a wide variety of like types of women so many different personalities obviously this movie is far from diverse in spite

of where it takes place which is nuts but a wide you know variety of ages, just more than your condition to expect from a movie that came out in 1989. And I find this movie very comforting. This movie is like soup. You know, it's kind of chicken noodle soup. Yeah. You're like, I know what happens. I know Julia Roberts. Well, spoiler alert, she's not gonna make it i've seen

this movie three times and she never makes it she does not but what i got out of this viewing experience that was a little different was i just learned more about the context of why this movie exists and it was based on a play by robert harling who also wrote this screenplay and it's about his sister like his sister is the Julia Roberts character um and so we could talk a little bit about that and sort of this journey in which like a total non-writer wrote this really famous movie yeah Caitlin what's your history with still Magnolias I had seen it once before in college just because again I was making a point to see notable movies didn't really matter what genre or what era I was just like this is a movie that people have talked about it's on lists of notable movies so I've got to see it the eternal student oh my gosh i'm such a student of

phlegm yeah and i will say it's not exactly my type of movie slice of life real world dramas you hate women also i hate women famously famously. Yeah. And their stories. And I just don't want to say that. I don't. When Caitlin sees a woman having an arc, they're like, enough. I'm like, boo, where are the explosions? And that's actually kind of sadly true. But, you know, my tastes are my tastes.

And I cannot even help it. But I appreciate this movie for what it is. And as a stoic, I'm always like, a movie is probably not going to make me cry. And every time I watch this movie, I cry so many times. It's just so heart-wrenching. It's like genetically engineered to make you cry. Yes. There's no, like, you are made of stone.

It felt like it was basically against. You're made of steel it's true but everyone maybe weezer doesn't cry but almost everybody cries i think weezer weezer's got tears in her eyes i mean she's crying she's made of steel but she's not made of stone oh yeah this movie is too much i just yeah i'm really excited to talk about it. Let's take a quick break and then let's come back and do the recap. 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. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel,

available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds.

What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you.

And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday 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. Okay, so here's the recap. So I'm going to focus on the main storyline, which is Julia Roberts' character's story, but each of the main characters have little subplots that I'll pretty much just gloss over in the recap, figuring that we will talk about them

in a lot more detail in the discussion. Gotcha. So we are in a small town in Louisiana. The movie begins on the wedding day of Shelby Eatonton. That's Julia Roberts. She and her mom, Malin, played by Sally Field,

are scrambling around, preparing for the wedding. Shelby's dad, Drum, played by Tom Skerritt, is trying to scare birds out of a tree by shooting a gun at them sure sure we are also following anel played by daryl hannah who goes to a salon owned by truvie that's dolly parton and truvie gives anel a job in the salon as a glamour technician but there's also like discussion about like anel seems to have a past anel and truvie are

the best characters to me to me oh okay i want to hear about that they're my favorite okay so then we also meet shelby's groom-to-be jackson played by dylan mcdermott who by the way we meet because he sneaks into shelby's room and bathroom while she's in the middle of a bath without knocking on the door or anything it's 1989 so we're like oh romantic Home intrusion. 5x1 true love. And not like, ooh, invasion of privacy is so sweet. Okay. We also meet Weezer, played by Shirley MacLaine, the grumpy neighbor of the Eatonton family, as well as Clary, played by Olympia Dukakis.

She is recently widowed and it seems like Weezer and Clary are like best buds, but also kind of frenemies, but BFFs. Also kind of queer coded. There's a few moments with Weezer and Clary where I'm like,

maybe it's just me, but I would like for them to kiss. Yeah. No, I agree. I never thought that. Maybe I'm just me, but I would like for them to kiss. Yeah. No, I agree. I never thought that. Maybe I'm just bringing my perverted little, but there were a few moments where I was just like, maybe it was just forbidden at the time.

But clearly they belong together because they treat each other like it's a schoolyard crush. They do, looking back. True. They do, yeah. So I'm for it. The layers. There's so many layers.

It's like an onion. Yes, feminist scholar. Shrek. Okay, so Shelby and Malin go to get their hair done at Truvy's salon, during which Shelby has a medical emergency. It turns out that she has diabetes. They give her juice, and we just get kind of more information about her condition. And she recently received news that having children isn't possible due to her condition. Shelby had been having second thoughts about marrying Jackson

because she's afraid she would be denying him the chance to have children. But she and Jackson go through with the wedding and we see the reception at the Eatonton house. Everyone's dancing. The iconic armadillo cake with gray frosting, great wine. Then we cut to Christmas time shelby reveals to her mom that she's pregnant aka is pregnant and she does she has a little greg and she has a little greg

soon but malin is not happy about this pregnancy announcement because sorry pregnancy announcement because shelby carrying a baby is very dangerous to her health but shelby really wants to have a child of her own and the other women also learn about the pregnancy and they realize it's not necessarily happy news because of this risk associated with it we cut to a year later after the baby, the Greg, if you will. Yes. Jackson Jr. has been born. La petite Greg. Yep. They celebrate his first birthday. Then Shelby and Malin return to Truvy's salon. A lot of scenes take place there. Shelby gets her haircut very short

making her the baldest woman in charge yes you know and for newer listeners to the show the baldest woman in charge rule real old holdover from the show in which in movies very often the woman with the shortest haircut has the most narrative power why is this we don't know but it's something we've why is leonardo dicaprio fully submerged in water in his clothes in so many movies we don't know it's just something that you see happening and you have to speak up yeah you have to maybe make a letterboxd list about it i mean i'm gonna make a letterboxd list i'm gonna make one for the bechtel cast by the way i don't know if people know that we're on letterboxd but we are so you should follow us and i'll make a list of all the movies in which

leonardo dicaprio is fully submerged in water wearing his clothes because it's so many i haven't seen killers of the flower moon yet but i would say it's honestly a safe bet that he will be fully submerged in all his clothes. Never topless, always in the clothes. Yep. Let's continue. Yes, okay. So they're at the salon, and as Shelby is getting a manicure, Truvy notices some severe bruising on Shelby's arms. Turns out it's from dialysis because having a baby put a lot of strain on her kidneys

and she is in need of a kidney transplant. And her mother, Malin, is donating one of her kidneys to Shelby. Malin, truly mother of the century. Yeah. That Malin. And the surgery is the following day and everyone gathers at the hospital they're nervous but the surgery goes well and everything seems all right at first some time passes and one day shelby is at home taking care of jackson j., and she collapses. We cut to the hospital. Her body is rejecting the kidney

transplant, and she is in a coma. Malin stays with Shelby day and night, trying to get her to wake up from the coma. More time passes. She isn't waking up. She doesn't show any signs of ever waking up so they make the decision to take her off life support and she dies we see the funeral we get the iconic monologue from sally field she's just so mad she wants to hit something hard this is when clary is like hit weezer punch her in the face and they all end up laughing about it because that scene makes me cry like a fucking baby i mean like obviously shelby dying makes me cry but the funeral scene oh it's so good it's so good yeah it really is so this kind of moment of levity they're all laughing about it and the movie ends with everyone accepting that life goes on and then anel who has a pregnancy of her own by the way she goes into labor and everyone rushes to the hospital. The end.

