Holes with Korama Danquah

On the Bechdel Cast. 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, Zephyn Beast. Start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Hello Bechdel Cast listeners.

Hello Jamie and Caitlyn.

Here a little plug at the top.

It's all coming together, It's all happening. I am going to be going on a book tour for the paperback release of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about Hot Dogs.

Ever heard of it?

It is coming out in soft cover this may. If you're hearing this, it is out right now. If you are the kind of person that doesn't want to spend twenty eight dollars out of book, fair enough, we have a more affordable option. And if you haven't purchased the book and you know, maybe you're able to now, you know, it's also a great gift. I've sound so desperate. The thing is, it's a soft cover book, and people love those, and.

I love a flaccid book.

Yeah, it's a floppy little book. And if you do have the hardcover and you're a completionist, there is also a brand new ForWord that I wrote, and also the acknowledgments have been adjusted to acknowledge that my agents were Zionists, so I don't really thank them anymore. So there's a thrilling edition there as well. But there is new stuff in the book and it costs less, and we love that.

No please, by all means tell us okay.

May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, almost my birthday. So I know I'm missing your birthday. It's an act of violence. I will be at North Fig Bookshop in Los Angeles, hosted by friend of the cast Julia Clair May fourteenth. I will be at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. On May fifteenth. I will be at the Cambridge Public Library in Massachusetts with the Harvard Bookstore, and I will be in conversation with one of my dear friends, PBS's own

I can't wait to see.

So if you click the link in the description, it will take you to the full page where you can register to go to these events. They are all free events, so come and hang out and provided that I get my shit together in time, there will also be speakers from local unions at all of these signings, So come out, make some friends, come hang out, and uh, let's eat some hot dogs.

Beautiful. We'll throw the link to be able to access registration for the events on our link tree as well link tree slash Bechdel Cast, so there's no excuse not to come.

It's free, it's fun. I'll be wearing a little outfit. Come buy the book, yay, enjoy the episode the Bechdel Cast.

Dig It All on, dig It dig It Out, dig.

It I Wow, I rewatched music video and it seared into my brain.

Oh wait, I didn't know about the music video.

Oh, Caitlin show, you didn't know about ship?

Pause the show it just started.

But it's so good.

They're having such a nice time. The boys are having fun.

Okay, I believe it.

That's the most important thing about the music video. And also the song is great and oh my gosh, two thousand and three, what a time School of rock an holes be serious? Wait, sorry, I you singing that song just really put me in a great mood. And I forgot what I was gonna say. Oh well, oh, I was gonna say, we need to bring back movies where there's a song during the credits that summarizes the movie you just watched. Yes, you need that. We need to bring it back. Maybe it is back in kids' movies.

True Wild Wild West, Men in Black.

Yeah, the list goes on. I think I'm not actually sure.

Might be just those two.

It might, but they're impactful, impactful, welcome, to the Bechdel Cast, Do I think one of the one of our our longest holdouts for a beloved movie.

Hold out whole out, whole.

Again?

We have our holes out on this episode.

During this children Yes, we have our holes out during the Children's Prison Industrial Complex movie episode. My name's Jamie. Locked is my holes not in a way? It's away?

So are mine talking about that?

No?

The hole in my damn face I is going to be flapping.

Yeah, And it's like that line from Titanic when the.

Wave you out shut that out? Yeah? All right, well things have already is already erupting. What's your name?

My name is Caitlyn Durnteme awesome. And this is the Bechdel Cast, a podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel Test simply as a jumping off point. But Jamie, what is it though?

Well, I'll tell you. The Bechtel Test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, often called the Bechdel Wallace Test. Created as a test in response to the fact that queer women were never in movies at all, it has since been sort of more generalized into what we use. Our version of the test requires that two characters of a marginalized gender with names talk to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. This is an interesting case. This is an

Me, sure, but it is. But there is.

I think there's two women and one is dead. They don't exist on the same timelines. So it's a challenge. It's a challenge. Patricia Arquette and Sigourney Weaver are separated by generations, true and political differences.

Yes, all of the above. Yeah, well, we'll talk about that further, but we'll also talk about so many other things because this is a rich text.

Yes, because it is a perfect movie.

It's so good. And joining us for this discussion is writer actor. She's in an upcoming horror comedy movie called Bad Karaoke. You know her from our past episodes on Us Get Out and Cheetah Girls. It's Carama Donquay.

Welcome, Thank you for having me again. I would like to just issue a correction right off the bat. Five women in this movie.

That's true because there there's a lawyer Stanley's mother. Yes, what else we got?

There's there's the former student of kissing Kate Barlowe, whose name is said. And I think it passes because they talk about how she used to be a student.

Right, yeah, okay, we're going to talk about the treasure.

So legally it passes, not just to you, Jamie, not just spiritually.

Okay, that is that is a relief.

But it was it was tight.

It was very close, and they made us wait to the very end. Then.

But I think maybe the lawyer and the warden also talk.

I think they're talking about Stanley.

Yeah, they're talking about the boys at all times.

We're talking about the crime as a.

Boy of man is a.

Man, no women and children. This is getting complicated. Thank you Karma for solving the podcast right at the top. And now we you just talk about the movie itself because this is a rich text. Thank you for coming onto the Wholes episode. Can you tell us about your history with this movie, the book, the Holes Expanded universe.

I'm gonna start with something that sounds like it's not related. I promise it is related. So recently, I was at a family friend's house and one of her neighbors came over and she was like, why do I know you? And my friend Jackie was like, oh, well, Karama used to come over all the time when we were little, and she didn't have cable at her house, so she would come over here. And so I had like a cable friend, as many kids who didn't have cable had.

Migos step aside.

Yes, it's all happening on Radio Disney. They even had a band named De Tent Boys. Yes, yeah, this was a single they were. I mean, this was run Ragged on Radio Disney in the early two thousands, and I was a.

Radio Disney kid when I moved to Ghana. When I was little, my dad would send me cassette tapes of like just hours of Radio Disney because I missed it so much.

It's really sweet, I know, but also like scary that the mouse had that much of a hold on me.

Yeah, the mouse will find you wherever we go. But this is a rare I'm excited to talk about the production of this movie because this seems like a very rare Disney movie where it seems like they were relatively hands off with this, and the director said it was basically like creating an independent movie with Disney money, which is cool. I'm excited to get into it because I

They never do that.

And also the main thing that they change.

I actually am for it because the main thing that they changed for people who either haven't read the book or don't remember the book is that Stanley is a pretty chubby kid in the book, and.

Through digging he actually loses a lot of weight.

But they didn't want to put Shila buff in a fat suit, and they didn't want to subject a child to a major like Christian Bale weight shift. So I think that that is actually, like, I'm all for a fat representation in film.

I love that representation in film.

I think that this was the better choice in this instance because I don't like fat suits. I think that they're dehumanizing, and I don't like torturing children.

So they still tortured the children a little bit, but mostly with heat. Yes, But but yeah, no, I totally agree. I forgot that that was sort of the most major change, and I don't Yeah, it's I felt like rereading the book that it was, you know, I don't think meant to be a cruel outcome, but it's sort of lent this morality to Stanley's weight loss and and sort of presented it as a well, at least he's not chubby anymore, in a way that I felt like was not good

Uh.

The adults are a series of unfortunate events, level evil like it's great. So okay, so you so you you watched it at cable friend's house.

Yes, that was a frequent rewatch because they would run it on Disney Channel a lot. And I was a big fan of Lewis Accer, the author. I was a Wayside Stories girl from Wayside School.

Loved it.

Good Wayside School gets a Little Stranger my favorite of them.

Oh okay, yeah, I gotta reread.

But I was a big fan of like that sort of universe of like wacky but real. And I remember distinctly Lewis Sacer had like three kids in the Wayside School that had the same name, and I don't remember their name, but he would describe one of them as being tall and fat, and it's the first time it occurred to me that somebody could be tall and fat. But it was always like a very neutral descriptor. It was just like, these are the way the kids look, And I was like, whoa people can look all kinds

True to the spirit of it. It is amazing.

And one of our co hosts had never seen it, and I was just like, I don't know how you're breathing air on this planet being an adult woman of a certain age who has never seen Holes.

It is like a It is weird. It does feel like it's such a beloved millennial classic, but I wonder I don't know if kids are still finding it. I hope they are probably not. I mean the unfortunately, the shil abuff of it all does make it a harder sell because he's a fucking monster. I think he's like fourteen when this was, you know, child stardom should be illegal. But that's a conversation for another day. But okay, I also was a huge fan of the book and the movie.

Go well at least a roast comedian.

