On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism?

It's the patriarchy, Zephim fast start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Jamie and Caitlin here, we're going on tour in the Midwest covering the Star Wars prequels.

We're gonna just cover all three at once in one show in fabulous outfits.

We will be in Indianapolis for Let's Fest on Saturday, August thirtieth for a matinee show, and then Jamie, you have a solo show that evening that can't be missed.

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We will be at the Den Theater on August thirty first, do not miss it.

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Enjoy the episode the Bechdel Cast.

Okay, when the cow came on screen, I was like.

That's the first cow.

Yeah, Like, I've never had a movie watching experience where the movie shows you so clearly the title of the movie, but in classic Kelly fashion, has the restraint to not be like, there's the first cow.

Like, and I felt like I had blue balls, I had narrative blue balls.

But there she was the first cow.

There, she was female for time, we can argue.

I was really expecting this to be sort of like a silence of the Lamb situation, where you never see the lambs on screen, they're only referenced in one line of dialogue.

But this is a movie about the first cow.

We're not waiting for good out here.

The first cow is.

She takes her sweet time, but once she's there, she's there, and she's not just there.

She represents capitalism and the means of fucking production She's a metaphorical cow.

A metaphysical, a physical, a metaphorical everything cow.

She's everything.

Welcome to the Bechdel Cass, the Bechdel Cow.

I don't know the Bechdel cow.

It makes you think, it really does.

And this is our show where we're.

The first two Bechdel Cows.

Oh yeah, I'm first, Caitlin Dorante, I'm first, Jamie.

This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test or the Bechdel cow, perhaps as a jumping off point.

But Jamie, what is that?

Well?

It is a media metric originally created by our dear friend, friend of the cast, Alison Bechdel.

Originally created as a joke, a lark, a gag in her comic Thanks to Watch Out for in the eighties, it has since become a mainstream media metric.

There's many versions of this test.

Ours requires the following.

Two characters of a marginalized gender with names speak to each other about something other than a man.

You know, and we've got an interesting discussion ahead.

I can't believe this is our first Kelly Reichardt movie, and we have an incredible guest today.

We certainly do.

She's a cartoonist and illustrator, the author of the new graphic novel Simplicity, which is in bookstores now.

It's Maddie Lobchansky.

Welcome, Welcome, Hi, thank you for having me.

I'm really excited.

I also when the cow showed up, Lena to my, my dear wife, and I whispered to her, that's the first Cow, because you have to.

It's so satisfying, it's so triumphant.

She's so beautiful.

She flies onto the screen with angel wings.

It's the most beautiful cow in the world.

Yes, she really is.

And she's been through it, and she's been through it.

Yeah, she's a widow.

I know truly.

I was like, I would actually really love to see the Pixar version of First Cow also where it's just a deeply traumatized cow who makes friends with kind of a who's the guy in ratituey because Cookie, to me has the ratitude guye energy.

Oh sure, Linguiniinguiini.

He is Cookie and Linguini they like they're on a similar frequency.

Yeah, And then and then later when someone's talking about this movie, they can be like, you know, you think it's a kid's movie, but it's really about bovine trauma.

It is bovine generational trauma.

This movie is fascinating because like on the first watch, you're like, huh, what is this movie about?

And then the second watch you're like, oh m hmm, it's about food, sovereignty and capital.

Okay, okay, she was cooking because at first you're like, that's sure was a cow.

Some cow.

Let's get into it, Maddie.

What is your history with this movie?

So yeah, I love this movie so much.

It was actually my first CALLI record that I saw, and it was during this movie came out twenty nineteen, I believe, and during lockdown for COVID and twenty twenty.

My partner is in the WGA.

We started getting screeners nice and I was like, I heard people ranting and raving about this film.

People I know that like movies, and I was like, I'll force us to watch this.

We had a very elaborate nightly movie viewing in my home during lockdown, where I got on YouTube.

I found like the Regal roller Coaster and I would turn off all the lights and I would make popcorn and I would play that on the screen.

To make to put us in a movie mode.

You know, I love hearing what people's like simulation of normalcy was during lockdown, because it's like, that's it.

That's a good one, that's a very comforting move.

I yearned for the Regal Coff mystery of cinemas, and I had to go there in my mind, and you know, I go put our phones in the room and watch it, watch a movie every night.

So yeah, we watched this movie and I just it just fully blew me away to the point where that year, for my wife's birthday, I found the cow on cameo.

The cow is on kiss not anymore, howmeo very briefly the cows on Cameo and I found it, and I bought my wife for her birthday a birthday message from I believe the cow's name was Eve, who played the cow Wow, and Eve picked between two notes like fortunes on the ground.

Wait, that's elaborate.

Yeah, it's really elaborate.

And while this was happening, you know, in the very first when they first get to the fort in the movie, you see that guy kind of like wander by the camera and he's holding like a squealing little pig Yeah, that pig wanders into frame and she goes, oh, they're so and so he's in the film as well.

Wait were they from the same farm.

Yeah, they're like some I think in Oregon or Washington or British Columbia, I can't quite remember.

I have to like go the video is saved somewhere on my partner's fin can find it?

Wow?

Please?

Yes, that's it's The stars are just like us.

I love when stars are friends.

Yeah, they seem to be hanging out all the time.

The frog and the frog, the pig and the cow.

I also love that she gets that there's no human on the poster either.

Yeah, it's just Eve the cow.

Yeah.

This was my second Kelly Reichard movie, two of two.

I feel like she's the kind of director that I know.

I will probably enjoy all of her work, but I don't want to like mainline it.

I feel like it's it's nice to I watched my first I watched Certain Women last year, which is terrific, and Lily Gladstone is in this movie for two seconds, but she is like unbelievable in Certain Women, so I already knew that I really like Killie Recard.

I also like I also just generally like learning about her process.

She's very thorough and she's very anti Hollywood, where it seems like she makes movies when she feels like it.

She rarely makes them outside of Oregon, where she's from and where she lives.

I think she's from Miami, but she.

She's like been in Oregon forever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's best friends with I think Todd Haynes.

Like it's beautiful.

She's just a vibe.

Yeah.

She she came into the last year.

I think that she came to the Museum of the Moving Image, which I go to all the time because its in my neighborhood, and she did a talkback for Showing Up, which is a movie that I love.

Also, but listening to her it was like the first good talkback I've ever been to in my life.

It's incredible.

She just her process talk is like amazing, awesome.

She's like she's both so thorough and like it doesn't seem to give a fuck about a lot of the like more I don't know, bullshitty, YadA YadA aspects of filmmaking.

I just I really like her.

But this is only my second movie I've seen of hers and it's really good.

I was really taken by, like, what a simple story it is that like masks, all of these really complicated themes.

The performances were great.

I couldn't stop thinking about Waninguini.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know why.

I was like and I was looking up, like, has anyone else thought that the guy from First Cow reminds him of Linguini?

And I'm proud to say I think I may have had an original thought.

Wow, thank you, thank you.

But I really really enjoyed this movie.

There's so much going on.

I do have some thoughts about it, and I'm excited to get into it.

Yeah.

Kaitlyn wints her history was First Cow.

I had never seen it before.

It was my first First Cow, first Kelly write Card movie.

I knew of it and I remember it being released.

But I was also kind of confusing this movie with the Power of the Dog.

Wow.

Okay, first of all, misogynist.

Of you, well, I hate women?

You hate women with Bob's Okay.

In my defense, both movies have an animal in the title.

True similar similar release.

Right.

Part of the Dog came out like a yearish later.

A couple of years apart.

Both of them are directed by women.

Both movies are period pieces.

So you see where my head's at.

I hope canceled.