It always kind of cracks me up. I think we maybe talked about this the first time we discussed this movie. The last shot of this movie is so bizarre to me because you see all of the women that we've gotten to know and love and we're like, this is so cool. And then you see like Anel's husband and I think one of Shelby's brothers and he's wearing a bunny suit. Oh, yeah.

And they're on a motorcycle. And that's the last shot. You're like, what? I mean, it makes sense that he's coming. But I don't know this man. Classic. We have to end this movie about all these women with a man that we don't know. Classic.

And a menacing-looking rabbit suit. I was like, what is this? It's weird. What am I looking at? Anyways, weird last shot. But, yes, so, so, so much to talk about. Yeah, let's take a quick break, and we will 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 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.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen um dragged uh I'm NK and this is Basket Case so I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown I was crying and I was inconsolable

it was just very big sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basketcase, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius. I know. That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there.

Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions. Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus, we cover questions like, how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is.

And we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Before we get into the nitty gritty here, I do want to know, who are your faves? I would say because there's so many women in this story who kind of come in pairs because you've got melinda and shelby you've got weezer and clary you've got anel and truvie who's your favorite pair of gals i'm team truvie and anel i really like their relationship why do you love their relationship i love it because i just like a mentorship story that isn't necessarily a mother-daughter story. And I really like Anel's story of, you know, coming from an impossible circumstance.

She's like ashamed of her own poverty. She's ashamed of having been in an abusive relationship. And then meets Dolly Parton, who is like, here's a solution to your problems. Just be more like Dolly Parton. And like here's a solution to your problems just be more like Dolly Parton and it changes Anel's life and she just becomes baby Dolly Parton and I love that I love their relationship I sort of wish like if I could have my way I would have Anel remain Dolly Parton and not you know be like I want to be a mother and a housewife. But I really like Anel in Act 2 of this movie. So

good. Where she's like, I have a boyfriend. I don't even know if I like him. My hair looks great. I'm happy. I just, I love Anel. And I love how good Trivi is. It's a good transformation. She has a good through line in the story. I think it's really good. I think my good like through line in the story i think it's really

good i think my favorite i do love a mother daughter it just gets me every time so you know shelby and malin and in a lot of ways they are the heart of the movie and like it's their love, their relationship, their commitment to one another that is like really just beautiful to me. And then I think like a close second is honestly like Clarion Weezer. And it's because like, this is a big cast, but you need characters like that. Like you need the juxtaposition of characters like that in a cast. And I think they're so well done. Like it's like done to perfection for me so they're a close second but yeah malin and shelby are just it's just beautiful watching this mother it's weird because it's like you're watching her you're watching a mother allow what she thinks is almost like

allow her daughter to make decisions for herself even though she's a grown woman uh but you also see the mother intuition of her like instinctively knowing like this isn't gonna be good like you can see that she knows like it's not gonna end up well and you can also see i think that shelby knows it's not gonna end up well but they both are committed to like loving each other and just hoping that maybe there's a outcome that isn't worst case scenario it ends up being that but also just the blessing of you know Shelby still having her son and like it's the lesson of like she wanted more life with her son but she also got to experience it. And maybe that was enough for her. You know what I mean? Like maybe that was okay. And sometimes that happens. And I think it's the

people that are left behind that are grieving the most. But for Shelby, I thought maybe she was like, I'm just grateful that I had the opportunity. I mean, it's so well, first, Caitlin, who's your favorite pair? Oh, and I'm not just saying this to be like to say a different answer from everyone else. But I'm I'm Weezer and Clary all the day that we all have a different pair. Yeah. Weezer's my gal. I want to be exactly like Weezer when I get older. And yeah, I just I love that friendship too I love this scene where Clary is like Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand I'm telling you this to make you more

cultured and broaden your horizons and then Weezer's just like I don't give a shit about that I hate plays and movies and blah blah blah so I mean, and just so, so, so well played, too. Like, I love Shirley MacLaine so much. What a legend. Truly. Okay, so let's go back to Malin and Shelby for a second, because I agree that they are, like, as close to protagonists as this movie can get,

because the you know main beats of the story go around shelby's life and death basically yes so what i didn't know and i think that we didn't talk about this very extensively the first time we discussed this movie is you know i think that if viewed out of context there appeared to be some kind of tropey things at play here where i always feel like hyper attuned to like motherhood is the most important thing that anyone with a uterus can do and blah blah and like i think that that's true but when i learned more about the context of why this movie exists in the first place it's all very based in the author's life and the author's sister susan so there is a as close as this movie has to an oral history in a magazine called garden and gun

question mark i saw that and as soon as i saw the title i was like i don't want to read this and i just didn't unfortunately the article is quite good. I think it is like a Southern magazine. So it makes sense that they would write about Steel Magnolias. It's a very Southern movie. Either way, it was put together by a writer named Julia Reed in 2017. There's interviews with Shirley MacLaine, as well as Margot Martindale, who is the original woman in the play.

Love Margo. Also, wow. Didn't know that fact. Hair director Margo Martindale. Yep. So only heavy hitters can participate in anything that has to do with Still Magnolias. Right.

So it's primarily the writer, Robert Harling, Margo Martindale, who played Malin off-Broadway, and Shirley MacLaine are the three main sources for this story. But it's a lot of Robert Harling talking about how his sister was a type 1 diabetic who really wanted to have a baby and died very young. Her story lines up pretty closely with Shelby's. And he was an actor, he was living in New York, he was from the South, he was queer actor he was living in New York he was from the south he was queer like he had all these separate struggles with his family because he's a boomer you know then lost his sister really young who was always so supportive towards him and so he wanted to even though he

wasn't a writer wanted to memorialize her in some way and And so wrote a play version of this, which makes, once you know this movie was originally a play, it totally makes sense because the set pieces are so like the parlor, the wedding, the funeral, like the hospital. But he originally wrote it off Broadway and was afraid to tell his family because he was afraid that they would find it

disrespectful. And so I have a quote from him here speaking to that where he first showed his mom the script. It's so sad. He's like, you don't have to read it. It's about you and Susan and the whole thing. But she's a steel magnolia. She was going to read it. I gave her the script and I'd walk past and she'd be sobbing and I felt terrible afterward i said mom we'll just kill it i can't put you through this and she said it's wonderful because it's true she just closed it and that was it end of topic and they saw the show they were very supportive of it the show was very successful and then it was turned into this gigantic movie and the only other things I think that are notable about the production, other than it being based on a true story,

is that the director of this movie, he was mean and Shirley MacLaine yelled at him. But yes, the director, Herbert Ross, who also directed a bunch of famous movies and I guess was a shitty person and was cruel to Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton. Like, what kind of person must you be? But Shirley MacLaine got wind of it. And she said, then one day I basically told him to go fuck himself. And everybody heard it.