It's true. Yes, he literally goes full roasting at the store and then learns those people don't like that.

I think we need to wallpaper men's bathrooms in comedy clugs with the pages.

Of this book with dogs. Don't tell you don't be like Gary. It did not help him make friends just like you. So but yeah, big lewis a car fan. I mean, like you're saying, krama, the wayside school books were so silly and like fantastical, and the fact that he wrote holes as well, I mean, the range incredible. I loved the book, loved the movie. Of course, Being ten when this came out, I had a crush. I had a crush on zero zero was my big time crush.

It's a real testament to the fact that people are like, oh, kids can't understand that. Kids can't understand that, and no, you just can't explain it, right, You're just not good and explain there is a way for kids to understand literally everything, Like, sorry, there are kids who are soldiers in war in some parts of the world, Like they can understand things. The way to explain it to them

Just all of this stuff is very.

Clearly outlined in a way that is developmentally appropriate.

Totally.

Yeah, and like puts a face in a name to these issues. And I think the like maybe the only unhoused character that I saw in movies as a kid that is not played as a joke or as a personal failing or you know how often we see on like it's just it's so good, it's doing so much, and then it has the audacity to be a really good movie, I know. And what a cast. Anyways, Kaitlyn wants her history with Holes.

Okay, I read the book in the late nineties, because it was published in ninety eight. I probably read it in ninety nine. I would have been a tween at the time, and I loved it. And then the movie came out a few years later and I saw it in theaters. I would have been I think a junior senior in high school at that point, so I was old enough that my big crush was Dula Hill and still to this day.

You're Not Made of Stone, Yeah, but.

Yeah, I thought it was such an incredible story. And then we got the movie on DVD and I watched it with my sister on repeat, and I chose this movie for my not to be a bit but it is my birthday episode. Oh yay, So this is like my birthday pick. That's how much I love this movie.

I will say embarrassingly, I was twelve when it came out, so my crush was Shilah buff which has not aged Well.

My Kurt wouldn't convict you. It made sense at the time. He was on Even Stevens.

Loved Evan Stevens. My dance teacher. My dance teacher choreographed Even Steven's Influenza. I remember when she had to miss class because she was doing Even Steven's Influenza, and I was just like, that's so cool.

Wow, that show was cooking. I think about the song about going to space a lot. We went to the Moon in nineteen sixty.

Nine, not nineteen seventy, the year before four.

Uh huh oh no, it's a millennial circle jerk episode. Well, here's the thing.

I was one of the Friends without Cable as well, So I've never seen a single episode of Even Stevens, and I think I probably was aged out of it anyway. But yeah, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

I know, I don't think there's any need to return. It was just the age of the musical episode Even Stevens had a musical episode and it was iconic, memorable.

Yeah, it was called Influenza, as one of the main characters had the flu and so she was like having a fever dream and everybody was singing in the fever dream.

Yeah, okay, fine, but this is uh.

I think this is Shia Labuff's first movie.

It's introducing in the credits. I was like, oh, like I was. I was a little emotional. I was just like, wow, that's where it all started.

Yikes, and oh that it had gone another way. But the kids, I mean, it's very famous adult cast and then a bunch of kids outside of chilah Buff I think mostly unknowns. I think Cleo Thomas had done some stuff. I saw he was on Kids Say the Darndest Things, so he was child starring out. But so Gourney Weaver, John Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Winkler. I remember my mom being like, that's the Fonds because we will watch Happy Days on Nick at night and I was like, why isn't he cool anymore?

And earth A Kitar the Kid, Oh my god.

One of her final film performances Delay Hill Patricia Arquette, and they managed to make the movie for seventeen million dollars. Don't know how that worked, but yeah, they brought a bunch of kids to the desert and made one of the greatest movies of all time.

Yes, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the cap.

And we're back.

Okay.

Here is the story of Holes. We open on a place that we will learn is a juvenile detention facility where teenage boys are out in the hot sun digging holes in the dirt. One of them purposefully gets bitten by a rattlesnake so that he can be sent home, and that's going to open up a spot at this facility.

And you're all like, immediate. I hadn't seen this movie in a couple of years, and I was like, oh, from moment one, they're not fucking around.

This is a dark, cold open.

I would rather potentially die, literally die.

Than another hole, which was added for the mo It does not happen in the book. They're just like something something barf bag. But they started as a full on, like active You're just like okay, okay, director of the Fugitive, Let's Go. Let's Go.

Also one of my favorite movies.

I've never seen it. I just thought it was like, what a this is? I think his first and only children's movie.

I think so yeah, because he had been known for action movies.

Collateral Damage came out like so weird.

It does happen in the book that barf bag gets bitten, but it happens off screen, Like you don't see that scene play out. They just reference it after the fact. But in any case. We cut to stan Lee Yonnat's the fourth played by Shilah buff who is on his way to this facility because he was wrongfully accused and arrested for stealing a pair of shoes that seemed to have fallen from the sky and land on his head.

How instantly, Yeah, like how instantly it is clear to kids and anyone how ridiculous this is. Or it's like that line where it's like, yeah, you bring a boy to camp and you make him dig a hole every day and he turns into a good boy, and that's our belief. You're like, ah's that is just describing prison.

Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, holes they make you so wholesome.

They didn't even try. They didn't even try. It was right there.

They're like, no, dig a hole, be a good boy.

You're like, okay, right. Mister Starr also tells Stanley to beware of yellow spotted lizards, who are highly poisonous and lethal, and if one bites you, you will die a slow and painful death.

Really good two thousand and three, CGI on the Lizards. You're like, there was a tennis ball there.

You can almost steel the tennis.

Energy with a racket.

So then we meet Stanley's counselor, doctor Pandanski played by Tim Blake Nelson, who assigns him to d tent where Stanley meets other incarcerated teens who he'll be digging holes next to. They all have nicknames like x Ray, Zigzag, Squid, Armpit, Magnet, and Zero Zero, who doctor Pandensky is especially cruel to because he thinks Zero is unintelligent and worthless.

Doctor Pandanski is such a fascinating care again, just like another adult pretending to be good who is actually fucking awful and talks shit about the kids he's supposed to be taken care of behind our backs. The first second he gets I think again, I've only seen it in series of unfortunate events, like adults who are as bad as it seems.

And also from jump we get that he is very much about calling the kids by their government names, even though they have names and they'd like to be called And then like it's giving what your name is Toby, what's your name? Not like that?

And except for zero, he keeps.

Calling zero zero, and it's like, there's nothing going on up there, your little dumb dummy.

Right, And he like explicitly says that he feels comfortable doing that because no one is looking out for zero and so he doesn't matter, like it's just like it's I don't know. I thought it's a good performance too, because he's really putting on the hateful guidance counselor vibe big time. And then you find out at the ante never got.

His degree, and you're like, fuck this guy, right, So stan Lee settles in and starts to learn the ropes. He reveals that the shoes he was accused of stealing belonged to Livingston, a famous baseball player, who had donated those shoes to be sold at a charity auction to raise money for an unhoused shelter. And so that's why it was like such a huge deal that Stanley is presumed to have stolen them and why he's sent to.

This and he, like the famous baseball player literally calls a child a horrible person in court. So I was like, easy man, easy, He's like twelve.

So then we flash back to Stanlee with his mom, dad, and grandpa, who talk about the family curse how Stanley's great grandpa made a fortune in the stock market but was robbed by a famous outlaw kissing Kate Barlow due to the family curse and his bad luck. We'll find more about the curse soon, but back to the present, Stanley starts digging his first hole. He's told that if he finds anything that the warden thinks is interesting, he

Who I only knew at the time as you're like it's Easma from the other movie. And then later you find out she is a legend.

Yeah, like the President was scared of her at one point. Legend.

Oh my god, so good.

Yes, And she tells Ellia to carry a baby pig up a mountain and let it drink from the stream while he sings to it over the course of I don't know, a few weeks or something, and it will make the pig grow and then he'll have a pig to offer Myra's father. And then Madames Roney says, okay, when you're done with that, Now you have to carry me up the mountain so I can drink from the stream and get strong. And if you fail to do that, I will put a curse on your family for always an eternity.

That line read really stuck with me, always an eternity, Like it's such a good read.

Yeah, And Ellia forgets to honor this promise before he immigrates to the US, hence the yell NAT's family curse. Back to Stanley, he finishes his first hole and then it's either the next day or a few days later, but Stanley finds a fossil in his hole and shows it to Pendanski hoping that the warden will find it interesting and that he'll get the rest of the day off.

And you're like, these actors are hot. I wonder what will happen.