Yeah.

Yeah, Anyway, hadn't seen this movie before, and listeners of the show will know probably that this is not really my type of movie.

I think there's really interesting things that the movie does and says.

But the movie made me sleepy.

But I'm excited to talk about it.

There's lots to discuss, and let's take a break and then we'll come back for the recap.

And we're back.

We're back.

Actually, before we get into it, Maddie, I neglected to do this at the top of the episode.

Let's talk a little bit about your new book before we talk about the events of the movie.

First.

Cow Yeah, So I was thinking about this movie when we were talking about picking movies, because I did.

The way the movie is framed to me was so fascinating, and I didn't I'm loath to say I ripped it off from my book, but I did.

It was very inspired by it.

So yeah.

The book takes place in the far future, like fifty years from now, and America has like collapsed into various like walled fascist city states and like an academic from like the New York one of the city states is sent up to the Catskills to like do an ethnography of this cold group that's been living there since the nineteen seventies, and he kind of falls in love with someone up there, but then very mysterious things start happening and members of the group start disappearing in him, and this guy that he's in love with kind of like trek off into the woods to figure out what happened.

It's a lot of like very tranquil wood stuff I was thinking about when I was making the book, and it's about sort of like both capitalism but also utopian separatism and communal living and that kind of stuff and the urges that drive people to sort of make those decisions like leave society and start a new somewhere else.

God, it's I haven't quite finished it yet, but I started a couple of nights ago and it's so terrific.

I also love your last book, Boys.

Weekend is so like the Range, the Range.

It's just you're incredible.

Thank you.

I'm very excited to keep reading it.

And Yeah, I wanted to ask because it was like, it feels like this book is in conversation with this movie a bit.

The book is sort of framed through The first thing you see is like the spoilers for the first page of my book.

But it's like it's like kids in a museum and they're talking about like the events of the book like they've already happened.

Right, It's different.

It's much different in the movie.

But this idea that like we're all just sort of like subject to like the tide of history washing over us at all times, and having that in mind from the jump.

So much of the book also is about what history is and who records it, and who's it recorded for, who's it recorded by, who is in the intended listener or reader of the history being made, and all that stuff is really important.

I'm always trying to think about that.

So I think a period piece like this is so has a lot of that in mind as well.

Absolutely nice.

Yeah, well, I'm excited for listeners to check it out as well.

Well, let's start talking about first Cow.

It would be nice.

Do we know?

Is Eve still with us?

Eve the Cow?

Yeah?

Oh boy.

She's not credited on Wikipedia, which seems like it should be fixed.

She's credited on IMDb.

Thank god.

I think her name is ev Evie okay, ev the Cow.

Yes, she should start a book club or something like, you should get on her like influencer wave.

Yeah, I would take her.

Like if if you put a few books before her and she sniffed one, I'd be like, I'll give it a shot.

Yeah.

According to the GQ profile I found for her name is she's nicknamed She's nicknamed ev Okay Wow, Okay.

So she was two when they filmed the movie Prodigy.

So I'm like, what is life spain of a cow Jersey Cow?

I think it's okay, let's check this out.

Really it was like twenty years.

Yeah, it was like it's a relatively long life.

I think all things considered, I think they might Yeah, fifteen to twenty years.

So like, okay, like a cat, Yes, great, I'm glad we were on the same page there First.

Cat, and there's a cat in the movie also there is Okay, So here is what happens in First Cow.

We open on a woman played by Alia Showcat out in the woods walking her dog.

Some would say that is the power of the dog.

And I think our friend would agree.

I think this is also like I haven't seen it, but I know that one of Kelly Rigar's earlier movies stars Michelle Williams and a dog he's called Wendy and Lucy.

I felt like it was like a little nod girl and her dog.

It's a Kelly thing.

You wouldn't understand, No, I wouldn't.

But anyway, she and the dog come upon a couple human skeletons which are kind of like half buried in the ground, and then Alia showcat like unearthed the rest of them.

She looks so excited when she's digging up the skeletons.

I noted that too.

Something I noticed on this meeting that I had not noticed last time I watched it, where she's like, wow, so jazzed about it.

She's the only character who like doesn't come back, so it's like, whatever, she worked at this movie for three hours.

Who like her reaction?

I was like, Okay, so she knows she's in the movie first cow Like that's how she reacts because otherwise an absolutely unhinged reaction to finding two skeletons, because she has no way of knowing how recent these skeletons are.

They're fairly well preserved.

Yeah, this could.

Be from a couple of years ago.

This could be people she knows, This could.

Be I don't know how long it takes for a body to like fully decompose.

I mean, not longer than a few years, So this could be.

We don't know.

We don't know, but they're from the early nineteenth century, and it seems like she knows that based on She's like, oh my god, the protagonists of First Cow.

This is awesome, yes, because we flash back to eighteen twenties Organ territory.

So it's wild wild West vibes, It's Oregon Trail vibes.

Well Smith is there fighting a big spider.

Everyone's dying of dysentery.

A man is in the woods picking mushrooms.

This is Otis Figowitz, though he goes.

By cooking Gueenie.

I mean both names that are food, I.

Know, I mean and the same sort of like mappy, you know, like the little hair cut and the little like I'm just a guy, I don't know, like the vibe.

I'm coming around on this.

Get John Magro to play Linguini in the live action rather they are a bound to make right.

He would be so good.

So he's traveling with a band of fur trappers, and they're headed to a place called Fort Tillicum.

Cookie is in charge of finding and cooking them food on their journey, but this is a difficult task and their food supply is running low, and they keep getting on Cookie's case about it.

That night, as he's like scavenging for more food, he meets another traveler, an immigrant from China named King Lou played by Orian Lee, who is here on this continent in hopes of finding gold or just like any kind of prospect, but he hasn't had any luck, and right now there are some Russian men chasing him because he may have killed one of their friends.

He's also crucially nude.

Right buck naked.

I love Kinglu so much, like he's so cool, especially how calmly he presents.

Kinglu is a certified yapper.

I really really like him.

Where he's he's always just yapping it up.

He presents all information matter of factly, whether it is like regardless of what.

He's like, well, yeah, I'm being chased, and cause he's like why, He's like, well, I may have killed someone, and Cookie is like tight, tight, tight, and it works, and he's like, Okay, I guess come with me.

Where you get the filling where if King Lou appeared panicked, the events of the movie couldn't happen.

But he's got a very cool head, cool as a cucumber.

Yeah, and like compared to the horrible vibe of the trappers, that the horrible, awful vibe of those terrible men.

Yes, it's like, oh, we got a guy I can chop it up with.

Come sleep in my tent please.

Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense where Cookie's like, all right, so maybe he killed a Russian guy, but he seems like he can hang and I don't know anyone like that, and that's sort of how they come together.

Also, he killed the Russian guy because the Russian guys killed his friend.

Yeah, but it's implied that his friend was stealing from them, So you know, it's like a chicken in the egg kind of thing.

Who was the first person to do something wrong?

We don't know.

They're cut from the same cloth.

Yeah, Cookie and King Lou, And I also feel like Cookie.

It just based on and again it's like we don't get a lot of expository, like Kelly makes you work for it, But I feel like Cookie in some ways, like there's something in the other that Cookie would like to be more like Kinglu in some ways, and vice versa.

They compliment each other very well.

So yeah, Cookie finds King Lou.

He gives him some water and lets him sleep at the campsite that night.

The next day, King Lou kind of disappears.

Cookie manages to catch some fish in a net as he's by the river or I don't even know if Cookie sees this, but we see a cow being brought to land, the first cow.

And we start cheering, Yeah, go crazy, Oh, it's so good on her, like she's on a raft.