And things got better after that. So Shirley MacLaine, just simply not fucking around, never has been. Someone had to say it, apparently. And it would make sense that it was her. It looked literally if someone was like, guess who in the cast said that? I would be like, Shirley MacLaine, like, duh, give me the million dollars. Easily. So those are the sort of main

production beats but I think that it was sort of helped me work through my feelings on Shelby's character and her relationship with Malin knowing how close it was to the author yeah yeah I'll add to that just a little bit by sharing some kind of like quotes and paraphrasing of what robert harling has said i'm pulling from a dailymail.co.uk you're like i won't read the garden and gun piece but let me take famously trustworthy daily yeah our sources today are really good um but they did an interview with him robert harling was talking about his choice to write this he obviously did it to honor his sister's memory and kind of keep her metaphorically alive so to speak he wrote the first draft in like 10 days or something like that it came out very quickly and he speaks

about trying to kind of capture the language of how the women around him spoke and he says i don't care what people say i wrote down what i heard the women in my town talked in bumper stickers they were funny funny people and i'm like watching this and i'm like is this how people talk is this like what like they're so quippy and i love the quippy dialogue and he was saying like no this is authentically how the people in my town spoke and i also loved he had a quote in that oral history piece about how he was really nervous he like would never admit who he based Weezer on because he was afraid that she'd be offended. Oh, yeah.

But then his mom saw the play and was like, oh, it's obvious who that is. And he was like, oh, well, I guess I'm not as sneaky as I thought. Cat's out of the bag. I just love that Weezer is described as a town grouch. And it's just so funny because like every town has one, everybody knows one,

you know what I mean? Like, and I think that there needed to be one in this movie and play. And they're always beloved. Nice character. Yeah. I also, I wish that this movie had the courage to let Weezer and Clary be queer I will die on this hill I think that that

is the ultimate what should happen but I also do think it's powerful that they gave her a boyfriend that she hated who was shorter than her I was like wow representation matters as a six-foot tall woman who has dated many shorter men that she did not like i felt seen in that moment but okay back to back to malin and shelby yeah their relationship i i think i didn't respond to it as well the first time i saw this movie i don't know i think it's more just like because their relationship is so entrenched in the idea of maternal sacrifice, right? Like on both ends, where Malin is not just willing to physically do anything she can to support her daughter, but emotionally we see her really struggle with accepting her daughter's decisions because she

knows that it's going to hurt her. But more i watch this movie the more i appreciate it and maybe it's just like getting a little older myself where you know i don't think it is fair that that this is an expectation of women or of mothers in general where we see we see fathers throughout this movie but they're mostly like hindrances. Incidental. Yeah, they're like blowing up trees. They're like leaking your pregnancy in public. Like they're not being super helpful, which is, you know, authentic to a lot of parents is like the mom is carrying the physical

and emotional burden of her children's lives. And I think when I take it into context of we have so many other characters who are women in this movie that are not in Trent, their story is not entrenched in motherhood. I mean, we got Weezer, we've got Truvy, we've got, you know, there's plenty of other people to look to for different kinds of stories. And Malin, especially, I love Shelby, but I just, I feel for Malin so much. She's put in this horrible position to have to kind of like grin and bear it through knowing what is going to happen. And it's, I think it's just like so well performed and like, what else can you do? Not have a relationship with your daughter when you know you're going to lose her. It's just, oh, it's so sad. And then she has to raise Shelby's

damn kid for her. I was like, Malin, give this woman a break. Oh my God. I don't know. I think I really, I think part of it is getting older that allows me to connect with it even more. I mean, I always, I always have loved a mother-daughter story, but I think especially as I get older, I'm like, Ooh, this is really, it's just real. Like my mom said to me once, it's just me and my sister, but she said to me once, and it made so much sense. She was like, you're only as happy as a mother. She was like, you're only as happy as your least happy child. And that applies to happiness. That applies to health. That applies to anything. Like, some mothers really struggle with like being able to kind of like be detached for lack of a better term from their children, like not taking everything that's going on with their children

on for themselves. And I think that's what we saw with Malin. But like I said, it makes me think about what my mom said. Like Malin is struggling because her daughter's struggling. And I think there's even a point in the movie where she almost, there's this feeling of where she's like, don't you see? Like there's no other way for me to be. Like I can't enjoy my life if my daughter is dying. That's impossible for me to do. Like, I don't know what you all expect from me.

You know what I mean? Like, I wish I felt differently too. I'm paraphrasing all this, obviously. But like, that was the energy of like, I can't enjoy my life when my daughter's losing hers. I can't. And I just think it's real. Like, it's very, very, very, very real. And, you know, in the end, like you were saying, you know, she, you know, Shelby dies, she has to raise Jackson

Jr. And I think that Malin looks at it as like, thank you, God. Like, I still have a piece of my daughter with me. This is not how I wanted it to go but like I get this like I think she almost saw it as like a gift like oh my god like she truly is always with me and I get to have a piece of her with me for the rest of my life and I just think that's really beautiful and like the thought that like life does go on. No parent wants to lose their child. But with her knowing that she has to keep living for her daughter's child, it just shows that like she still has a purpose in her life. She still is able to keep going on loving and giving that love she gave Shelby, giving it to Jackson Jr.