Yeah, the two of them are vibing and they exchange, you know, onions and peaches. Then we also meet this rich prick named trout Walker, who has taken a liking to Miss Catherine and will return to this storyline. But in the meantime, back in the present, Stanley's peers finally give him a nickname, Caveman, so he's like one of them now. Then he learns that zero the kid who

What women can be bad too?

Lewis Nakara is not afraid to say it.

Oh her nail polish. That is such a good detail at Oh that scene in the book like really stuck with me where she puts on her evil lady nail polish and then slaps John backhands John voy she's doing it. I didn't never realize she's also wearing a sports braw In that scene, You're like, this is nuts, Like she just finished doing like yoga on zoom and then she like almost kills John Voyd.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. That happens a little later. First, yes, we meet her, it's so Corney Weaver. She gives x Ray the rest of the day off for finding this interesting item, and then she orders everyone to dig around x Ray's hole, thinking that that's where the bullet thing came from, but we all know that it came from a different hole of Stanley's. Then we flash back to Miss Catherine and Sam. He helps her fix up the schoolhouse. If there's a leaky roof or a broken window. He says,

Because he sees her crying and says, I can fix that.

It's really that would work.

On the iphear I folded like a lawn chair, Like I'm done, let's close the windows.

We're having a party, one of the most popular letterbox reviews. Will someone tell mister I can fix that that my pussy's broken?

Yeah, oh my god, that's amazing.

I also love that there is this It's like, not it's a whatever, like one of a million themes in this movie, but that even in the flashbacks, there is this theme of literacy and gate keeping education because she also teaches night classes to the same men who are fucking creeping on her. But it's like the movie isn't I don't know. The movie is saying like, these guys are awful, but also they are you know, like at a disadvantage as well.

And she believes that despite the fact that they are awful, they deserve the you know, privileges that literacy Ford's one in society, right. And on top of that, she's reading the kids like an Edgar Allan Poe poem and Sam can the poem and I'm like, oh, Stallar, we love it, love it. He's so fine.

I think it is. I think it is an one of those Edgar Allan Poe poems that is like about fucking his cousin. But the spirit of it.

It's the spirit of it it's fine.

Annabel Lee was redeemed by delay Hill also.

Petition to start calling them Edgar Allan Poems. I just feel like it's it's.

Cleaner, it's right there.

Yeah, it's that's your ear doing justin Timberlake in the social note and then just stomp out of the room.

Right.

So, yes, this is a white woman and a black man kissing in Jim Crow, Texas. So trout Walker sees this. He alerts the town people, who start a riot. They burn down the schoolhouse, they go after Sam. Miss Catherine tells the sheriff, who has no intention of stopping any of this.

No, he just like hits on her.

He harasses and prays on her.

I've been called slurs in my life. I gotta say Onion Picker was scarily slurry when he was like, kiss the onion picker.

I feel it, Yeah, onion Picker with a hard R.

That's a lot, yeah yeah yeah. And right after this, the racist mob catches up to Sam. They kill his beloved donkey Mary Lou, and they murder Sam. We cut back to the present. The boys are still digging collectively while the warden supervises and clearly expects them to find something, but nothing else is found because, to quote Raiders of the Lost Arc, they're digging in the wrong place. Wow, so thank you so much.

It's a little Seinfeld edge to that.

That's just how they say it in the movie. That was unintentional, but the warden has them returned to digging individual holes when no other items are found. Back to the past, Miss Catherine pays another visit to the sheriff and kills him for not preventing the racist mob murdering Sam. And this is the start of her becoming the famous outlaw kissing Kate Barlow. We cut back to the present. Magnet steals mister Sirr's sunflower seeds from his truck and

Ooh ooh wah.

It is a very like feminist You know, you could make your arguments against it, but it's just such a good idea that I will not be hearing criticisms of the snake Venom nail.

Pasha, and Mister responds by saying, all I do is give you love and affection.

Yeah, it's implied that he has a crush on her because he's always like fixing his hair when he's about to see her and stuff.

It's also it's another I mean John Voyd, another bad man, yes, who gives a really great performance in this It's true.

Yeah. So Stanley returns to his hole and he discovers the Zero finished digging it for him, and so Stanlee offers to teach Zero to read after all, and in exchange, Zero will help Stanley dig his hole every day. So they start lessons and Zero is like, by the way, my real name is Hector's Zerny, And we're like, hmm,

That Zero is the best character.

Oh, he truly.

Beats the shit out of you. Oh he's so great. There's a quote from Because there was a There was a I think it was like two years ago. There was a short oral history for the twentieth anniversary, and Cleia Thomas says Zero is not the most Disney friendly character. Like he was grabbing eight balls ready to fight. He hit a guy with a shovel, he choked somebody out. I keep thinking about how this character I'm playing might

It's awesome. So Zero aka Hector runs away from camp. The warden, Mister Cyr and Pandanski discuss deleting Hector's 'errony's files and pretending like he was never at Camp Green Lake because he's a ward of the state. There's no known family looking for him, so they're like, we can just basically delete his existence from ever having been here.

It's all connected.

So I think the worst part of this movie slash book story in general is the words.

Yeah, yeah, they.

Really needed to do a second draft on that. But anyway, I think it's.

A fun word for kids, but like as an adult and like it sounds too much like things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I don't want to.

Think about Hector's rony drinking things.

I also is like, I feel like I have looked this up on past years, like can peaches like last like that?

I think if they're preserved properly, right, maybe I.

Just assume it's a little magic.

Also, to be fair, he gets immediately ill from that's true.

He just started throwing up the passing for days. That's true. That's true.

So Stanley and Hector try to figure out what to do next. In the distance, they see a mountain that's sort of in the shape of a thumbs up, and they think maybe that's what Stanley's great grandpa meant about finding refuge on God's thumb. So they head there. They climb the mountain. It's a long difficult journey. Hector gets

I don't yeah, again, there you have to magic it a little bit to be like onions cure or did it just make odor smell.

They were boiled? I don't know. I believe.

I believe that the fawn's cured foot oder.

I'm not a chemist.

I don't know what's in the onion that interacts with the peach that makes.

It smell real, because a caramelized onion has a very sweet night true's and taste.

It is beautiful that the legacy of their love cured foot.

I wanted to cry a little bit.

It's really nice.

Yeah. So, while Hector and Stanley rest and recover, Hector reveals that it was him who stole Clyde Livingston's famous baseball shoes and it's his fault that Stanley got arrested and sent to Camp Green Lake, but Stanley is not upset. He's just like this is destiny, and he suggests they go back to camp and dig one last hole in the spot where Stanley originally found that gold tube, which he thinks is probably a tube of lips stick and

Yeah, and he quote unquote matters because his family has secured a lawyer, right.

Yeah. We flash back to kissing Kate Barlow being approached by Trout Walker and his wife wanting to know where she buried all the loot she stole.

She somehow found Turn of the century like hair Bleach's a she's got a new wig.

Well, she's out in the sun all the time, and it's true.

It looks good.

It looks good.

Yeah, but Kate is like you and your family can dig for the next one hundred years and you will never find my treasure. And that's what Camp Green Like is all about, because the warden is a descendant of Trout Walker and she is using unpaid child prison labor to dig holes to search for Kissing Kate Barlow's treasure. Stanley and Hector returned to camp and they start expanding the hole where Stanley found the lipstick tube and they

Hey, for a movie about holes, there's not a single hole in the plot of the movie. There's true, everything is explained, yea, and it all is like a cross generational Oh, it's so good.

A few hours later, Stanley's lawyer returns the warden makes up a story about how Stanley broke into her cabin and stole her trunk, but Hector is like, no, this trunk belongs to Stanley. It's got his name on it, and sure enough, the name Stanley Yellnatz is carved into the trunk because this is the treasure that belonged to his great grandfather. This means Stanley and Hector are free, as are all the other boys, because Camp Green Lake is shut down and the warden, Mister Sir, and Pandanski

Very different guys, so different.

But their names are too similar. Anyway, Tim Robbins when he spoiler alert, finds freedom and it's pouring rain and he's like, ah, so it felt like that to me anyway.

Wow, I was gonna watch that movie.

So yeah, sorry for spoiling now. A thirty year old movie, it reigns.

Then he goes.

Ah, okay, So we cut to Stanley and Hector at the yell NAT's house. They open the trunk. It's full of gold and jewels and stocks and bonds. Question Mark, I don't know what those papers are.

And for some reason, Stanley is the one that knows about how money has appreciated over the last like century, because his mom's like, Stanley, what do you think? I was like, what is daily know about banking? He's you know, he's in middle school, but he knows.

He takes math class.