Yeah, but it feels like she's being brought in on like an ancient Roman litter, Like she's just drifting into frame and it's incredible.

Yeah, it looks like a like a classical painting of like a like actory preyed in Rome or something.

There's just like, yeah, it's incredible.

Yes, I got a big foam finger.

That's his cow, and I'm holding.

It up waving it around, and the one it indicates which cow it is, the first?

Right, we will learn that this is the first cow in the Oregon Territory, which a rich man from England named Chief Factor had shipped to this area so that he could have milk in his tea.

Shortly after this, Cookie arrives at the fort.

Then he goes to a saloon where he encounters King Lou again, who invites Cookie back to his cabin in the woods for a drink.

This is a funny scene because Cookie is supposed to be watching a baby while the baby's father is busy being in a like a bar brawl.

Again, that like the beginning to a totally different movie about the baby.

I know, I thought the baby was gonna come back.

No, I kept thinking this movie was going to be about so many different things.

Because when they go back to Kinglo's cabin, I'm like, and they're like drinking, I'm like, is this gonna become like a Broke Back Mountain type story?

Because I especially because they were they're skeletons.

I mean, we're let you sort of guess early on, okay, these are the You're like, yeah, they're they're met laying beside each other, and you're sort of like, dare I hope?

I know?

But yeah, And there's a like beautiful little domestic scene where like you keep seeing Kinglu in the window like outside doing like man stuff.

Chopping firewood exactly.

It's like chopping firewood inside Cookies, like tidying up and hoping he doesn't like notice that he's like sweeping his house and putting potted flowers on the shelves and stuff.

They're so complimentary, like it's really lovely.

But they're just friends.

It's cool, just friends, guys, they're just friends.

They should have kissed, but yeah, they're just friends.

I feel like they didn't not kiss too, because I feel like Kelly keeps you guessing.

You don't know they didn't kiss.

Yeah, they were spiritually kissing.

We just didn't see them kiss on screen.

But that house did not have two beds.

Yeah, true, because like eventually Cookie just moves in with King Lou.

Anyway, Cookie is supposed to be babysitting this random stranger's baby and King Lou's like, leave the baby, it's fine, let's go have a drink.

So they're chatting, and King Lou talks about how this is the land of opportunity and that he's biding his time until he can capitalize on some opportunity and hopefully become rich.

He's had different ideas on how to do this, such as selling beaver oil from beaver glands, but again nothing really has panned out.

Cookie says that he would like to open a hotel or a bakery someday.

And this is a seed that gets planted in King Lou's and he keeps talking about a hotel.

He's a yapper.

Then Cookie sees Chief Factor's cow and tells King Lou about it.

He's like, I'd love some of that milk to use for baking, and King Lou is like, okay, pitch, let's go steal milk from the cow.

So they do.

They sneak over to Chief Factor's house at night.

King Lou is on the lookout while Cookie milks the cow.

And he's like also empathizing with the cow, yes, which is a plot point.

Weirdly, they bond, They bond.

They become good friends.

Linguini, I'm telling.

You Linguini and a rat, Cookie and a cow first rat.

Okay.

So they return to the cabin with the milk.

The next day, Cookie makes some biscuits.

King Lou is like, yummy, yummy, we should take these to the fort and sell them.

Cookie is hesitant, but they go for it because Cookie is kind of a doormat he'll just go along with whatever, and right away the men at the fort buy all the biscuits.

They're like, hubba, hubba, these are delicious.

And King Lu sort of preys on their own racism to avoid describing the ingredients.

Yeah.

Yeah, he says, like, oh, it's an ancient Chinese secret kind of thing.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, it's the first cow.

It's the milk of the first cow.

Yes, that night they steal more milk from the cow, and the next day it's much the same, where the biscuits fly off the shelf.

It's almost like these hot cakes are selling like hotcakes.

I was really excited to write that down.

Anyway.

I was thrilled.

I was thrilled.

Yeah.

So this goes on for like a few weeks, it seems, where they steal milk at night, use it to bake tasty treats and sell them at a pretty steep markup.

They're charging I think the equivalent of at least five whiskey shots for a biscuit.

Yes, which is wild to think about because I feel like in current dollars during happy hour, that's still fifty.

Dollars, like two dollars a biscuit.

Yeah, and then they charge we'll get to this part.

But Chief Factor comes around eventually and they charge him double, so he's paying one hundred dollars a biscuit.

The point is they're making quite a bit of money from this endeavor, which they hide in a tree because eighteen twenty.

It's so funny because he's like, we got to put this in a bank, and they're like, yeah, a bank, like a tree.

I honestly the way things are headed right now.

I was like a tree bank.

Not the worst idea, not the worst, not the worst, bring it back.

So one day Chief Factor played by Toby Jones, one of my favorite character actors.

He's so great great.

He comes by and he buys a biscuit and we're all wondering if he's going to notice that milk is one of the ingredients.

Milk that would have to come from his cow because he has the first and only cow in the region.

But he doesn't notice it, for I mean, which is fun because he's, you know, the most powerful colonizer in the story, and he is not smart.

He's a bit of a dunce yes.

And it also I think really again, like subtly shows like the power of like how nostalgia is something that can result in you not asking questions.

You should probably ask where.

He literally says, this tastes like London, and it's like, we'll think a little harder about why that might be.

But he's just so like thrilled to have this taste of his past that he doesn't ask questions until like forced.

That's the power of the milk, the power of the cow.

I was gonna say, I just hate it when I'm enjoying a Priustine reverie and people use that as an opportunity to take advantage of me.

I cannot stand it.

You're most vulnerable, my most prustian people are.

Anyway.

Yeah, Chief Factor loves the biscuit and he asks Cookie if he can make him a cloth foo tea.

I don't know how to say this claffo tea.

I google.

It's like fruit pizza.

I don't know.

It's like a set custard with fruit in it.

Again, I was so lucky to be watching this with my wife, who is a food writer.

Helpful yeah, and I just turned her.

I was like, hey, what's it?

What's a claffoo tee?

Please?

Thank you.

I actually wrote this down because I love the line so much.

He was talking about like a captain coming by to his house for high tea and he loves claffootees, but he thinks that, like the Frontier is too savage, and he just goes, well, the captain loves a klaffootee and I'd like to humiliate him.

You're like just bitches, like anyone's ever said.

I okay, possibly queer icon chief Factor.

I love these queens, Yeah, because I mean.

The characters keep basically referring to Chief Factor.

They're like, what kind of woman is he?

He likes milk in his tea and he knows about the latest clothing fashion from France.

It's complicated because you're like, ultimately he is the colonizer.

Yeah, so it's okay to bully him, but like it.

But also he's being the bully in a very particular way.

Right, yes, yes, anyway, Chief Factor wants to humiliate a guest of his with a klaffou tee and cookies, Like, sure, I'll make that.

So he makes it and brings it to Chief Factor's house where he's entertaining this captain as well as a couple native guests.

Lily Gladstone is there and apparently she is Chief Factor's wife, because her character's name, according to IMDb is wait for it, chief Factor's.

Wife Kelly There.

I mean, yeah, I have some thoughts that because Lily Gladstone is a Kelly Roger company player.

I guess where she's appeared in a lot of her work.

And that was like, well, we'll get into That was one of the things where it's like there's a lot in this movie that's left unsaid and like left for the viewer to sort of clean on their own.

And she is like the character that I wish there had been more explicitly said about because it's like, yeah, she's married a chief factor.

What does that mean?

What were the circumstances?

Like, you can guess, but you just don't.

You don't know, We don't know.

Also in this scene, Chief Factor mentions that his cow gives very little milk and wonders if there's something wrong with her.