And she's going to be okay. There is a spirit of like, she's going to be okay, especially because she has all of these women around her who love and support her and are going to make sure she's lifted through it. And so I also love, you know, the messaging of like sisterhood and community. If you were to throw all these people together, they don't really fit, right? Like you would be like,

why does this person know that person? Why is this person hanging out with like, but when you see what they all experienced together and how they held each other through it then you're like oh wow like the only way that Malin could have gotten through this was with community the only way Anel could have like healed was through community and it truly is this small louisiana town but it's a community and it's a village and it's powerful and that's a big takeaway for me in the film too i think that's so beautifully put ashley like how the community of women even though we know that there are men in this community and that they're important to the community but but this story is

so clearly focused on like malin couldn't have made it through this experience without the women in her life because i feel like often in stories about mothers and daughters like one of the two gets lost in the shuffle kind of yeah i like that this movie and i'm sure it's partially because the author was writing and thinking about his own mother we get moments to like really see malin process and like struggle with it there's that scene at the party where her doofus husband is like shelby's pregnant without seeming to it seems like he cannot engage with the stakes of that situation and he's sort of bulldozing through it because he's like we have to be happy so we're gonna be happy we don't really know what his journey is i don't really care what his journey is but we see malin like she feels like shit in the other room

and all of the other women you know they're like why are you acting this way and she's like because i'm gonna lose my daughter like i i think. And I like that they, yeah, you get those moments to see her really struggling with it. And through having those conversations with the other women, get the compassion that she needs to move forward. And also the reminder that like, as horrible as the situation is, Shelby needs you. And Shelby gets those moments too where you know she is making a very informed decision she knows what she's doing she knows what the stakes are and it's what she wants and i feel like it's very built into her character is that like it's what she wants she wants to have a biological child and i appreciate that the alternatives are brought up repeatedly and

she's like no i don't want that because i think sometimes it's like there's yeah like a biological child is the only way but everyone's like shelby you could adopt a baby and she's like no it's not what i want this is what i want to do and you know i think that that is as much as you want to be like, Shelby, come on. You'd be a great mother to an adopted baby. Shelby, come on. I do appreciate, though, that her character is very clear on what she wants, is not being naive about what the stakes of that are,

and is doing what is right for her and that you see that tension between Jackson and Malin that kind of results in that because I think Malin is wanting Jackson to push back on it more and Jackson's sort of like I have to accept what she wants yeah I also appreciate that I feel like generally speaking, a lot of people's kind of immediate reaction to learning that someone is pregnant is like, Oh my God, that's amazing.

Congratulations. Best news ever. And rarely do you see people being pragmatic about that type of news? And like, is this the best choice financially is this the best choice for your health and i appreciate that malin is like being very pragmatic about this like do you know the risks because the first time you hear that oh it's not possible for shelby to get pregnant and so we think oh there's something about her physiology that will

make getting pregnant impossible. But then we learn that what was meant by that is like, if you do get pregnant, this could be potentially lethal to your health. And later in a conversation when Malin, or it's revealed to the other group of women that Shelby is pregnant. I can't remember if Malin tells them or not. But again, their gut reaction, oh my God, amazing. This is wonderful because we thought she couldn't get pregnant. And it's like, no, it's not that she couldn't get pregnant. It's that she shouldn't.

There's a big difference. And so, they have this discussion about it and people realize like oh this is this is a huge risk and i just appreciate like the pragmatism that goes into discussing that because i feel like that is often left out of those conversations and i just appreciated seeing it i agree i also wanted to just touch on really quickly how this movie, because I feel like I cannot think of many movies where there is a character who has diabetes. I don't know a lot about diabetes as a condition. So I wanted to do a little research into it to see if, because it is such a common thing to see how people who have type 1 diabetes felt about how it's portrayed in the space of this movie and again with the knowledge that this is a dramatized version of what happened

to the writer's sister yes but there does seem to be a sort of split opinion in the community i think some people find it to be over dramatizedramatized and, you know, a way that it's like, you know, type 1 diabetes is certainly not a death sentence in the way that I think this movie, you could read this movie presenting it. There's a writer named Rachel Kerstetter who wrote in Healthline about watching this movie after getting diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. She says, I know Steel Magnolias brings up a lot of different opinions and feelings, especially among us ladies. I mentioned to my best friend I was going to watch it, and she recommended very strongly that I

shouldn't, but of course I did. She said, the reality is that Steel Magnolias portrays a time when diabetes management was much different from today, a time before continuous glucose monitors existed and even insulin pumps were really mainstream, before the A1C test was established as a gold standard for diabetes management, and prior to factor acting, insulins and analogs being introduced. Today's reality is thankfully different, even though economic and cultural gaps certainly exist that prevent people from getting ideal treatment but basically she felt that it was somewhat dramatized because shelby's character is so specific i think there's a world and we talk

about this with a lot of conditions we've seen portrayed on screen you know presenting a condition and presenting it in a pretty prescriptive way that like if you didn't know anything about type one diabetes this movie would probably scare you. And I just thought it was interesting that there was a fair amount of diversity of opinion. Although everyone seems to, that I, I mean,

the few pieces that I read, there was a general agreement that the scene where Shelby's character has a hypoglycemic attack and her mother gives her juice um that that was pretty authentic and well done and other parts were a little more divisive but i really i mean i thought that was a wonderful scene from the mother-daughter perspective too of just like i feel like it's really it's like this dynamic that I'm like oh that's been me and my mom at some point where like Malin is like you know being kind of bullish and is kind of like come on like drink the fucking juice dude and you know Shelby's being combative it just like

the stakes of the scene are very high but there's still this just like vaguely combative mother-daughter dynamic existing within that high stakes scene that i thought was really good yeah i think that's one of the most memorable scenes in the movie i think when people think of still magnolia's you think of the orange juice and the punch yeah like those are two like those are two movie yes oh well yeah but yeah like those are like i would say like if you're talking about steel magnolia somebody it's bound to be like oh yeah the orange juice scene that was crazy like that's what people are gonna say yeah for sure it seems like

shelby is like upset she feels that her mom is trying to like micromanage her and it's like, well, she's trying to save your life right now. But also, yeah, you don't want your mom interfering in all of your business all the time. It is just like a very authentic, nuanced mother-daughter relationship that I think feels very familiar for a lot of people. And it's obviously caring and loving loving but it's not without its faults and it's not there's a scene where shelby tells her mom that she's pregnant and melin has this reaction of like i'm not happy for i'm not really going to congratulate you because i don't think this is a responsible choice and all shelby wants is her mom's support and she says something like you're just pissed off because you can't control me anymore like you don't and I remember having a similar

situation with my mom where you know I was like a full adult my mom was still trying to micromanage a lot of things in my life and I was was like, you can't do this anymore. I am my own person. I am very capable of making my own decisions. I have my own autonomy. You don't get to call the shots anymore. And you haven't been able to for a while, mom,

but it's just such a familiar thing for so many people. And that, I love that line from Shelby where she's like, don't talk about me. Like I'm not here. Like that line from shelby where she's like don't talk about me like i'm not here like i think and just that she's struggling but it's like that is such a dehumanizing like feeling controlled where malin is and malin is talking about her like shelby isn't sitting in front of her and that doesn't mean that malin is bad or wrong she's just trying to manage the moment but of course that would be hurtful i i think that this movie like it it rewards a rewatches

so much because the first time i watched this movie i was confused because the exact nature of shelby's condition is like you don't find out for a while like what exactly is going on and the first time you're seeing it you're like why is this marriage like what is going on with this marriage maybe happening maybe not happening it felt like an interesting experience where it's just like you never know what someone's going through you never know what's going on in someone's life and witnessing a relationship dynamic isn't understanding it because with both Shelby and Jackson and Shelby and Malin, it's not immediately clear what's going on. I remember the first time I was watching it,