I believe that He's like, it's worth at least a million dollars. I was like, good, good math on your feet man's and and I really it'll it like makes me so much of the end of this movie makes me tear up. But the fact that, like, even before they know Zero is a Zeroni and connected to the history of their family, they agree to give him half of whatever is in there, and it's like mm hmmm, collective, I know it's great and.

Like, no, no fight the parents.

Ye have windos to Hector, one for us, one for mister Saroni, one for us, one for mister Sni And then the grandfather embraces Hector and kisses him.

And I'm just like, oh, it's really nice, so nice.

And then Hector uses some of his money to hire a team of private investigators to track down his mom, which he does, and they reunite and embrace and that's also very sweet and tearful. And then the movie ends with all of the boys from d tent at Stanley's nice new house with a pool. They gather around the TV to watch a commercial where that baseball player Clyde Livingston is the spokesman for Splosh, which is stan Lee's dad's product for treating foot odor.

The end, and You're like, sure he's also I didn't know. I guess that that guy, the guy who plays Clyde Livingston was Rick Fox. Yeah, but he played for like the Celtics and the Lakers, and like was a pro athlete. Didn't know, I don't know enough about sports.

Why didn't then make him a basketball player?

So because because like Mike had just come out, they're like, there's two basketball shoes of it's played out in children's media.

Fair.

That's honestly my guess, but I have no idea.

Yeah, anyway, so that's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

And where back. I wanted to say just the one thing about this movie, and I didn't finish rereading the book, so I don't remember or I don't know like how this is dealt with in the book. There is like in a movie that is shockingly not Disneyfied in most ways. The ending does feel a little Disneyfied to me, but only in the one scene where you know, it's so critical of justice and of the school to prison pipeline and all of these things that you never see discussed

Of I did fully reread the book a couple days ago. Yeah, I mean me reading a book. Wow, good, thank you. But I tend to agree. There is a moment in the movie which it does feel very cathartic, when like, yeah, the warden and mister sir and like the officials at the camp are arrested and humiliated and all this stuff that doesn't really happen. In the book, there is a reference to how Camp Green Lake gets shut down and will be converted into a Girl Scout Camp.

Which at one point was going to become a Disney Plus series.

I think it's still in development.

I'm sorry, what isn't that bizarre? I was kind of like, yeah, I'd watch it. I don't know.

They could have just kept making Bunked. I don't understand they canceled Bunked a show Camp. And also, this is my listen. If you are a Disney executive, call me, because I think that we I know that everything's a reboot, even Fascism right now, but I think that we need to reboot Bug Juice.

And I was gonna say, a great camp show.

I don't know why, because like it's unscripted, it's gonna be super cheap to produce.

It's you know, get those kid influencers started early. I guess.

Bug Juice was so awesome. Kids shows were really gross, like I because that was like Baby Survivor.

I have never heard of this. I don't know what you're talking about, but yeah.

It was like a camp reality show. It was like kids at Summer Camp, and it was like the trials and tribulations of the drama of summer Camp.

So I'm like, if you want to make a camp show, either.

Bring back the script camp show that you literally just canceled, or you know, you have to renegotiate everybody's contract blah blah blah, or bring back Bug Juice a show that needs to be brought back.

I think about this all the.

Time because I don't and you're totally right, it like it fits influencer culture absurdly. Well, yeah, huh.

So the Disney plus TV adaptation that's I think still in development. I don't know much about it, but basically it's an adaptation of the book. So it's not necessarily about like fun summer Camp. It's about like prison labor camp. But it is like a quote unquote all female reboot, which I don't know how that will go exactly.

That's what makes me think it is not going to be made because I feel like that time has come and gone and what so has Disney plus making like original content ruined it?

Yeah, I think both All Lady Goes to My was the start of the death knell, and then Katy perry Space Journey is like.

The final nail of the coffin.

Yeah, there was a wave of feminism that ended when Katy Perry went to Space because it was just like what feminism? What are you even? What are you saying?

I hate it?

Woman should space tourism anyways?

Yes, And then I would say the other big adaptation change from the book in general and especially at the end, is that Stanley feels a lot more confident at the end, and he likes himself now and now he has friends. And this is part of a larger adaptation change that we alluded to it at the beginning of the episode, which I would like to talk more about, which is the fat erasure of Stanley's character. So basically, in the book,

But Also, it's like they could have just cast a fat actor.

Right, because the thing is like, if they wanted to emit something, why did it have to be his fatness. If anything, they could have omitted his weight loss.

Right, that was the Yeah, that would be ideal, right, Like, at the end of the day, it.

Is about the confidence. And the thing about being fat is that, for the most part, being fat is not actually, in my opinion, as a fat person, that bad.

I'm hot, I am fine with the way that I look.

The problem with being fat is society and the way that society treats fat people. And the problem with Stanley being fat is the fact that he's getting teased. He has no confidence because adults and children alike are making him feel bad about his body. And like the nineties was also a peak heroin chic, the early two thousands was like low rise.

Genes also experiencing another unfortunate reboot.

Yeah, the rise of.

Like skinny talk is terrifying. It's like anemia Tumbler all over again.

It really, it really.

Is like very disconcerting to encounter, and like, I find myself having thoughts that I haven't had in twenty years, and I'm just like stop it.

But I'm okay, I'm good. But every now and.

Then I'm just like, like, I'll read the can of a Lacroix and I'll feel bad about myself because looks actually are really weird of fat Shamie, because they really yeah with them, they say zero carbs, zero.

Fat, zero, zero guilt or something like that.

It's innocent.

Oh my god, it does say equals innocent yea.

And sometimes it gets to me.

Polar would never, polar would never.

Yeah, a spin drift couldn't catch them.

No, absolutely not. No, I Caitlyn, that's a great point. Like it's because I did feel like, I guess what, I I agree with you, Karama that you know, putting child above in a fat suit would have aged the movie terribly. Yeah, but I did feel like in the portion of the book that I finished that there was it was like one of the faults of the book

Totally and right. If there was again anything to omit from the adaptation, it could be the weight loss, or at least the implication that his boost and confidence correlates in some way to his weight loss.

I do also think that, like we are looking at this very much with twenty twenty five eyes, and I think that having a kid that was fat on screen be made fun of for being fat was something that was like also going to be considered like damaging, like putting this fat kid in the public eye, And I think that it ultimately would have been damaging.

For that kid.

Sure, And I know that like Heavyweights was a movie that came out in a similar era.

I can't remember exactly what your Heavyweights.

Came out, Yeah, late nineties, I think because he isn't Keenan Thompson in it, so it's like, yeah, Keenan era, I think baby Keenan's in it.

Yeah.

But the thing about Keenan is it was always okay for him to be fat because he was funny, do you know what I mean? Whereas like with Holes, it's more of a dramatic turn and you're sort of like the hero of this drama. And I think that I think that I would have loved if it were different. But I also kind of understand why it was the way that it was with.

The time that it came out, and adding that to I mean, I think I'm sure that I'm but I the only young fat actors that I remember knowing of as a kid were Keenan Thompson and Lori Beth Denberg and that was it. And so if the you know, directive is to cast Stanley yell Natz as a known actor, that might have been hard also because of how of how prejudiced Hollywood is in the first place, where the most well known child actors are you know, finn Totally.

This is before Nicki Blonski changed cinema.

It was a few years away, in just three years.

So the filmmakers spoke to this adaptation change in an interview in two thousand and three. So it was Lewis Sacker and director Andrew Davis were interviewed by Phase nine. Sure, I don't know exactly what that is, some kind of film publication, but anyway, precisely, they were asked how they searched for the right kids, like the right child actors for the characters. Lewis Sacker says, well, the character of Stanley in the book is overweight, Shia is not, but

As a misguided take, I would say I can pretty much bring any topic back to how much I dislike Leah Michelle. But of course, for me Funny Girl the adaptation, I thought that Beanie Feldstein was better casting because the whole thing about Funny Girl is that Fanny Brice is

She's like a hot lady.

Our beauty conventions have changed, but we still hate fat people. And I think that Beanie Feldstein's casting was far more in line with who Fanny's supposed to be as an outsider. So I think that on the one hand, Lewis is right in that what matters most is that he's an

But you know what I mean, Yeah, or even if it's just like he has a lack of confidence for a reason that has nothing to do with his appearance or ability or anything like that, and it's just that it wasn't replaced with anything. Yeah, Yeah, So that's just that whole part of his character is erased. And maybe Lewis Sachar is saying something like, well, you know, Stanley's fatness does not define him as a character, which is true,

Yeah, it feels like a very like hollywoody thing, which to at least to Lewis Skar, I'm sure that Lewis Akar is not the one making the final casting decisions, no, right, I know that he. I think he was a pretty around the movie. I think that that is like a better suited question for the director than which the writer.