So they all take a walk to see the cow, which affectionately nuzzles Cookie since he milks her every night, and they've become friends.

And tells her his little secrets and he's like, I'm sorry, he's like literally her therapist.

Yeah, he's like I'm sorry about your husband and your child because we learned that originally three cows were supposed to be brought to the territory.

It was a cow a bowl slash, her husband and their baby, but only the cow survived the trip.

Anyway, the cow nuzzles Cookie and everyone notices and they're like, hmm, that was kind of weird.

And then that night, Cookie and King Lou head back to steal more milk from Chief Factors cow and I'm like, don't do it when they have all these guests around who could see you, But they do it anyway.

Also, King Lou has been talking about opening up a hotel in San Francisco using the money that they've been earning, and their plan is to sell biscuits for a little while longer and then heads south.

So this is why they need to make another trip to the cow.

But that night, as Cookie is milking the cow, they are spotted by and I believe this is Chief Factors, like servant the Chief and the captain chase after Cookie and King Lou with guns.

And also spud from Trainspotting.

Is there, Yes, yes he is.

I still have seen it.

I still have seen train spotting is.

A huge like, Yeah, the Scottish guy is in Trainspotting and he's incredible, and I think both both things.

The Scottish guy would be in Trainspotting and makes a lot of sense.

Okay, his name Jamie in real life, this actor's name is oh, you in Bremner.

I'm not gonna try it.

You don't Wancottish Scottish names.

They're just like, really really challenging for me.

They can't.

It's okay, I'm irish, I can't.

Anyway, he is there.

He's also the one who tells the audience about the circumstances of the first cow, so he's a very important character anyway.

Cookie and King Lou managed to get away for a while, but they get separated and they're both injured.

Cookie ends up in a stranger's house.

Apparently someone found him in the woods and brought him home to tend to his injury.

Meanwhile, King Lou negotiates with a native man to take him down river in his canoe.

Eventually, Cookie and King Lou both make it back to their cabin, but it's not safe for them to stay, so they set off again.

Although Cookie is lightly dying from his head injury, and they're both being hunted by a young man who we've seen before at the fort.

This is a man who wanted to buy biscuits, plant.

And pay off with this guy while except it doesn't.

Quite pay off, well, just the fact that he comes back, like you think the baby's gotta come back.

I always assumed that it was him that does them at the end.

I think it's safe to assume we don't see that on screen.

Basically, this man wanted to buy biscuits, but the other men would always cut him in line and he never got a chance to taste the biscuits.

And so now he's possibly going to shoot them over this biscuit vendetta.

Except it's actually that there's like a bounty on their head and he's like trying to collect on the bounty.

I'm guessing, but we don't see this quite payoff, because if he does kill them, it doesn't happen on screen anyway.

They stop to rest Cookie and King Lou, but they both pass out in the same position that all your show cap finds them in finds the skeletons in at the beginning of the movie, so presumably they die shortly after this.

Either via the man who wanted biscuits, or they just die from their injuries were not totally sure honestly.

All things considered, I hope it is from the Biscuit Mand because I think I jumped to like assuming they died a slower death.

I hope that that's not true.

Yeah, yeah, See, to me, I felt like I drew a pretty straight line to that being the Biscuit Boy m hm, because there's so much in this movie that's to me about like the various levels of being perceived as womanly of all these men, like Cookies, like immediately off the bat, like he's so soft.

King Lou also like clearly doesn't fit in with like this very masculine society that they're they're living in.

Uh.

The chief factor is like again like seen as like effemineate and this little this little boy is like the Biscuit Boy is.

To me, he's so framed as like a fruity little guy and everyone, yeah clearly is treating treating him that way.

So like, how what better way to prove yourself to Spud than to Achilles to kill the other fruits?

You know?

Oh God, It's almost like masculinity is a prison I wouldn't know anything about that.

Also, very similar themes are explored in the Power of the Dog, just saying.

Caitlin's desperately trying to backtrack their own mists.

All women look the same to you.

No, I don't even know who directed the movie.

At first, I was just like, these are the same movie because they're about animals question Mark anyway.

Anyway, the Power of the Dog is about a mountain.

But that's the end of the movie.

So let's take another quick break and we'll come back for the discussion.

And we're back.

It's Jane camp be It who directed The Power of the Dog.

A different woman, but we're talking about first Cat.

Yeah, where do we met, Maddie?

Where would you like to start?

What jumps out to you about this film?

I think what sticks out to me so much is this sort of like the stuff that it's all not to be like it's like jazz.

But there's so much about this movie that is about I think masculinely and about colonization that is only really you're seeing white men, but there's all these like weird little pockets that the camera lingers, or there's a moment that stays there that makes you think about it really hard, Like I think about we were talking about like how Lily Gladstone only really gets this one second.

But then there's like this long moment where she and I think who was supposed to be her mother in law or a sister I can't but like another native woman sit on the couch and just start having a conversation about what they're wearing.

Yeah, and the camera just stays there for like a long time, like longer than I think most writers would leave it there, and it seems so intentional to me.

And then yeah, there's all this stuff about like like what this society of like mostly men, like hyper capitalist expansionist colonialism, like what it's doing to the land and the people there, and there's all this stuff about.

Like the line that will never leave my head about this movie is that it's something King Lou says early and he says like.

History isn't here yet, yes, yeah.

And Cookie's like, what do you mean it's old?

I mean the first time you see the cow, it's like, wow, this beautiful cow is coming in, like here comes civilization, here comes milk, and this like finally there's food and all the people are like wow, food finally.

But the first thing you see after you see the cow is there's like some native women on the shore, like mortar and pestling some grain right there, like the food ways exist, it's all there.

Yeah, And I think all this, all these little subtle nods to what's going on, are not Like there's a lot of movies that would would be like, oh, like here's me lip service, like like like a Leave of their own or something where the ball rolls out of bounds and you see the three black women like waving from very far away, Like there's a lot of movies that do that kind of stuff.

Or the the I feel like my go to of like in queer representation is Josh Gadd dancing with a man at the end of Beauty and the Beast.

Oh is that what they did?

For three seconds?

We did it?

Yeah, oh god damn it.

But yeah, I think so much of this is like it is the point of it, like these these little, these little gaps.

Yeah, I'm really interested to talk about it because it's like I do agree that like where she lingers is very intentional, and I know it's like such a part of her process to leave things on said and then there's like the yeah, the tendency to focus on white characters in terms of like who do we know the most about, which I do think is true of this I guess with the exception of King Loup, but I don't.

Yeah.

I watched this movie twice and and then by the end, by the end of the second watch, I was like, I think that, like, ultimately this movie is about like American capitalism finding it's footing basically, but this this moment where like indigenous food sovereignty is taking a very particular turn, and what we see her I would also I was looking for more I wasn't able to find very much.

But I'm really curious what Indigenous American viewers think about this movie because I felt as if, like I don't know, like you don't.

It's not like Kelly Reichert's style to focus on like the peak of violence that comes with colonialism.

She's focusing on this like day to day normalizing of colonial ideas, and like through the Toby Jones character, I think it's like, yeah, there's a lot going on with him where he's treated like he's very effeminate.

He's like, you know, people are teasing him for that, but you're also like he is unequivocally the colonizer, the person with the most power.

Yeah, I mean the second his day little Tea is threatened that he sends people to kill them.

This is all about his like his tea party, Yeah, basically, And you can tell, like one of the moments that stuck with me is like the criticism I have because it's like a big scene where the high Tea is a big scene in the movie, and you don't know initially that there's going to be Indigenous people at this part.

He just is like, this is it's going to be high t We don't know.