I was like, why is Shelby being such a brat or like in different moments? I'm like, why is Jackson being so pushy or like, which you could still ask, why is Malin being so mean to her? Like what is, and being like,

you should quit your job because you shouldn't be on your feet all day i was like whoa what decade are we in the context it's like oh okay even if you don't agree with every dynamic the context of it makes sense and i don't know i don't feel like there's a lot of movies like that that when you watch it back you're like oh you know exactly where everyone's coming from whether they are being overly controlling or like you know bringing too much of themselves to the table or not like it's just it's really cool and i you know every single time you're just like shelby come on shelby listen to your mother mother knows best but she's gotta she's to do it her way. And I love, yeah, that like for Malin, there is as happy an ending as is available to her where she's still, like you're saying, Ashley, still has a piece of her daughter and has this community to raise her daughter. And then there's a baby Shelby on the way with an L.

Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Can we talk about an L a little bit? Yeah. I love it now. I just think she's the, I don't.

Sorry about it. I mean, I've sort of said exactly why already, but there's a few, she's not like a super big character, but there's a few story beats of hers that I really appreciated. is just again like stuff you don't see very often she is very insecure about where she's at in her life she's insecure about her own poverty the scene at the wedding where she is hungry but doesn't have money for food and then is told like no it's a wedding the food is free and she's

like oh shit like she was hungry and was like embarrassed to tell anybody and embarrassed that like she has this torrid past quote-unquote and she was very kind of withholding about that information because she wasn't sure how she would be perceived and oh will anyone hire a woman who may or may not be married because she like she's not sure of the legitimacy of her marriage if it's actually legal or not her husband is like a criminal on the run took her things of course like yeah you would be probably like self-conscious of and yeah it's and everyone's just like it's okay we'll take care of you and you're like exactly i just i really like that and it's like her arc is pretty simple from there again it's like pretty prescriptive and unimaginative that like her happy ending is

like finding a guy who isn't evil and having a baby i don't think we're necessarily told exactly what anel wants out of life so So maybe that is what she wanted. I'm not totally clear. In my dream scenario, she and Truvy open a successful chain of salons across the globe. But I mean, I do like that she, you know, it's through her friendship with these women and especially through her mentorship with Truvy that she doesn't just like improve her life materially but also seems to like rid herself of a lot of the shame and embarrassment that we see her experiencing when truvie first gives her a shot so i via these relationships with all these women we do have the classic trope though of like

wow daryl hannah famously hot woman if you took your glasses off you'd be so beautiful yeah you're like sure great yeah i also love all the names i think they're just great character names weezer and now which weezer is spelled with the o by the way it's not like her name her name is i think louisa or louisa louise something like that and so they her nickname is is weezer which i think is iconic brilliant yeah like how do you even come up with that is that a thing that people are doing in louisiana like i would have literally never thought of that right and i'm the queen of nicknames i never like and when did that can you imagine calling a child like weezer get over here yeah get your ass over here

the thing i don't like about anel's character is when she gets like very holier than now religious it gets a little weird but i do like that she seems to come around a little bit on the end where someone tells her to lighten up and then she makes like a joke kind of at her own expense and then she gets pushed back to a few months there's like one point where anel talks out of turn in like i think a hyper religious way and boleyn's like yeah no you're not gonna get me to be happy that my daughter died. Get the fuck out of my face. And you're like, yeah, she deserved that.

She deserved that big time. And so I do like that her arc is like her lightening up. And we even see her tell her husband that he has to lighten up. So it's like, okay, she's starting to get it. And she's, I think, also maybe the same age as shelby but i think she's maybe supposed to be the youngest character too like she's pretty young in the movie although julia roberts was 22 in this movie and she's already like fucking oh i thought she was only 19 oh maybe it was shot even earlier i don't know she might have been 19 to mystic pizza doesn't matter oh wow and yeah i think the companion character to an l is true v

i love true v i also i don't like that she's burdened with this like needing to reconcile with her shitty husband storyline i would have rathered that real estate be used for kind of anything else what i love about true v is that she's Dolly Parton. That's great. I also love that she is like a business owner. She prioritizes giving like young women in her community opportunities. She's a gossip. She's a good friend. She's very empathetic. And like the stuff with her and her husband, which by the end seems to be like way more important to the story than we were originally led to believe i just i feel pretty ambivalent towards it i'm just like who yeah like you're not good enough for her you're not going to convince me you are well that's that's one of my criticisms about this movie but i'm also trying not to be too critical

of it because it is you know it's a very female driven story that centers this group of women and their lives and their relationships. And we get to see what's important to them. And they're, you know, pursuing the things that are important to them. The things that are important to them are often what you'd associate with very like traditional womanhood or traditional femininity type of things and again i don't want to be too critical of that because many people men some feminists will be like oh things that are so hyper feminine or so traditionally rooted in like what's expected of womanhood or whatever i think it's overly

criticized yeah in a way that is that makes those ambitions seem invalid which obviously the point of feminism is letting everyone do what the fuck they want in safety just do whatever the fuck they want and yeah this is a movie made in the 80s that seems to very much reflect the values of like Southern white women. One thousand percent. It's very 80s. It's like very 80s Louisiana. Like, yeah, they're in a parish like. And in that way, it doesn't like those things don't interest me personally. So that's one of the reasons I have a hard time connecting with this movie. But there's something to be said for a movie that centers women and allows women to talk about what's important to them, even if it doesn't reflect my exact experience.

Yeah, it definitely doesn't reflect my experience. But I like couldn't be any further. But again, I think what helps me is that I am a daughter of a mother, so I can connect to that. And community and sisterhood has too saved my life in a lot of ways. And so again, that's something that I have a different perspective of it the older I get. And I think it's the portrayal of that in this movie is actually really

beautiful. Yeah. And can I also add, I think something else I really like about the movie is that it highlights how in your tribe or in your community, there's a lot of diversity and I don't mean, ethnic diversity. Do they not know a single black or brown person?

Yikes. 1,000%. They were avoiding the black people in the town. It's fine. I know it. We don't even have to. We're in Louisiana. They were on the other side of town.