Which the director answers a question, a follow up question, which was didn't you consider a fat suit, and director Andrew Davis says, yes, we did, but in the book he loses weight as the story evolves and as he digs the holes, et cetera. And we shot the movie out of continuity, so that wouldn't have worked.

That's the reason.

Yeah, youre right, And I think that was like I remember that also being a reason that they gave for not casting a fat actor to begin with, because it's like, well, movies are shot out of chronological order. So if a character is losing weight progressively, but the movie is shot out of order, then how how do we manage that?

It's all very two thousand and three. I mean, I will say that, like not to give this movie a pass, but that this feels very thoroughly in step with how fatness was treated in movies at this time.

For sure, shallow how oh yeah.

Right, like this like the same couple of years God, I still have managed to never see Shallow.

How oh, I won't see that movie because I love myself too much.

That's one of those movies where it's like, I know we'd have a lot to talk about, but I don't want to subject to anyone to have it to watch it, including myself.

Fair it's horrid. I have seen it, and.

It's like been free on YouTube for a thousand years because no one would watch it on purpose. But in any case, yes, I wasn't aware that they had been asked about it directly.

And then the other thing is that there is a fat character in the movie Armpit laid by Byron Cotton ar MPI to the t well, yes, of course.

Is that you're smelling dog?

That's me okay, Well, that's the thing.

That was a lyric. That was lyric.

The main thing we know about him is that he has body odor. He doesn't. He's implied to not have very good hygiene. Every and teases him about this. And also the movie goes out of its way to show at least once to show him struggling with a physical task of some kind.

Yeah.

So basically the only fat character on screen is attached to all these very harmful reductive tropes. Yeah, associated with fatness.

So which sucks for a lot of reasons. I mean the actor, because I don't think I don't a lot of these kids didn't go on to perform at least in movies very much. But Byron Cotton is so good, he's so charming, and also like it also just doesn't it's so clearly fat phobic because you got to think, all these kids are stinky, They're not being taken care of, and it's not their fault, Like they all share a single shower stall like there, of course, hygiene is poor and they only get like four.

Minute shower tokens or something.

Yeah, and add that to the average hygiene habits of a young boy in the best circumstances, like, yeah, all these kids are stinky.

Yeah, and they're wearing the same work clothes three days in a row.

Right.

I did want to talk a little bit about the production of this movie, because there is child Okay, one of the hills that I love to die on day in and day out is child labor laws, and there's I think that this movie technically followed child labor laws, but to me, say that child labor laws are not restrictive enough because they I mean, obviously the kids have to go to school all this stuff, But they were literally in the middle of the desert in heat as

Well I met once.

Actually what is he nice?

It was very nice. I was like, is he t zero? He was really sweet.

I was on a show on Hulu called Reboot, and at the premiere of Reboot he was there and I was like, what are you doing here?

Also, you're great in Reboot. I was like I think I like gasped and like messaged you immediately, like how could you not have told me? Actually?

I actually had a really sweet interaction last night with somebody at like an actor mixer thing for my agency, and this like younger actor at my agency.

She's like in her twenties. She's not like a child, but she came up here. She's like, I really loved you in reboot and you made me want to go to UCB. And I was just like, I'm literally gonna cry right now.

Thank you so much. I feels good about my career and that made me feel so much better.

Like moments like that find you when you need it.

That's really yes.

But yeah, Cleo was very nice.

He introduces something like I know you're I know I'm aware of.

I know the classes, but I would lose it.

I would still still crushworthy.

I would say yeah, I followed it. I followed him on Instagram today. I was like, he still got it.

I was gonna say slides DMS and I remembered, like a fully engaged with adults.

He would get it.

This Cleo Thomas has been promoted to my Hall Pass. But so this is a quote from Miguel Castro, who also talks about how like the casting process and how they really did. I mean, I think that being unwilling to cast a fat actor of Stanley is the standout bad thing that they did, because it seems like they tried to really find young actors who like fit the role, and also that the movie was not being aggressive whitewashed in a way that I would not put past two

Like that's we all agreed is bad.

Yeah, it's.

It's giving Mikey Madison saying that she and Sean Baker decided together not to have an intimacy coordinator, and I'm like, I don't think that that's your call as a no. I think it's your call as a yes, but it can't be your call as a no. That's like not having a stunt coordinator. Like even Tom Cruise, as dedicated as he is to doing these outrageous stunts, has a stunt coordinator.

Right right, Yeah, it feels like adults knowing that they have power over children and being like, no, we got to keep going. The show must go on, let's go, let's go kids.

Don't you want to make the movie? Don't you want all of your friends to watch this cool movie?

Right?

It's just I don't know, I don't understand like production risk, Like even if you were heartless and you don't care about putting a child in a one hundred and thirty degree whole like that production insurance. I don't know. I was just I was curious. I was like, I wonder how they kept the whole school. The answer they didn't.

I feel like he has a really strong understanding of story to begin with, So I feel like it was like he was at the water.

They just had to show him how to drink, you know what I mean?

Right, yeah, yeah, And that's what they were sort of like. They were like, he's a great writer, he just needs to understand the format. And I guess throughout production, like Lewis, the Carr had a lot of input and if he wanted something changed or adjusted like Andrew Davis, had no questions. I was like, wow, no one respects writers. That's cool. Yeah, that's right. That was my takeaway.

He's also in the movie.

Yeah, mister bold, Oh that's him.

Yeah, cute.

Sweet.

I wish they had shown him with like a bust down wig.

Later because the onion juice it worked. The onion juice cured his boldness.

I just want to know if it works. It's like a Sweet Todd situation.

Mister No, I think Sam's onion remedies worked one hundred percent.

You would have loved Arawan, Oh my god, Oh he would have.

He would have been making billions at the Ariwuan.

Wow.

Yeah. I love cameos like that. And not to keep going back to series of unfortunate events, but it is my favorite. And that is a terribly adapted movie that the author was very upset about. So it's just like there's so many examples of you know, heavily sanitized, Like all the dark themes in that movie are basically played for comedy instead of because the you know, Nickel I think it was Nickelodeon productions in that case were like, it's too scary for kids, they won't be able to

I met the boy from that movie.

I didn't know it was him. I just happened to be sitting.

All my childhood crushes.

I just happened to be sitting next to him. We're instagram like mutuals now. I happen to be sitting next to him. Last summer when I went to New York City and I decided to use my free will and my adult money to go see Cats.

The Jellicle Ball, and he was there.

And he was there in the front row, right next to me.

Oh my god.

He had a friend who was in it. He had never seen Cats before. I had seen Cats before.

Of course.

I will just say I think the Cat's the Jellical Ball was actually genius and a really amazing production because they used ballroom culture and I was like, oh, this is this is actually the only way this show makes sense.

That is actually a great adjustment.

Yeah. So it's like Paris is burning bust cats.

Yes it's gay cats.

I'm in that's so good.

Yeah. Liam Aiken, Yes he's sucking and like, I'm a yapper, so I'll talk to anybody that's unfortunately sitting next to me.

And he was such a trooper about it, and I was like, Oh, your friend's in it. Who is your friend playing? And he was like, oh, she's Skimbleshanks And I was like the railway can.

The best Cat's god best number.

I was like, that's a good cat, you've.

Good taste and friends.

I can't believe you're hang out with Skimbleshanks. Oh my god. Yet another like Horny Child's thing on my wall. I had like achin for Liam, that's so funny. Wow, I'm glad that he's And he did turn into my dream adult in that he was friend row at the Jelicable and like I never.

It never it came up that he was an actor because we were just talking and I was like, oh, I'm an actor too, and blah, blah blah. And I didn't know until I like looked him up after he walked me into the subway because I was like, I don't know where I'm going, And I looked him up to see if his star meter.

Was better than mine.

It was, and I was like, oh, snap, this is the guy from Stepmom, one of my favorite movies of all time.

Oh yeah.

And then I was like, oh, I had a series of unfortunate events a movie that I did not care.

About, but Stepmom, good for him, Good for him.

Have you guys done? Stepmom? Sorry, we should talk about the movie.

No, we haven't, but it's on our list.

I think would be down. I've seen it because jennam Alone is in it too, right, baby jenneral alone? Yeah, but well, I guess back, I guess.

I mean speaking of a movie that you know, like doesn't sanitize the more serious themes, or at least not extensively. Yeah, this movie, it addresses a number of social issues such as race, class, incarceration in all of the storylines I think that are intersecting. So there's these two main storylines from the past, one from the present. In one of them, it's Stanley's Great, Great grandfather Elia Yellnetz. He is seeking

Yeah, she's like believe Egyptian. In the book too, they explicitly say that she is an immigrant from Egypt.