He's married to Lily Gladstone.

You know, I think it's safe to assume that that marriage was either forced or one of convenience for the survival of Lily Gladstone's people.

It doesn't seem like it's a marriage based on love.

Which is interesting that like Lily Gladstone has been cast in that part more than once, right, because it it isn't it's a different part from Killers of the Flower Moon, But I was reminded of like she's put in a similar position, which also by a white director, right, but that like you see that Toby Jones's character clearly thinks he's like being a good guy by welcoming indigenous people into his home and clearly does not care or doesn't understand that he is bending everyone in this room to his will, regardless of race.

Like Cookie is also bending to his will, King Lou is also bending to his will to like maintain what he perceives as reality because he holds the power.

And then like through our friend miss Evie, he has the means of production.

It's also about means of production.

They don't own the means of production, so it can never sustain.

Ah, I don't know, yeah, my I think big criticism of the movie is that we are watching white settlers act colonize the land and claim its resources as their own, whether it's like the animal pelts that the fur trappers are taking, or the it seems like there's a mine like a silver or a gold mine or something whatever, the minerals, the animals, the food, everything, it's being stolen.

And we see the native characters on screen whose land is being stolen, but I feel like they're mostly treated as kind of set dressing.

Yeah, for sure, we don't get any interiority for them.

At all.

We barely see them speak.

There's that scene where I don't know if it is Lily Gladstone's sister or friend, and then she seems to be partnered with the Native man who is a guest at Chief Factor's house.

We don't know anything about the dynamics, names, name anything, so could have I mean, the movie's not afraid to like take some time with scenes and like take some time to let you in on some information, but it neglects to do that at the expense of not letting the audience know anything about the indigenous characters.

It's felt like a deliberate choice that I couldn't find any I mean, let me know if others found examples of her speaking to this point, but it doesn't seem.

And also like from what I can sort of glean from her larger body of work that she is not like trying to shy away from indigenous history in Oregon and like the history of her own community.

But and like, while so many of the themes of this movie tie back to Indigenous Oregonians, we don't get to know them.

And I'm like, why was that choice made?

Because it's not like she's avoiding the reality of it, So I don't, like, Yeah, the people that she sort of decides to focus on, Yeah, I was like why why?

And also because we find out very late in the movie that King Lou has spent time with indigenous communities enough to have a basic grip on the language, right, And you're like, okay, so even with the characters we've chosen to zone in on, Kinglu has a history in these indigenous communities.

Like where, I don't know, Yeah, I think what everyone think.

Yeah, for me, I think again, this comes back to the framing of it, where it's like, you do start thinking about history and what we know and what we do not know about the past, and we don't know about the interiority of a lot of these people because they were wiped out by the other characters in the movie.

And to me anyways, like again, like I don't I don't think it is an unfair criticism to talk about this at all, But to me, anyways, it seems like the interiority for the people is there, but like you're not, it is happening on the edges.

It feels like you've ever seen big trouble in Little China?

No, yeah, I don't remember it.

Super well.

But yeah, so like the whole thing is that there's a movie going on to the background that Kurt Russell is not aware of.

And at the end, they're all like, what the fuck are you doing here, white guy, Like get out, like the other movie already happened without you.

And I think there is sort of this like why why does she keep showing these people like I don't It didn't strike me so much as as like set decorations did, like I wanted to know more, and then you think to yourself, why don't I know more?

And I also think it feels intentional that like King Lou isn't just another white person, he is also an immigrant that is not, you know, not a colonizer in the same way.

And yet it shows this like perniciousness of the idea of getting on side with the colonizers, right like if you're if you are considered effeminate, you can get on side by acting macho enough.

If you are not white and people are racist to him, yeah, like if you're not, if you're not in the club, you can try to get in the club because look how nice it is to be there.

The older native gentleman that's over chief factors is like wearing a suit, you know, to me, so much of it is sort of like, yeah, this pernicious drive to join in, Yeah, and how how attractive it can look to people who are who would be on the outside of otherwise.

Right, And like the conclusion that the story comes to, which is like, unfortunately, the general result is that if you exist on the margins of society in any way, chances are you're gonna get fucked.

And because and we find that out at the very beginning, learning that you know, in spite of their ingenuity, in spite of their skill, in spite of all of it, they're still killed.

And they will be skeletons soon, right.

And Maddie's speaking to your point, like it's all the more tragic if they're sort of taken out by this other character who is aspiring to see more masculine to succeed in the same system that will probably end up getting him.

Anyways, Yeah, they're not gonna You can't.

You can't not be cut in the Businese line.

If there's no biscuits anymore.

Kids, there's no one you couldn't.

I mean, did you get the recipe at gunpoint?

Did you think but also but also it doesn't matter because he doesn't own the cow.

Like the cow as the means of production is like fascinating to me.

I yeah, I think like it seems like we're all sort of on the same page with Like, I think there was room in this movie to include at least an indigenous character.

I know it's a very like broad like there's not a lot of central focused characters, even if she's being sparing in the narrative, there was room for it.

And I'm curious if there was any point in writing the script.

I know this was also adapted, but if there was any point in writing the script where that was on the table, because it's also like you've got Lily Gladstone, Like why is she in the movie for three minutes?

Yeah, as far as King lu goes, I think it's like, uh yeah, the where I sat with it, it's I don't know, it sounds very like corny to put it this way and kind of almost undercuts the movie itself.

But like King Lou is sort of buying into the idea of the American dream being accessible and finding out that it isn't.

And it seems like I don't know if it's because of Cookies, we don't really know, like if it's Cookie's experiences in Boston, if it's because of just like his personality.

He seems sort of less inclined to buy into it, but of course it's so appealing, and King Lou really believes in it and has the juice sort of like he has the ambition, he has the plan, and it works for a while.

I feel like, like as often these kind of stories go where it's like it works until you threaten someone too powerful and then you're cast out.

I think also in terms of like the two central characters being colonizers or immigrants or whatever.

I mean, Cookie figure, it's obviously a Jewish guy.

This is like I think I believe canonical.

He is a like I think at an interview, Kelly Recard's like, yeah, it's Jewish guy.

He's at West.

So he's also like way outside of like he you know, there's no way his family got to Maryland that long ago.

There weren't a lot of Jews in the early eighteen hundreds in America.

We just weren't here yet.

And so I think I think that's also just an interesting thing in terms of like, yeah, like that that buy into the American dream that is so appealing to these people.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

King Lou has a line at one point where he says, men like us have to make our own way.

We have to take what we can when the taking is good.

Jack Tawson vibes, first of all, true.

Yeah, basically the speech that Jack gives as he's eating caviar and toasting Champagne on the Titanic.

Lou also gets on a boat in this movie.

It's true, Okay, so ratituy Titanic.

There's a lot.

There's a lot going on.

Basically, when the cow is on the faery, she's like, I'm king.

Of the world.

Exact.

But yeah, it just speaks to like, we've already touched on the seeds of American capitalism that have been planted and are very rapidly growing.

And you have a ruling class who you know, owns the mine or owns the fur company, or you know whatever, and then everyone else who is either being actively colonized and having their land and resources stolen, or it's settlers who are trying to, you know, make it in this landscape, which is very difficult, if not impossible, because they have to resort to.

And I'm not against stealing from the ruling class, but it's what they have to do.

And then what's the what there's a story where it's like they steal from the guy and then feed.

Whatever.

I feel like it's kind of like a tale as old as time where it's like stealing from the rich person and then like feeding this stuff back to them and then.

They're robin hooding to themselves.

There right fight club, where it's like we're stealing like whatever, the like liposuction materials out of the garbage and making it into soap to sell back.