They never saw them, never interacted with black people probably. But there's a lot of diversity. There's a lot of diversity there's a lot of personality diversity right and i think that you know when you look at your friend circles or your community it's the same for you like you have to have different characters in your story because you never know which one you're going to need to call on and if everybody's the same then that's not really helpful or productive so i love that they're all such distinct characters which again it happens in movies but i think they're very distinct because

it was a play yeah like to your point like you know there's a wedding there's a funeral there's a hospital like but anyway i do like the diversity and personality in the movie. For sure. Because even though we get, you know, with Anel and Truvy's subplots, they're pretty centered around the men in their lives and those different dynamics. Then you've got Clary and Weezer and their subplots are more focused on the friendship among themselves. And they're like kind of love-h hate relationship where they're always getting on each

other's cases but it's out of a place of love and again i love the clary trying to like broaden their cultural horizons and weezer being like i don't like to watch movies because they only have naked people in them and i hate books and i hate i love Cleary and Weezer. I mean, like, again, this movie is so glaringly, excessively white in Louisiana. And we'll get to in a second how there was a remake of this movie with an all-black cast in 2012 that I believe aired on Lifetime. We'll get there in a second. But Cleary and Weezer, i don't want to know how they vote however i do like i just love a couple of broads saying fucking whatever it is so fun to watch they both seem like pretty wealthy uh as well where it's like there's that great line from

weezer where it's like people are only nice to me because I have more money than God and I was like whoa okay or like Clary doing the like you know whatever girl bossing the fuck out she buys a radio station so she could like be a sports commentator question mark like they're on these side quests we get those moments together and we also see I think it's like with clary that weezer is most comfortable showing her gentler side even if clary is only going to give her shit for it but i always think of the scene of the two of them in the grocery store where weezer said you know sort of something casual and offhand about death in front of shelby not realizing what shel Shelby was going through

and then saying to Clary when they were alone, like, I shouldn't have said that. That was wrong. I had no idea. And it's just nice to see, like they are the more cartoony characters of the cast, which I think older women are often written to be more cartoonish,

but it doesn't bug me because we have the context for who they are and we see other sides of them they're not just acting out these like stereotype older women characters they get moments to be together i don't even think they're written cartoonishly i think they're just eccentric i mean whiz are getting dragged around by a horse of a dog for the better part yeah that, that's true. Which I love. But also, I'm just like, I don't know.

I feel like some people just be doing that. Yeah, it all tracked for me. It didn't. No one felt too big or too small to me. Actually, it all worked. And I think the small town of it all helps that. I think that if this like took place in Los Angeles that would like it wouldn't work in the same way you know what I mean or like Seattle or something I don't know

but there is something that made it really believable um for me and it didn't it didn't bump me and I tend to get bumped very easily when watching things I'm always bumped by something yes I think they all feel like and I think that like the story really takes time for every character at some point to have a moment that we see either like a more vulnerable part of them or have more information about them to contextualize why they're acting the way they are.

And I just, I mean, I could have watched different arrangements of these six characters for another hour like i really love it i wanted to touch really quickly on yes there was a remake of this movie in 2012 yes it was directed by kenny leon who uh was most noted before then for directing a broadway production of a Raisin in the Sun, a black director and a black leading cast. We had Queen Latifah, Jill Scott,

Alfre Woodard, Adepero Oduye, Felicia Rashad and Condola Rashad. It was, I think the movie got kind of mixed reviews when it came out and it was only broadcast on television in spite of, I mean, that's like an unbelievable cast. Truly. And I watched it two years ago when we first covered it.

I haven't rewatched it. Same. It is the same movie. Right. Made with, I think, like a far lesser budget, which seems to be very pointed. Yeah. Right. lesser budget which seems to be very pointed yeah right and we've had similar discussions about like all-female reboots of like originally male casted movies so we've seen kind of an uptick especially i feel like 2018 or so was like the peak of i guess the all black reboot for lack of a better term where you

got movies like death at a funeral what women want oh my god instead of what men want i blocked that out you got a little instead of big so in a lot of these cases they were not only like black reboots but all female reboots so the point being like with these reboots they take an existing marketable property with either a predominantly white cast or male cast or both and then reboot it with like oh now it's all women or now it's black people or both rather than giving women and black people a chance to just tell their own original stories yes and this was in 2012 so i feel like it's even a little bit ahead of that trend yes yeah i mean my feeling on it it's kind of twofold where the reboot culture i mean i think at this point it's

played out to the point where it's no longer even financially successful but i think it just like sets marginalized creatives and performers up for failure by like not giving anyone the opportunity to tell an original story it's like no actually this like we know that this story works so maybe people will like you know it's just it feels condescending and shitty and to be given such a smaller budget and platform than the original steel magnolias on top of that feels insult to injury even though the cast is fantastic yeah for sure i mean the cast is stacked. Kenny Leon is a very well-known director, especially in the theater world. You know, I think for me, I, as a Black woman, as a Black artist, I always, like, feel bad, basically, like, when I don't connect with the Black version of something. It almost feels like I have to or I should. I don't know if that's making sense.

Hopefully it does. But there's this guilt associated with it. Like if I don't love it. And I think for me, the biggest issue, I thought the cast was fantastic. But I think the biggest issue for me when we do this, when we do the Black version of something or the Latinx version of something or whatever, the Asian version of something,

is that oftentimes it's trying to be too much like the original version that's already too white. So it's almost like it has to be more different. And it wasn't different enough for me to resonate with it, if that makes sense. I think you said it was basically the exact same thing. It couldn't be the exact same thing because now we're dealing with Black women. We don't live the same experience and even kind of the same way. So I needed more of a differentiation outside of just, we're in a black hair salon doing black hair.

It's not, it's not enough, you know? And another, like, this is like a small note, but kind of a big note to me is that like, I think Phylicia Rashad and Condola Rashad should have played mother and daughter.

Yeah. They should have been Malin and Shelby. That would have, to me, I don't know why Queen Latifah was Malin. I'm very confused by it. Love, QL. But like, I just needed... And so it makes me like think,

like were Felicia and Condola like, we by no means want to play mother and daughter like I'm just like why why didn't she do it with her actual mother I just don't understand that's her actual mother I just think that would have been like duh it would have been beautiful I think and because for me it was Quinn Latifah and Condola that I kind of didn't really believe I just was kind of like it's not your mom Because your mom's sitting right there in the scene. It was confusing. It was not confusing.

It was distracting. I just was watching the whole time like, but your actual mom is sitting there and you're both fantastic actors. Why couldn't, why didn't we do that? But anyway, that's kind of like my review of that.