Right, and curious what your thoughts are. But I couldn't help but feel that there are hints of like the magical Negro trope at play here, because she's presented as being this mystic type of person. She places a curse.

I agree there's a little magical Negro happening, but I don't mind it. And I don't know if I'm supposed to say that out loud, but I don't because also I feel like it's a lot of the time, like when curses are happening, it's like, oh man, we got cursed for no reason, and nobody at any point is like, oh man, we got cursed for no reason. They're like, my, no good, dirty rotten pigs stealing great great great grandfather.

I would have been on the next boat.

Back personally, right, I did. Yeah, that is I guess I hadn't registered that that. At very least. The family is not like fuck, Madame Zeroni. They're like, he made a deal and he didn't keep his end of it.

Yeah, at no point where they're like, oh, Madam Zaroni was the worst. They're like, yeah, no, that's that's fair.

It's like a European white guy neglecting to pay a black woman for services rendered and he gets cursed about it, and it is fully deserved.

And I also think that, you know, the the curse being broken because finally the services that were promised were rendered in a way with this new generation, it's it's very much speaking like the promise. I think that with them being explicitly black, even though it's like somewhat ambiguous in.

The book, like if if she's Egyptian or if she's Romani.

It's very much about like, oh, the promise is that America has made to black people and sort of like how those have been broken and there I think that there is going to be a curse on this country until something happens to make it right. Whether it's reparations, whether it's something else, I don't know, And like I don't even think that I would be entitled to reparations because my parents are immigrants. Like I'm not saying it for personal gain, and I'm saying it for justice reasons,

But I think that more people tried it, we'd find out in real life.

Right yeah, right, So yeah, that's that storyline. And then it also intersects heavily with the Stanley Hector Zerny storyline in the present. And then the third storyline is the Miss Catherine aka kissing Kate Marlowe and Sam in I think it's like turn of the century, like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. Again, it's Jim Crow era Texas. She is a white woman, he is a black man. They fall in love. They kiss during an era when that was illegal in Texas and in many other states in

Right. Also, I think that there's sometimes there's power in letting someone suffer.

Oh true, because he by the end of his life he is miserable.

Yeah, he's obsessed.

He's a man completely possessed by the idea of finding this treasure where he's torturing his granddaughter, right, so built to dig these holes and she's you know the TikTok sounds that has spawned a million video.

I'm tired of this grandpa it is.

I thought that, like that was an interesting Again, like this movie is good at like providing context for the villains without overly empathizing with them, because what she does to deal with the uh trauma of the holes is that she becomes like a prison warden and opens a prison and outsources the labor to disenfranchised children. So it's not like it's an excuse for anything that she's doing.

To the way that white women will pass on the violence enacted upon them by white men to black people, because you know, not everybody is black in the camp, but they do make it a point to have if you're a number of black kids, because that is unfortunately who is getting these harsher punishments. And even if you think about Hector and Stanley, Stanley is getting this punishment because he stole from allegedly stole shoes from a homeless shelter and they were like this famous guy's shoes, and

Right, shoes that probably cost twenty dollars kind of thing, not even.

In three pay less shoes fifteen at most.

Right right?

I miss pay Less every day rip rip to a real story.

The payless where I used to buy my Easter shoes is now an axe throwing place.

Oh my god. So it's like gentrification on gentrification. I thought it was interesting that Pala's got shouted out by name. I'm like, did they pay for that?

I don't know, they shoes worth stealing? Paylas there is.

I mean, I guess I'm curious what you both think of this, Like Camp Greenlake is a diverse but I would say mostly non white body of people, which I think makes a lot of sense if you look at prisons unfortunately, especially the school to prison and Pipeline. I do feel like, while I do love Stanley Yelnatz, centering this story on a white character does not to say that this does not happen to white kids, but it

Yeah, I don't think we know.

This doesn't provide any more context in that regard, but I will share a quick paragraph from the book. Quote Stanley was thankful that there were no racial problems. X Ray, Armpit and Zero were black, he Squid and Zigzag were white. Magnet was hispanic. On the lake, they were all the same reddish brown color, the color of dirt. Unquote. So that's pretty much the only thing the book has to say about any racial or racialized dynamics.

In that timeline, at least because.

Yea, and I couldn't help think about another movie as I was rewatching holes, which is the movie Nickel Boys that I saw recently, so as far as a book slash movie about young men or teen boys being incarcerated and sent to a work camp. There is a version of this story that is written and made by white people,

To sure for sure, Yeah, I think that sometimes the messenger matters as much as the message.

And I do think that in two thousand and three, for a kids movie to send this message, I think you need to see this happen to a white kid who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, because when black kids are in the wrong place at the wrong time, people are like, well, what were they doing there, Why weren't they there at the right time, Why weren't they in a different place?

And I think.

That it's kind of similar for me to my favorite movie about racism, Pleasantville. Yeah, it is a movie about racism with not nary a single person.

Yes, however, wild that they.

Did that, but like wild that they did it and did it well.

I think one of my favorite movies.

It's a great movie.

It's a really good movie. And I think that there are people who would not have gotten the message if it were a straight and maybe wouldn't even have watched the movie if it were straight up, Like, hey, this is about segregation in the nineteen fifties, which is what it is.

It is a movie about segregation in the nineteen fifties, but the colored people are literally in technicolor. Yeah, and I love that, and.

I love that that was an idea that somebody had, And it's like, sometimes, what if this happened to white people? Is the way to get the message to people that are like, hey, wait a minute, And it's like the last few lines of that poem, that's like, oh, and then they came for me and there's nobody to stand up for me, And it's like, what if this were to happen to you?

You need to think about if this happens to you.

Not to say that all of the audiences are white, but in filmmaking, for better or for worse, white is seen as the default and you can put any experience on top of it. And I do think also there are things that are true about this story. I do think that even with the expensive lawyer, if it were Hector, or if it were another black kid, it would have taken longer than literally a day after hiring a lawyer to get.

Him out of there.

Definitely, no matter.

How hard that lawyer was working, I feel like the judge would be like, no, I'm not overturning this. I don't care, he's already there. The holes are good for character whatever, do you know what I mean? Because like, while I was watching, when they said this into eighteen months, I was like, that is six times as long as.

Rock Turner got ah.

Yep, Well, when you put it that way, it.

Was an unreasonably long sentence, and I don't even know how long those other kids.

Are sentenced to.

I was gonna say, I would be really curious what the other sentences looked like, because it didn't seem like that was a default sentence by any means.

Right, and like x Ray had already been there for six months.

Also, x Ray's nickname is my favorite because it's because he's got the big glasses, but also his name.

Is Rex and like genius.

Yeah, that is like peak kid brilliance. Yeah, I that's that's a good point, especially where like you're saying, in children's media often still, but like especially in the two thousands, you know, you're taking the like default protagonist for for a movie like this and making the worst possible thing happen and demonstrating that it was through no fault of his own. And then it's sort of I don't think this is like intentionally done. I would guess more that

Very much a Colorblind two thousand. It's like, Wow, racism used.

To be so bad.

Now any kid can go to jail.

I will say, just because we talked about kissing Cape Barlowe and Sam, I'm really glad that they didn't hang him. I know that they said they were going to hang him, which would have been I think more historically accurate, but I was so glad that they did not show him getting hanged, and that it.

Was shown too, like, yeah, yeah, I think that that was handled very gracefully.

And I think that not just for the kids, for me and my little heart, I couldn't have handled it.

Yeah.

And then the other thing I was gonna say was we were just talking about like the kids at the camp and at the beginning, at the very beginning of the cold Open, when barf Bag sacrifices himself to the snake, they are singing dig It at the beginning, and it feels like the song sixteen Tons to me, like there was a very similar vibe and it was sort of like, you know, same deal as like working and you're never going to get out of it, but they're also joking

Yeah, and even with that, he's like a slightly older kid.

It's he's visibly a little bit older and God only does how long he's been there too that part.

But yeah, I think that there's a norm of adultifying, particularly incarcerated kids and especially black kids, where it's like, oh, they're not normal kids, they're criminals. And like some of the kids did do things that are crimes. Like I mean technically, you know, Magnet did a crime, although innocent.

Let them go right, h M.

The puppy, he.

Literally saved a puppy from a horrific practice, like come.

On, and like Twitch stole a car, but he's a little boy.

Yeah, he's like I just want to go zoom and it's like, okay, well maybe we should take this kid go cart.