To kind of sweety Todd.

To sweety Tea.

Yeah, does this happen in Fried Green Tomatoes?

Sure?

Yeah, well just the one time, but just.

In any case.

So this is this is what they do, and it's I mean, I think, a great idea, but ultimately a doomed endeavor because the you know, the rich guy finds out that he's being stolen from and is like kill those motherfuckers and then they die lying next to each other.

I keep thinking about the point you're raising about the means of production.

I keep thinking about because I'm such a visual thinker, which again why I think so much of the movie to me is like it's so visual in terms of what it wants you to know, for such a quiet movie, for such a talking movie, it's so visual.

But I keep thinking about the after they steal from the cow.

The next time you see the cow, there's like a fence around it that's like so small, and like that's what that's the only thing they know how to do.

Yeah, right, is make smaller and smaller fences.

Yeah, it's true.

I mean I think a lot of it.

And the cow, Evie, I'll say it, she's the most interesting character in the movie.

And like I think, like as a symbol for a lot of experiences where we don't really know the circumstances under which Cookie or King Lou came to the US.

We don't know if they were brought there forcibly, we don't know if they brought if they went there voluntarily.

We don't know if they went there because they were fleeing something, you know, And I think that's intentional.

I think like the characters like we're supposed to sort of you know, headcan and what we think is going on.

But the same goes for Evie the cow, because like I read.

There was a great Pop Matters piece about this by Caitlin Jurgens that came out around the time that the movie became available for streaming that sort of illustrates how this movie can be perceived as something about food sovereignty and how cows, as I often forget, are an invasive species in America to some extent, they are not native to the US, and their arrival in US.

In the US, while it was not the fault of the cows, and I kind of like that, we get the backstory that the cow has also endured quite a bit of loss and trauma in order to be brought here for objectively a silly reason like if you needed milking your tea that bad.

Don't colonize another continent just to stay where you're from, but you know the animals.

So where's the tea from, dude?

It's like, come on.

But like, the animal also suffers tremendously in order to give a small convenience to a colonizer.

But what the cow also can represent is like sort of the end of indigenous food sovereignty, which I feel like is this piece argues that even though it is not explicitly stated, and even though we do not get to know the indigenous characters, which again I wish we did, but that it seems like this marriage could be seen as indigenous communities trying to deal with colonizers doing stuff like this, because like food sovereignty is defined, I'm gonna get in my bag.

The twenty nineteen book Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States by Devin A.

Mehesua and Elizabeth Hoover defines food sovereignty as indigenous community retaining complete control of their food systems, from production to distribution to sustainability.

And of course there are many many threats to this, but the image of the cow and the milk itself is a threat to food sovereignty.

It is bringing in something that is not native to the country.

It is an animal that the indigenous community does not have familiarity with and does not have control over, and that result in any number of literal or cultural violence that could lead to stuff like feeling pressured into marrying a colonizer to preserve the well being of your community, and so like, I don't know, there's just there's so much more going on in this movie than you'd think.

Yeah, yeah, and it's subtle and it's there for the audience's interpretation in a way that feels like to me at least, And maybe this is just like a personal preference thing, but I wish there was a little more commentary on it.

They're certainly recognition of it, but I wish there was just a tad more commentary.

I think, like kind of the most we get is as far as like explicit dialogue and whatnot.

There's a moment where Spud from Trainspotting is talking to another man.

I think they're at a saloon or something, but one of them says, this is no place for cows.

If it was God would have put them here, and then I think it's Spud who replies, then it's no place for white men either.

I mean, I wrote that down, I feel I mean, is that to me feels like pretty explicit commentary.

Yeah, yeah, but I don't know.

I wish there was more which we could have gotten again with getting to know the indigenous characters, who I believe are from the Chinook nation, but again we don't get that.

Yeah.

So I do like the friendship between Cookie and King Lou though.

I agree it's beautiful.

It's a friendship between two men who bond over their struggle to make their way in the world.

And they're both pretty calm, gentle men in this world that rewards agro behavior and violence.

And we see all these scenes where like the fur trappers are getting into these brawls, or there's that man with the baby who comes into the saloon and other men are like taunting him, everyone's inciting violence around them.

And then you have these two men who we focus on, and then others in the stories, such as the biscuit boy who just wants biscuits.

And he never gets his biscuits.

But the two who we get to know are Cookie and King Lou and they kind of bond over being like gentle and not aggressive in a way that I really appreciate.

Yeah, it's funny because like so much.

Yeah again, maybe this is me putting my own little interests into the film, but I think there's a lot of gender in here, and so much of like what is perceived as feminine or not fitting in like I mean, hell milk, very feminine coated liquid.

Uh.

True, I shouldn't I should have said it like that, but I did.

But like to your point, Yeah.

But the idea between like like there's another calm guy in town, and it's my favorite guy we've not talked about, which is the chrow Man who's played by my dude Renel Versionoir from De Space nine.

My guy Odo.

Oh.

I always think of him as like that's a Robert Oatman guy, but he is a D nine.

Yeah, he's also to me, he's the d Space nine man and also the chef and the little yes, but he's like also a calm guy.

He's also like living kind of hermity and like not brawling or doing anything, and he only it just stares at them.

He's just regarding them with suspicion, which is all he can do because it is this weird like they puts like when you are a softer gentleman, it is very much like crabs into bucket hours, like you are trying to basically not be the low person at all times because you don't want to be faced with like the maximum eyre of all the really macho guys.

So I think there's there's so much of that there, I think.

So the fact that they have this beautiful friendship I think is so nice and I'm glad it's not romantic like that they are just physically gentle with each other and emotionally gentle with each other without having to be necessarily sexual, because it could just be like, you know, like it is possible for men, I think, to experience tenderness, right, Like you know, we had the male lowly and it's problem solved and we turned all those guys into skeletons.

Yeah.

I really loved that scene between them at the end, even though you're like, oh, they're cooked, they're cooked.

Where they reunite and they just like embrace each other and they're so happy to see each other and like that there is just this inherent like they see something in each other.

It's a deep friendship that you're right, Maddie, Like it's I you know, would I have been mad if they kissed?

No?

But I also understand like that there's so few representations of like two protagonists who are men who know how to be friends, who are affectionate with each other, and that that can be I mean, just like friendship is a life saving force in general.

And that's the quote at the beginning of the movie.

It's something like a bird is the nest a spider and it's web men friendship as if like we find home and comfort and community in friendship, right.

And it's like if they haven't, if they hadn't been able to like handle and that feels like a weird bird choice, but like they had been able to handle a friendship like that, I feel like they would have been dead way sooner.

For sure.

Yeah, for sure.

To your point, Mattie, this is something we've talked about on different episodes.

I remember it most clearly from our Lord of the Rings episode, where there is a tendency to see representations of platonic male friendship on screen and ascribe a romantic component to it.

And I understand that to some extent, but it also sort of erases the idea that men can just be platonic friends with each other and have like platonic tenderness with each other, and we rarely see it on screen.

But I do really appreciate when it is represented because it does exist, and it can exist, and it doesn't have to be romantic, And there are no implications in this movie that it is romantic.

It's just that people often will ship characters together, I mean in society, I want to say, but yeah, I did appreciate the friendship that we see between them.

I also think that there's like a gendered component to the product that Cookie is making, and that his skill is a skill that women would typically have, especially in this era, and would be expected to have as far as like baking, and he's able to make these delicious baked goods that remind these men of something their mama used to make, which is one of the characters says, because they are selling them at this fort that seems to be occupied by mostly there are some women around, but they're indigenous women that number one the story doesn't care about, and number two who don't have the recipe for all of these like English biscuits.