But, and I remember when this came out, I remember auditioning for shelby yeah i mean this i moved to la in 2010 you know i was 24 years old at that time like this was the time that yeah they were calling all the black girls it was like a big deal and again you all know my history and my connection to the movie so i was like this is great condola obviously got the part and she's lovely and fantastic but i remember this time and I remember being you know anticipating and watching it with all my girlfriends and and feeling exactly what I just told you like why aren't I fully connecting with this it's my truth yeah I am very frustrated

by that pattern I am hopeful that it seems like at least it's not happening with the frequency that it was this time five or six years ago but it's still yeah i don't think so it's so clear even in like i mean part of the reason that steel magnolias works is because it is so specific in the story that it's telling and so it's like every community should have the opportunity to tell a story with that level of specificity instead of treating it as a one-size-fits-all kind of story yes yeah i just saw a mother-daughter movie last night in the theater saw x um no i did it well i did see saw x but i did a double feature of saw x and the persian version which um is a very culturally specific mother daughter story in which like

motherhood plays a very large role in both of their narratives. And it's just like a very interesting examination of a mother daughter relationship would recommend people see it. My favorite mother daughter movie is, Oh my gosh, you guys want to guess what my favorite movie is oh my god can we have a hint one of the actors in still magnolias is in it oh okay um is it it's one of my favorite movies of all time actually but it's a mother-daughter movie oh my gosh is it dolly blanking heart it's all i parton in another mother-daughter movie oh my gosh is it dolly blanking heart is dolly parton in another mother-daughter movie i don't know dolly i'll tell you it's not dolly

is it julia roberts i can't tell you who it is but she's in it do you want me to tell you what the movie is yeah just yes terms of endearment oh shirley mclean shirley shirley mclean is the goat oh my, my gosh. It's one of my favorite movies. I haven't seen Terms of Endearment in forever. It's beautiful. I've just rewatched The Apartment. She's just S tier.

I was like, what's my favorite mother-daughter movie? I need to think about it. I'm like Free Friday, 2003. That's a great one. That's my favorite one. But, oh, God, we haven't't done terms of endearment i was gonna say if you guys do that one please i want to come back and talk absolutely you'll be coming back it's one of my favorite movies of all time absolutely a couple last things i want to talk

about and these are just sort of stray thoughts actually they're kind of about the men in the movie wow brave of me to bring up the men in the movie but as we've already mentioned they're kind of not entirely incidental to the plot but they're certainly not the main characters by any stretch of the imagination and the way that they are often talked about or just presented on screen is like they're a nuisance they're annoying a drum is like just bullying weezer the whole time in like a kind of playful way but also sometimes a scary way i'm like i don't even know if you see malin and him speak i don't think so but he does say he's like i make it a point never to deal with my wife and it's like okay feminist icon drum yes i do appreciate so shelby has two brothers who have

a couple lines here and there but they're kind of barely characters which i think is especially interesting because the writer who wrote this movie about his sister is presumably one of those brothers. And he didn't even write a character for himself, which I think the way that a lot of male egos are would not allow for that to happen in most cases. So I was pleasantly surprised. Feminist icon Robert Harlan. Yes. And then, yeah, we get a few other men. We meet Jackson a few other men we've like we meet jackson a few times and although the way

he's described shelby's like i thought he was a pest at first but then he kind of grew on me and now i love him and it's like okay wow tale as old as time we talked a little bit about spud truvie's husband spud gets the best deal out of anyone and i don't understand why at the end they're like it's like is it just because it's sam shepherd where they're like spud you know he was distant and rude for the majority of the movie but shelby dying it almost feels like a walk to remember sort of thing where it's like it wasn't until this young woman died in an untimely way that i as a man man learned, I should be a little nicer. And you're like,

whatever, what, what is that trope? It's so weird. I don't know. It's a very tiny part of this movie, but I was just like, great.

It's tropey though. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. Especially cause I'm like, Truffy deserves the absolute best. And she has to accept this, this scraps of a man yeah she also

has a scary son people are like it turned out okay he's just a little scary yeah honestly I'm like that'll be me one day uh I wanted to also just quickly shout out Robert Harley also wrote the first wives club just something oh to he also wrote soap I want to say, or am I making that up? I also, I hate to add this in there, but he's Presbyterian and he's gay, which I'm Presbyterian as well. But he also owns a plantation. I saw that, yes, in Louisiana. which uh says was built in 1830 who held as many as 104 enslaved people on the property okay well um yeah so he um he owns a plantation so i gotta say it's it's knocking it down on my list a little bit i gotta fuck that guy yeah yeah robert as someone who's bread and butter is writing uh

stories of wealthy white women uh not the plantation robert like i jesus took a turn it took a turn for me everybody i it's taking a turn yeah yeah i did not know that take a wrecking ball to it robert for fuck's sake great movie though robert but you writing it in the living room of the plantation is stressing me out yes oh for fuck's sake well that's the end of the episode no the other thing i want to say about like the way men are characterized in this movie that kind of brings it back to the title of the movie malin is talking about the moment that they take shelby off of life support and her being in the hospital room as shelby passes away she's describing how drum left he couldn't take it jackson left i find it amusing men are supposed

to be made out of steel or something and then meanwhile like all these men who were supposed to be you know these very hold it together oh nothing affects me because i'm a big strong man kind of thing they couldn't like handle it emotionally which i mean fair like it is a very upsetting thing and devastating thing to deal with but i guess just kind of like the comment on we as women our strength is undervalued because it's emotional strength whereas like societally we favor like the perceived physical strength of men even though i don't i don't want to be making sweeping generalizations here but i just like that she's like wait a minute men are supposed to be the strong ones made of steel but actually we're the steel magnolias so i don't know what my point is but it's something is there any other stuff we wanted to touch on this movie is very dense i

feel like we've only kind of scratched the surface but i could keep going i feel like we covered a lot about it i feel good i've done a great job here today i'm reeling from this robert harling situation yeah i it really puts a damper on the whole damn thing it took a turn not gonna lie but you know i mean also what we have to be honest about is like i hate to say it but like of course he probably owns a plantation like it's he's from louisiana like it's not it's not that surprising which is the sad part really but like like, but reading it is like, Oh wow. Got it.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Really don't. Someone who has like a formative influence on you as a kid owns a plantation. It's just fucking ridiculous. Yeah.