There's so many like ethical solution, I mean, which is the story of incarceration. But it's just it's so and I love I do. I this was the first time I watching the movie that I really was like, I guess paying closer attention to Pendance Key specifically. I think it's like such a well written character where he is being presented as the nice guy, but over the course of the movie is so clear that he's not the

He's a coward.

Yeah.

And also just his response when like everybody's like, don't teach Hector to read, which is wild, that's that arc I was like, whoa, hold on, hold on, why don't we want Hector to read?

Like I get why you don't want him to dig the hole?

But it's another great like it's so good. There's a really good video essay that I was rewatching by I believe Yaharazade or I hope I'm saying her name right, Yaharazide called holes in the prison industrial complex and she like ties that explicitly to like, the kids aren't doing anything wrong. They're being told that they are going to improve themselves, so why would you get in trouble for

About the theme of literacy is that they keep the shovels in uh ad, that says live library.

I thought it was a good touch.

Yeah, I had to pause it, but I was like, oh no, I didn't notice that before.

That's very upset.

Yeah, there, And also that the oppressors of this movie. It is kind of a funny, like woman can do it too, and you're like, it's true, but it's you know, the people at the top of this operation are white, and they're all sort of representing different kinds of oppression, where like mister Zur and Panansky are equally bad, but they are presenting a different approach to being pro incarceration. Like I it's just it's so well written. And then the snake nail Polish, I mean, hello.

Love the snake nail Poli.

I love the idea of like the women in this story having these weapons like kissing.

Kate Barlowe is.

Known, Yes, she shoots people, but then she kisses them and that's what she's known for. Is this red lipstick mark that she leaves behind is her sort of like signature, and then the warden has her nail polish that she then uses to like put these men in line. And this idea and like poison being traditionally a preferred method of like violence for women.

I thought that was really interesting. And you know, there are a lot of women in here, but they make it count. Wh Yeah, when they're hurting people, they make it count.

And I don't even mind that they're not the many women in this movie.

Well, I mean it's about especially because it's about like a gendered incarcerated like it makes sense. I do think that, you know, it is good. I guess we got Orange just the new Black. You know, it's there was media down the line about incarcerated women, which is equally important to talk about.

And maybe more with this Disney Plus reboot, which I wrote down the.

Joke I'm calling it it's not happening.

Well, if it does, they should call it Girl is the New Boy. And that's the amazing joke I wrote down.

Really good.

I hope that it gets green lit and that they hire me, and then I want to write the episode about when one of the girls gets her first period in the middle of digging her hole, and everybody else has to help her finish digging her hole because she has cramps.

And that's womanhood and that's solidarity.

Hire me, that is Disney solidarity. Yeah, as long as they bring back Sigourney Weaver, because that, I mean that character would get out of jail. It lickety split, I guess. The other just contrasting the yeah, because you really only get like one woman in each timeline, because you have Madam Zeroni in one timeline kissing Kate Barlowe in another timeline, and Sigourney Weaver, I mean, Stanley Yale's mom is barely in it.

Like I do.

Like that they go out of their way to show again that like all of these kids we are led to believe are from poor backgrounds to different degrees, but like it, Stanley is from a family that's just scraping by. They're almost getting evicted, and you still see that there is like he is emotionally cared for and loved, which I think often you know, like poor parents are made

Also, he probably wouldn't have taken the shoes if he could have read so rightly, because he said that he did not know that they were Sweetfeet's shoes he just liked them and he took them. And I think that the you know, the weight of taking those shoes would have been different. Could he have read like the little thing that said, oh sweet feet whatever.

His name is, shoes because he just needed shoes. Yeah, like you're saying like he got arrested for taking from a paylist. Like the kid just needed shoes and he wasn't being provided for. I just ah, I love Zero's character.

And the shoes were donated to the shelter, so he was living at the shelter, those shoes were in.

His mind for him, right, Yeah, totally. I also think it's interesting that there is acknowledgment that even though Stanley's family is poor, they are still more socioeconomically privileged over Zero and his family, because there's that moment that Zero's describing, Oh yeah, my mom would sometimes have to like leave me at a park, you know, I would go to Laney Park, and Stanley's like, oh yeah, I used to go there all the time parentheses for fun with my family,

But it's so clearly is because he can't. And it's like Pandanski acts as if because Zero can't read, he also cannot hear, like it is just like it is so oh, he's like to me, to me on this viewing the most evil character in the movie, because he's a fucking coward, like he does think he's a good person. I very least don't think mister sirr or Sigourney Weaver are like I'm an amazing They're like, yeah, I'm a piece of shit and I and I don't care if

Come on, Teaching is a tough job, and I'm so glad that there are people who are committed to doing it and doing it well.

Few are and.

Fewer people because administrators at schools are making it so much more difficult, and then the turnover is getting outrageous. But there's always one teacher who is like, I just want to be able to have beef with children, and.

You're like what, And so often I feel like they're in administrative positions. Now I'm just projecting my mom's entire career, but like like it's yeah, I don't know, Pandanzky piece of shit. And then I do like that they add the bit at the end of like he doesn't even have a degree, because what, like what teacher would agree to work there that isn't fraudulent?

Yeah, yeah, So a lot of that I found to be very effective in the movie. There is a joke

But yeah, yeah, I didn't love it.

And it's like it's genuinely not funny.

No, no, yes, not for nothing.

I'll admit when a joke is like, oh this is problematic, but also I giggle a little despite myself, But like the Merry joke is not even there's nothing funny about it. It's not even like a silly sounding name. It's a very normal sounding name that is just oh, girls have it.

Yeah, it's just a yeah as a Jamie. He's fine, fine, right, it's actually it's great having a gender fluid name. It's fun. Yeah, that was not great, but I think, you know, a comparatively small.

Totally yeah, one of the few blemishes on an otherwise perfect movie.

Yeah, I think that's everything I had.

I wanted to say something about the music. Obviously we've talked about dig it. There is a lullaby. We didn't really talk about the lullaby very much. That when Elia was taking the pig up the mountain, he had to sing to the pig, and it was like if only, if only at the woodpecker's size, the bark on the trees were as soft as the sguise.

There's something about wolves. I don't remember the rest of it.

Yeah, and you know he's supposed to sing it when he takes Madame Seroni up, which, as we all know, drop the ball on that.

Should it turned around taken the next boat. I stand by that.

And then I think that it's really sweet that Stanley does sing this song when they get to God's Thumb and when Hector is drinking the water and it makes him strong, and that's kind of like the last piece of sort of breaking the curse.

And the other thing is.

They did a like studio song version of that song in the end credits, if you stay till the very end of the credits there they do that song as the last one, and then there's a scene of Zero saying like Madam Zeroni's line that if you forget to come for Madame Zeroni, your family will be cursed forever and all it.

Yeah, however, the kid's voice, so he does a line reading of that, and it's very cute, but the song actually kind of slaps and it's giving, like very early two thousand's, late nineties.

Like soft rock, sort of like a Matchbox twenty Moby.

There's a Moby.

Song in it. I did not know that that's of the time there is bravely a Moby's song.

But so I looked at I rewound the video and I looked at who because I always like reading the little music things and I wasn't paying attention, and I saw that it was by somebody called like fiction Plane or something like that, and hold, then I wrote it down. I don't know why I'm pretending that I can't read. Uh yeah, fiction Plane. They sang the song if Only, and the lead singer of fiction Plane is a man named Joe Sumner, who is Sting's son.

No way, yeah wow. And Sting was in the Disney Expanded Universe because of Emperor's New Groove. I wonder if he pulled some strings there, if he pulled some stings Sting some stings there, if anyone ever, I think it's it's It is occasionally re uploaded to YouTube. There is like, I don't know why I find it so compelling. Well, it's an interesting documentary about production. But Sting was originally like The Emperor's New Grave Groove. The production of that movie is fascinating.

But it was.

Originally a much more serious story and then turned into David's Bade comedy. But Sting wrote this really like he thought he was doing Elton john and The Lion King. So he wrote all of these serious stories, and his wife was making a documentary, assuming like, oh, we're gonna you're gonna be like Elton. You're Elton john Ning, so I should document this, and you just see the production

Yes, yeah, he's British.

But but it's so interesting. It's specific watching Sting slowly realize all of his music is going to be deleted. And it's actually a David Spade comedy. If you ever wanted to see Sting become really depressed in the space of eighty minutes, it's an interesting documentary.

Why would I want them to do that? Did Joe Sumner's father?

My theory is that Disney was like, we we got a tossing a bone, we got a tossing a bone, we did a so Dirty on Emperor's New Groove, another Earth a Kit joint. Yeah, it's all connected, it really is.