They have, Yeah, they they I think critically, like they have the nostalgia recipes exactly for these settlers.

Yeah, and that is what lets them earn any amount of money, which presumably is lost forever in the tree.

It also speaks of this interesting phenomenon in which cooking and baking is so seen as like feminized labor until you're selling it, in which case becomes very masculine society.

And it's this very interesting tension that like there is a there are all those beautiful little domestic scenes at Kinglu's house, like when he makes the first biscuit, King Lou is again outside doing something manly.

But he's beating a rug, like beating the rug.

And he's like gently leaves one of the biscuits on the like the sale for him.

Yeah, I love Conky and it is this very like it feels very gender.

It feels very but then the second they're selling it, it's like a cool boy thing to do because you're making money.

Yeah, but it's still King Lou who's generally doing the selling like he's though, you know, he's kind of calling the shots.

I liked it.

It's like a very subtle moment.

I don't even know if it was intended like this, but there is like a moment where it seems like Cookie allows like feels comfortable enough around King Lou to show that he really cares about cooking too, where where we see him with the like settlers who are very dismissive and abusive towards him at the beginning, like he can't say, like I really care about how things take, you know, like that this is like a passion of his.

But it's like when we see him actually comfortable around someone, and King Lou is like he's like, we got to start a business.

We got it because that's because he's an ideas guy, right, Like he is a proto capitalist.

Entrepreneur and job creator.

And then you have like you have Cookie being like, I don't know, could be sweeter, would be cool if we had honey, would be cool if we had this stuff.

And it's just like, I just you know, even though they are endeavoring on what we already know is a losing battle, they're both comfortable enough to be passionate around each other, which you know it might not save your life, but it certainly feels better.

Yeah, I just there their dynamic is so gentle and complimentary, and yeah, you can like feel a real friendship.

Going back to UH, there's an interview that Alyssa Wilkinson did with Kelly Rhikert around the time this book came out that I know that we it reminds me a little bit, just in the dynamics, not the movie itself, in the conversation we had around the Vivich in UH many many months ago.

Another movie that generally I mean, and I think more so than this movie focuses on white settlers and very much keeps Indigenous people on the margins of the story.

This movie I think does more.

Not that that's saying a ton, but I wanted to talk about because we got I think something this is shorthand on this podcast at this time, Robert Eggers being asked like, how did your research indigenous culture for this movie?

And he said, I went to the library once and I and it was iconic that he admitted that, I guess.

But anyways, go back to our episode about that.

But Kelly Redcard was also asked how she did research specifically for the indigenous language used in the film.

So this movie was my page on Power of the Dog up.

So this movie was It's all happening again.

So this movie was co written with Kelley red and frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond, who is a white guy from Oregon who has collaborated with her many times.

And it was also based on a story that Jonathan Raymond wrote.

Jonathan Raymond, to his credit, I guess, has written extensively about Oregon and historically also does not shy away from indigenous history within Oregon.

But as we've talked about, the movie doesn't explicitly address indigenous characters very much.

So I was curious what their research process was, and I have an answer.

Kelly Record is asked, there are people from First Nations throughout this film, and the way the settlers treat them, which often comes across as ridiculous, is a big part of the story.

How did you go about researching language and culture?

Kelly replies, there's a confederation of tribes down near Eugene, Oregon.

It's called Grand Rendez.

They had just opened this very beautiful museum that was in an old high school.

Jonathan Raymond went down there to do research.

They were a little wary about getting involved with us, as they should be.

Eventually, out of our persistence and Jonathan's persistence, they opened up the library to us and then ended up hooking us up with a woman who made the cedar capes and hats worn in the movie, which was cool because then we then donated them back to the museum.

Then they helped us find someone who spoke the language.

It's a jargon, a mix of languages.

The Chinook Wuaha Oriyan who plays Klu had to learn that, as did James Jones, the Native American actor who takes them up the river.

That was pretty tricky and I had to edit that language, which is not really phonetic.

Hopefully we didn't slaughter it too much.

Sorry the long que She's then asked, is that language still spoken commonly or is it being preserved?

She responds, there's not that many people left that still speak it, but those who do are trying to preserve it.

We had some help with learning it.

It's a difficult language.

Orian really picked it up.

An interesting thing happened one night.

I realized that the whole sound crew, because they were listening to that language constantly, had come to understand the language.

I think it's a bit like Spanguish, where it's a combination of languages.

But the Grand Ronde ended up being incredibly generous to us, and that's also their canoe in the film.

So on one hand, we have two white writers composing this story that you know, indigenous characters are important too, but also generally remain on the sidelines of On the other hand, I do really appreciate when white filmmakers bother to do their research and actually build connections and trust within indigenous communities, because so often you get the eggers treatment of going to the public library one time, and you know, I think it's still very very open to criticism, but I was at least heartened to learn that Kelly Riikert and her collaborator did genuinely seem to do their due diligence, and it also kind of like doubles down on Well, then, why didn't they do more?

Why didn't they build a character to express this culture through more?

I don't know, especially because this was an adaptation, like you said, novel by Jonathan Raymond entitled The Half Life, which has a story that has a much larger scope than what we see in the movie, where there's like two timelines oh interest, the story is set in two different continents, Like it's basically the movie kind of zooms in and focuses on just a small span of time that happens in the story.

And I'm not even sure the cow is in the book the titular how did?

That's what I understood when I was reading about this, But I might I might have misunderstood.

I'm not totally sure, But either way, I do know that the scope of the story in the movie is much smaller than the novel.

So the point is many changes were made from the original source material, so a change that could have also been made is more focused on the indigenous characters.

But I was going to point out that there's an even worse version of this like approach to research that we talked about recently, which is the Stephanie Meyer or Myers whatever approach when we recovered Twilight, because she did basically no research.

No, she was strictly on Mormon vibes, drove.

By the library and looked at Yeah.

So yeah, it is.

It is encouraging that these filmmakers did more research than you might expect.

But again, I just especially that they had like done more with it too, you know.

Yeah, I don't.

Again, I don't think I disagree with that read of it, but to me, it feels like they did I think an interesting job of leaving this big wide gulf between what you know about it and how much detail is present, which I think is maybe on purpose, And you could not like that as a storytelling maneuver.

And and that's a that's a very fair criticism in terms of like what stories we are allowed to tell and what we see and stuff like that.

So wanting I think wanting more of it is reasonable and uh fair, But I think it is an intentional thing to lead this sort of like lacuna of what's in the story and yeah, because you know, in terms of like the scale or the yeah, like on the scale of research from instead of like going to library once, there's going to museum twice, and that's what they do.

It's true.

It's true.

It's true because.

The Brendan caps back, so two times, right?

Uh?

Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss about the movie?

That's all I had.

No, we talked about oto.

We did.

We did.

It's really important to me.

It's true.

So does the movie pass the Bechdel test?

I don't think so, no, because even if because I always I mean, this is a whole other sort of large conversation about the use of subtitles where you know, I don't speak this variant on Chinookuawa.

I think most people don't because it is a language that is being actively preserved.

The only time we really see women talk to each other is in this exchange.

We referenced a few different times of Lily Gladstone's character, who doesn't have a name other than wife, talking to another Indigenous woman who she knows, but we don't know what the relationship is.

Much less than name, and we also don't know what they're talking about, so no is my I vote.

No, right, And on top of that, even if we did know what they were saying, they're just like hey, but they don't say that much to each other, and it's mostly just it seems like Lily Gladsmon's character is gesturing towards like the bead work on the other woman's clothing, maybe complementing it, We're not sure, but either way, I feel like you could remove this interaction from the movie and the narrative would not change at all.