But you know what? Not to like turn this into that, but like, it's just a part of being black in America. Like at any turn you find out that something you've loved or something you've known or something you've been a part of that it's connected to slavery in some way or something that like a construct that was meant to harm my people and like it's part of the trauma, you know what I mean? But it's also, like I said, part of the protection is like having the awareness of like,

I'm not really shocked. It all tracks, like it tracks. But yeah, someone that owes a plantation can also write a beautiful movie too. That black people then made a remake of that's the other i'm like how do you how does he fucking sleep at night like did they not know that i didn't know that until right now so maybe they didn't either i don't know but like we then made a whole remake of a man's movie who owns a plantation it's you know yeah it's a lot of thoughts yeah in the movie you do see people of color every so often but they're always people working at the wedding like a few wedding guests it's maybe a nurse i

think there's a black woman who's a nurse who speaks to shelby for like two lines of dialogue but i think those are the only lines of dialogue spoken by a person of color in the entire movie yeah so yeah well should we move on to the bechdel test and whether or not this movie yes it does for almost the entire movie it yeah it does they do once again and i'm trying not to be too critical of this but they are almost constantly talking about, like, very traditionally feminine things, which, again, is neither inherently positive or negative. Do I wish we saw them talk about something other than weddings, babies, relationships with men,

which obviously that part doesn't pass the Bechdel test, but, you know, they're talking about the color. But it's also a lot of health. Like, there's a lot of talk about health like there's a lot of talk about health there's a lot of talk about like they talk about anne boleyn having six fingers on one hand and that is the best pass of yeah i mean they are talking about a lot of traditionally feminine things but i think that that is inherent to this community and you're getting a big range of opinions on these issues too because if it would be just more like we can all agree that wedding and baby is awesome like if everyone was of the same mind i would maybe be more

bothered by it but because of like this community and the fact that each character has a pretty significantly different opinion on these issues i think it's interesting true they do they gossip about other women in one case are fat shaming another woman which dolly was wrong for that that woman was having the time of her life and she looked great so bye whatever yeah yes the movie does not really pass the reverse spectral test meaning like men barely talk to each other we see a few interactions between Shelby's dad and her brothers but other than that it is almost exclusively women talking to each other sometimes they're talking about men although I do think that when Weezer in response to something Anel says Weezer says men are the most horrible creatures they will ruin your life you mark my words i think

that still does pass the bechdel test yes the spirit of the line passes the bechdel test yeah oh and then really quickly they talk about i think it's clary's nephew coming out as gay and they're all kind of like what is what is that what are what gay people? 1989, huh? And they all have track lighting in their homes and they're all named, what is it? Like Mark, Steve or something else. Anyway, it was a less homophobic view of queerness than I thought it was gonna happen.

It didn't feel, especially because it was written by a gay writer. I was just like, is this how this writer heard people talking about him when he was growing i don't know i sort of gave that a pass just because the writer is from this area and is queer i also was like i don't really know what they're talking about here if i'm being honest i don't know what track lighting is and so i have no opinion on that exchange. But what about the most important metric in the entire world?

Our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I think I'll go ahead and give this a little split down the middle, two and a half nipples. I do appreciate that it is a story that centers women dealing with everyday life and also more kind of significant life moments, grief and tragedy, but also like, you know, celebrations of life and having babies and, you know, getting married and, again, very much reflecting the values of the time and the values of, yeah, like, Southern white women in the 80s. But it's a story that centers women and female friendships and female relationships and mother-daughter relationships and all these things that most movies ignore. And it kind of sidelines men the way that most movies do not especially movies written by men so i thought it was a really interesting movie in that regard and it is

i think a very nice way to honor that real life person's memory susan shout out susan and the movie is so so terribly white and although there is a little diversity among the personalities of the women the generations and ages the class of the women we see different classes but it is they really just don't want to be friends with any non-white people. Yeah. And that's pretty fucked up. I guess two and a half, maybe three nipples. And I'll give one to the armadillo cake. I'll give one to Weezer and I'll give one to Clary.

Yeah, I'm going to go three. I would have gone three and a half but in spite of things i just learned about robert harling cannot uh so i'll go three i think that there is yeah just to echo what you said caitlin there is a clear lack of diversity in terms of the races of these women it feels pointed and i don't know i'm gonna be thinking about the conversation we had about the reboot for for a while i think that there is an interesting kind of second act to the way that it seems like it was attempted to course correct when the reality is that there should have been a widely funded you know ensemble movie about black women it didn't need to be the same story over again so i i think that for what this

movie is there are a lot of unique aspects to it i i like the mother-daughter relationship and just this like impossible emotionally driven situation and i like that they're surrounded by women that are so different from them who they very much need to make it through i think that that is like the like core beautiful thing about this movie and that it has the good sense to keep the men in their life very much on the sidelines which you never ever ever get yeah like the gripes i have with the presence men do have never last more than 30 seconds so i can live with that yeah. So I'm going to give this movie three nipples. I'm going to give one to Weezer.

I'm also going to give one to the Armadillo cake. And I'm going to give the final one to the woman dancing at the wedding. She did nothing wrong. Yeah. Ashley, what do you think? I think I'm going to go with three too. I'm going to give it three nipples. You know, just everything you all said.

I mean, I think kind of to go back to what you said about like the lack of diversity I think the truth is like I'm okay with it only because it wouldn't have made sense anyway like if they had a random black friend I wouldn't have believed it would have felt like they threw a random black woman in there so I mean like I'm I'm okay with that. It was authentic to, like, these women living in this small parish in Louisiana. Like, it made sense. But, yeah, it's still a movie I love, but now a movie that has a problematic writer.

So, there's that. And then I would give a nipple to Malin. I'm going to give one to Shelby. And I'm going to give one to the black nurse. She deserves a nipple. She does. She really does. I think she was given a name too. I think Shelby says her name. I can't think of it right now. And I like

that we got to see Shelby at work too. I feel like you never get to see women at work. So quick shout out to that as well. Yes. Alright, well Ashley, thank you so much for joining us and talking about this. Thank you. And please come back for Terms of Endearment. I mean, please. Yes. I can't wait. I can't wait to get the email that we're going to do that one. Our resident Shirley MacLaine expert. Yeah. I love her. She's the greatest. So much. Yeah. Where can we find you? Where can we find your work? Where can we

find you online? Yeah. You can find me at Ashley Blaine on Instagram. You can also follow my podcast at Trials to Triumphs Pod, which is also on Instagram and Facebook. And then you can listen to my podcast each and every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, Trials to Triumphs. Listen to it and get inspired. And you can find us as always on Instagram and Twitter at Bechdel cast.

Keep your eyes peeled. We've got some live shows being announced in the next couple of weeks. If you live in California or Texas, interestingly. And yeah, you can get our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast. And also our Patreon, aka Matreon, where you get two bonus episodes every month. I was like, what time frame?

My brain just broke all of a sudden. Okay. It's working. Two episodes every month. Yes. Including all of the back catalog of bonus episodes, which is around 150 episodes can you believe it we've had the stamp patreon going since 2017 there's tons of content there my goodness and yes i am calling it content because i'm tired it's sort of like we are content creators oh okay you've gone too far

you've gone too far we're just people okay and with that let's uh all get on the back of some guy's motorcycle and go meet baby shelby hope you got your bunny suit on yep got it right here okay bye bye the bechdel cast is a production of iheart media hosted by, 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. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology, swaps of different meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl.

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