But yeah, seeing that and like the song was actually really interesting because I found it to be very moving and it was just sort of like, what if the bark on the trees was as soft a disguise? What if things were easy? What if life was different? And I was just like, yeah, what if what if? Joe?

And just the the Sting reveal was very surprising to.

Me, just when you didn't think Sting was going to get his way into the holes expanded universe. There he is.

And then I like did some digging.

I did some digging on Joe Sumner and I saw that he later invented an app in like twenty ten or twenty eleven that enabled people who go to concerts to upload their videos to this app, and all the people that went to the concert would upload their yes that they took and it would basically create a concert movie with the different angles that people oh did and the.

Apps until like twenty sixteen and bring it back.

That's cool.

Yeah, that would do so much better now too, right, I think like, bring it back?

Yeah, Joe, if you're listening, bring it back.

Joe biggest fans, We're big fans. I'm sorry to make fun of when your dad was upset about and for his new groove. I would have been upset too, But yeah, I just wanted to.

Bring that little factory because I thought that was fascinating, very interesting and unexpected.

Yeah.

Does anyone have anything else they want to talk about?

No, I'm good, I got it.

I don't think so. Yeah, I'm going to reread Wayside School. That's my I.

Love those books so much. I haven't read them in like thirty years.

So they're so silly.

Well, as we discussed, the movie does pass the Bechdel test, albeit briefly. It passes. It passes a pass as far as our nipple scale, though, where we rate the movie based on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh boy, I don't know. I feel like, are sure it applies.

Our scale is kind of tricky to apply here. I mean, I think in terms of like intersectionality, this movie does well in that it brings up issues I've never seen brought up in uh children's movie about like justice and oppression and school to prison pipeline, and this movie is doing so much.

I agree.

You feel like the nipple scale is like difficult to apply here.

It is.

Yeah, I give it.

I would say I give it five wholes.

File Okay, so not the nipple scale today is the whole scale zero to five holes.

This is the movie holes. So I'm giving it five holes.

Yeah, say I'm giving it five holes the end.

If I had to give it on a scale of zero to five holes, holes, yes, five holes, six holes. Even I know I'm an extra hole because they did one last holes like one.

Last job, and the bonus hole could forget.

If I genuinely had to do it on a nipple scale, I think I would actually give it, like surprisingly, like three and a half nipples, like a lot of nipples for a woman free.

Movie one woman per decade, just because like when we talk about intersectionality, yes we're talking about women and representation of women, but the things that matter at the end of the day are deconstructing these systems and it's talking about how these systems are flawed and bringing attention to these systems that do affect women.

And even though they're showing it in the context of it affecting teenage boys, unless you're Disney US, it still is something that is I think, and that positive for intersectional feminism. So like I because there aren't that many women, I can't give it five nipples, And because you know, at the end of the day, it's like this camp was the problem, not like the whole system. The state's

Woman in it, truly, I mean, and yeah, I hope that I wish that this movie led to more media like or just kids media that addressed issues like this, but it is still, twenty plus years later, pretty singular for the issues that because I mean, like if if a story like this kid, because I loved Nickel Boys, but it's very much not a movie for children.

And well, if you count Paddington Too, that's I mean, I mean Paddington and Paddington Too are again indictments of the prison industrial complex of like anti immigrant hate and racism. So it's true that Paddington movies do it.

So that's two there. But yeah, no, I mean, I I I don't know. It's it's a very special movie. I agree like it kind of broke the nipple scale in my head. But I think your your rationalization makes a lot of sense.

Grama totally thank.

You for engaging with the show in a way that we were not willing to.

That's what I'm here for.

I ask the hard questions, how many nipples does this movie really deserve?

Thanks for thanks for poking holes in our system by.

I will also say Utopia tries not like this particular set of issues, but Utopia does.

Try to be like haters.

Yeah, I would. It tries and it fails.

Yeah, I didn't say it succeeded, but he tried. Yeah, there's some deep.

Laws there where it's like, okay, but yeah, some people are predators.

No, but like they tried to fix racism with.

Animals, they're like, we didn't quite. Disney was like, we didn't quite do it with holes. Let's let's try the animal copaganda movie.

There.

I do appreciate ultimately, and I feel like I'm talking a lot of shit. I'm trying. I am trying to get work. But anyways, that Disney was very hands off with this movie, because I think if Disney had been hands on with this movie, we would have gotten, you know, whatever this movie's version of Jim Carrey's count Oloff was.

And yeah, totally, I think that.

It's really a testament to the fact that like, you know, we talk a lot of shit generally, we not the three of us, but we society talk a lot of shit on these major corporations. And it's proof that they are capable of making these thoughtful movies and they can do it if they.

Want to, right, So it's like, so why aren't they doing it?

And it is also sometimes commercially successful when they do it, and I think that it's a good reminder, like, hey, remember when you did this thing and you did it the way the creatives asked you to and it was wildly successful and it had a lot of a listers in it, and people are still talking about it twenty years later as a like shining example of the way to do things.

What if you rebooted that, What if you rebooted that spirit?

They're like, well, no, let's do cgi dogs for Lady in the trimp. Let's do that One's.

That word that's a joke, right, that's that's a joke.

Oh no, that's exit that. It came out five years ago. Unfortunately, it's very scary. It's a scary watch. It's scarier than mister sir.

I did think a.

Lady in the Tramp earlier because The Boy Dog is another example of a house representation in children's media.

Forget I believe, I believe Lady in the I think Lady is Tessa Thompson.

Sure, I never saw it.

I think I was the only person that's yeah, it's Tessa Thompson and Justin Thurreau.

And you're like, yeah, I was too busy gearing up for the live action Pinocchio Disney reboot.

So shout out to the Pinocchio Wars on the Matreon. When speaking of which, Okay, let's wrap it. I'm hungry, let's wrap up the show.

I just wanna say one last thing. Disney has been good to me personally, and I do you think follow the checks and I I'm just gonna say another thing and I forgot, So it doesn't matter.

Disney is good to me and that it made and or my favorite show.

I will say there, Disney is still making cool, weird stuff like I mean, you mentioned Bunked as a great example. I just finished work. I hope it gets renewed for all manner of reasons. But like a super silly kids show called Stugo. So if you have a kid, and I think I would say like the Seven or eight range. That's a very silly, fun show that's on the Disney Channel right now. It's like speaking to your point, Grama. They can do it, so why not do it more?

Very well done. I hope they do more holes in the world.

Yeah, yeah, Karama, thank you so much for coming back. You've covered such an interesting wide variety of movies on the show.

I'm saying on the record, bring me back for Stepmom if you ever get around.

Yes, absolutely yes, And then so it'll be it's two Disney movies, two Jordan Peele movies.

Oh yeah, and then now and step in the future starting a new chapter.

I'm gonna be like Tarantino. He said he was gonna like do eight movies and then never come back.

Which you can't wait for that part, right, He's really dragging out the last one.

I ever come back.

No, you can come back after that, please do if you want. Anyway, where can people check out your stuff? Follow you on social media, etcetera?

Yeah, at Karama Drama, on all the platforms that you might use. I started talking about libraries recently on my TikTok because I'm a big, big slat for libraries, love them.

I have for library cards.

Wow, hell yeah.

You can have a lot of library cards and get a lot of different things with them.

I highly encourage you to go get do it for Hector Zeroni.

The Hector Zerni Memorial Library.

Go get a library card. Where can you guys be found using your.

Library cards or not?

Uh?

You could? You can find us on mostly just Instagram these days. At Bechdel Cast, you could follow our Patreon aka maatreon at patreon dot com slash Bechdel Cast. We have shouted out The Pinocchio Wars, one of our best series, but we've had it since twenty seventeen. So for five dollars a month, you get two bonus episodes every single month and access to our back catalog which goes back almost ten years, so there's a lot of spicy content.

Yes, I basically decided that for my birthday month, I wanted to do Holes, Shawshank Redemption and Oh Brother, Where Art Though? Which is a movie about three men escaping from prison, and one of them is Tim Blake Nelson who's also in Holes, So it's all connected, just the way the plot of Holes is.

And both movies feature down in the river to pray.

Right Yes wow, yeah, it thinks that they changed it to valley because there's no water.

Yes, so that is what's happening over on the Matreon. As it is my birthday this month, it would be a nice little gift to me and to the podcast in general if you subscribe to the Matreon if you haven't already listeners and.

Uh, with that, let's go to the yell NAT's pool and watch a shoe commercial with our best friend, a basketball player playing a baseball player.

Okay, bye, 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. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Volskrosenski. Our logo in merch is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit link tree slash Bechdel Cast