So it's not a narratively significant exchange.

But I will say, for if nothing else, it is memorable because sure, going back to your point earlier, Maddie, that it does feel worth mentioning that, even though it doesn't really it fit into like how we generally analyze movies on this show, that it does feel like Kelly Recer does choose moments to linker on characters who we often see on the fringes of movies.

And again, it's not perfect or even necessarily good representation, but it is it is I think, noticeably different than how we see indigenous characters in colonial narrative treated where it's like their humanity isn't disregarded in the same way even through I think like simple interactions like two friends or relatives we don't know, and that's an issue, but like two people having a moment of human connection in a way that I think most often we see indigenous characters treated as stereotypes, as stock characters, as like not as humans.

So, yeah, I was gonna present like a fallacious, fun little argument the cookie is so feminine coded that him talking to the beautiful cow past the test.

But then I realize they mostly talk about her husband.

Oh that's true.

Well, so never mind.

Well here's some some food for thought, some milk for thought.

Perhaps a fry cake for thought.

Does it pass the Bechdel test?

When a woman finds the skeletons of two.

Dead men, is the dog a woman?

The dog might be a female dog.

Does it count?

Does it pass the Bechdel test?

When I watched the movie at home and say first cow when I see the cow, I think that's the closest I could get.

Is women's anyone?

If a marginalized gender screaming first cow and then the cow saying lou, that's that's text.

That's text.

I agree, it's interesting.

I mean, in this we've we've encountered this before.

A movie with a titular women character doesn't pass the Bechdel test and you hate to see it, and you hate to see it.

It's the women all over again?

Does the women not?

I guess it's you know what it's all about men.

It's the subtitle of the or the tagline right now.

It's true.

Yeah, that was the tagline.

For the original from the thirsday.

And they weren't joke.

I still really want to cover that on the show.

Maybe that'll be a birthday because it's a it's a brain breaker, and I will also say it's an enjoyable movie to watch.

That movie rips and it real quick.

But I have a fun fact about it, which is that she makes one joke about Adolf learning it as one of the women.

And I looked it up and it came out three days before Germany invaded Poland.

Oh my god, my god.

And there's some and and and talk about food for thought.

But yeah, no, it's it doesn't text.

It doesn't pass the Bectyl test.

But again, the Vitel test is not the be all adult of media metrics.

It's just what we happen to name Marshall after.

So let's talk about the media metric that that is the be all and.

All the nipple scale, where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.

And I just don't really know about this, because there are some interesting things in the movie is addressing and commenting on, such as early colonial American capitalism and perceptions of gender and the kind of spectrum of mass sculinity.

And I do appreciate that we are following characters who are not displaying the typical toxic masculinity of the time, which was beating the shit out of each other and killing each other.

What about making biscuits and pulling a scam?

Make that's feminism, yeah, if you ask me.

But the movies disinterest in giving any interiority to the indigenous characters who are visibly present on screen but just not given any of the focus that the settler characters are is disappointing.

I think I'll give it two and a half nipples.

I'm not sure why.

I don't really know how to rate this movie, but I do know that one nipple goes to one utter perhaps say, how yeah goes to ev the Cow.

Okay, one nipple I'll give to Kelly Reikhart.

I do want to explore more of her filmography.

We should cover certain women.

I feel like this Certain Women was unlike First Cow, arguably certain Women was made for our show.

Interesting.

Maybe we'll do a month on the Matreon that's the women and search women.

Let's yeah, it's like the women, let's get versus what about certain.

Maybe twentieth century women?

I don't know anyway, Yeah, yeah, uh so Kelly gets one of my nipples and then my half nipple goes to the four to three aspect ratio, which was kind of shocking to me.

Anyway, I hate Yeah, I'm having trouble with this.

I guess I'll also go two and a half.

This movie is is.

It's a tricky one because I think that my main criticism, even though like I don't know, the more we do the show, and I guess also just kind of the older I get, the more I appreciate movies like this, movies that have restraint, movies that are not stating the themes right, like movies that force I think rightfully.

So the viewer to challenge themselves or not as the case maybe, But I still think that there's a thing of like too much restraint, And I really wish that there had been an Indigenous character that we know something about, Like I don't know.

I just don't think that's like too much to ask.

I feel I feel like it was overly restraint to do all that research too.

And I also think it is a generally good thing for white filmmakers to do, to both do their homework and contribute in whatever small way in preserving language in mainstream cinema, right, Like, I think that that is a powerful thing.

Now we have Chiniguala in a current movie that got COVID, so not hugely wide distribution, but a movie that is widely available.

I think that that is a generally good thing.

But it felt like a missed opportunity to me that like, if it was done out of restraint, felt overly so to not give us more insight, because we see a lot of the factors that are affecting Indigenous people without getting to know a single person, And that felt like a missed opportunity for me.

But like we've talked about, I think that the friendship in all of the and also just the general ideas that King Lou and Cookie represent of these two outsider immigrants trying to make their way in a world where it is colonial capitalism that is hostile to them.

Which I appreciate that there's like no ifans or butts of like what ends up getting them.

It is.

It is that and all the ideas that come with that, including Maddie, like you were getting into this idea of hyper masculinity, and like the person who killed them is like that's likely a huge factor in why they did it.

Also, the biscuits looked good.

I'm not a huge like food cinema person like I I bravely when I watch a Studio Gibili movie, I'm like, cut to the chase.

It's like, I don't I can't eat this.

I can't eat this.

It's two d I can't which But but I I was hungry watching this movie, and that's not nothing.

So I'm going to give this two and a half nipples, and I'm going to give them all to to my pal Ev because she really needs as many, you know, utters as she can.

She needs six.

We haven't gotten her there.

Oh yeah, it's six, right?

I actually don't think I think I think it's four.

On Jersey Cows, I think it's four.

Speaking as the nipples slash utter expert, I was.

Just googling Jersey Cow and I was looking at them, and I think it's four.

Four.

Yeah, okay, then she's actually she's good.

I also was thinking about, Maddie, how about you?

Oh, how many nipples do I give?

I think, you know, I think I think the critique is very valid.

But on the balance, I love this movie so much and I kind of think it's a masterpiece.

I'll give it.

I'll give it a solid four for for one of each of EV's beautiful nipples.

Nice, lovely.

Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion.

Thank you for having me.

Where can people find you online?

Where can we get your book?

Are you touringing?

Oh?

Yeah, so this I believe this is coming out after my book tour is over.

But but you can find me easily.

Maddie.

Lobchansky dot com has all the information for all of my books and where I will be.

And you can get the book Simplicity, which should be out now.

I'm really proud of it.

You buy it and read it.

It's really good I think, and you can listen.

I have a podcast called No Gods, No Mayors where I talk about mayors with my two friends.

You can listen to that and No godsnowmares dot com.

You can find us where we are going to be on tour at the end of the summer across the Midwest.

We're talking in Chicago, Madison, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Indianapolis.

You can check out all those dates and grab tickets in our link tree, and you can join our Matreon Patreon Experience where for five dollars a month you get two bonus episodes on a theme of either hours or you're choosing, depending on how we're feeling.

That month, including an episode on Ratatui.

Yes we did a rat themed month.

Really get Rodent, Tember, redn't.

Timber, which I believe we observed in April, but don't worry about it.

It was just urgent.

It was really urgent.

So go over there for my birthday picks this month pretty thrilling.

And with that, shall we go milk the first cow that we see.

It's like getting lemons off a tree on the street.

You're like, might as well, why not dance there?

As long as there's not a little fencer rapped around the cow.

I think it's fine to do.

Yeah yeah, all right, bye bye.

The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mola Board.

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