you Welcome to the Gender Rebels, a question and answer podcast that explores life outside the gender binary. I'm Cath, a cis woman and ally. And I'm Faith, a trans woman. Special thank you to all our Patreon supporters. Hey everyone, I'm Kath. And I am Faith. Welcome to the Gender Rebels Go to the Movies. What did we see yesterday? What did we see? We saw a new film.
That's just out called I Saw the TV Glow. Correct. The director is Jane Schoenbaum. Schoen Brown. And the cast includes Justice Smith and... Bridget Lundy Payne and other other assorted performers including Phoebe Bridgers um who is not Phoebe Waller-Bridge yes which bothers me that
Both Phoebe Bridgers and Phoebe Waller-Bridge both became famous about at the same time. That's just weird. Something's wrong. And no one stepped in. Nobody said something. The simulation is glitching, guys. Did you like the movie? Just briefly. Yes. Me too. Let's give a quick plot synopsis. We walk into the movie theater and I spilled half of Faith's beer into my lap.
so that that's how things started but i gave her my hoodie to to use to clean it up because we were in a theater where you really couldn't it was a very full theater yeah it was yeah which is funny because the last bridget lindy payne movie we saw It was a very empty theater. It was a very empty theater, and Bridget Lundy-Payne was actually there doing a Q&A with the director, and the theater was mostly empty. And they wanted this one. I had...
I had BLP. We call them BLP. Yeah, they're BLP. Bridget Lundy Payne is great. We love them. We first saw them in Atypical. They've done other things. Links down below. They are they them. Non-binary. And they're super talented and funny and, you know, just a cool young actor on the scene. At any rate, clearly BLP's absence.
made it so more people wanted to come obviously they're the one they're staying away yes only explanation but uh yes bridget lindy payne uh was really the reason we went to see this movie in the first place or the reason it got on your trailer looked really good well you didn't you wouldn't have known the trailer yeah no no i i literally yeah so um big fan of theirs i really like the co-star uh justice smith justice smith who was in uh
He was in Dungeons and Dragons Honor Amongst Thieves where he played a not particularly skilled wizard, which was good. Amelia's children. Yeah. We saw Bridget Lindy Payne and Amelia's children. It was bad. It was terrible. Yeah. Embarrassing. I mean, they did a great job in it. Yeah, they were amazing. They were the bright spot. Yeah. They're a doctor who eats soup dumplings. But.
Let's stick to I Saw the TV Glow. So as a very brief overall summary, this is about two kids who are fans of a weird TV show. And I think it's kind of... One of those scary TV shows for kids like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark. It was very Buffy.
It was incredibly Buffy. It looked even lower budget and shittier than Buffy. It was kind of a pastiche of the Buffy in that Are You Afraid of the Dark? But I will say, and this is no spoilers, they... the actual font used so you watch you watch uh multiple sequences of this show as the characters watch it and it's got the buff the credits are the buffy font It's written and directed by Josh Weldon or something like that. Yeah, it's something very similar to Joss Whedon. All right.
who's who i think is a shitty human being so uh but created buffy and then the the episode you see with uh an evil an evil character of the evil monster who is, for those who might know Buffy, this evil character is brought about by a wish that another character makes, which is a plot in Buffy that's used a couple times. It's just very much, it's very, it's similar to Buffy.
uh similar to are you afraid of the dark etc yeah it's definitely a pastiche of that it's a tv show it is called the pink opaque and which these are i didn't want to ask if it had anything to do with the cocteau twins I don't know what that is. I guess, are they punk, new wave, new wave? I don't know what that is. What would you call them? Cocteau Twins. Well, they say they're a rock band. Cocteau Twins. The show's called Pinko Pink, which is an album by Cocteau Twins.
And I don't know what it had to do with it. I only vaguely know of Cocteau Twins. I'm not a huge fan. And I didn't want to ask at the Q&A in case everyone in the audience rolled their eyes at how obvious it was. Your approach to asking... questions at this Q&A. It was my approach to questions in college, which
Did some damage to my learning process. I'm not going to lie. Anyway, so the movie is not about the pink opaque. It's about two kids. We meet them, 7th grade and 9th graders, who are sort of outcasts, sort of awesomeness.
awkward maybe some neglect at home maybe some abuse at home maybe a lot of abuse at home yeah it's definitely it's definitely implied that there's not not even applied it's literally stated in the film that there's like abuse at home and they bond over this tv show but they're both kind of awkward so it's limited to how much they can bond but uh
it seems to me that this show and the friendship presented in the show is kind of what gets them through. Even they're not, they don't like hang out all the time. They're not really friends. No. In fact, BLP's character makes VHS tapes for... justin smith's character because he can't stay up that late to watch the show which is 10 30 i think they're friends i think it's presented as a friendship but i'll be at a weird one and blp's character is prickly
a little bit hostile she smiles exactly once in the movie um sorry we're gonna uh bridget lindy payne is a they them non-binary we will refer to their character by uh she her pronouns So if we screw up in that and you're listening, Bridge, which we hope you are. Yes. We're fans. Come hang out with us. We'll play Catan.
And the character's names, BLP plays Maddie. Maddie. So Maddie, and this all takes place in the 90s. Justice Smith plays. Much of this takes place in the 90s. Justice Smith plays Owen. Yeah. So Maddie is. so utterly 90s. I feel like I would have been friends with Maddie in high school. No, you wouldn't have. Maddie didn't want any friends. Maddie didn't want any friends, but I knew people like Maddie. I was similar to Maddie, I think. Yeah.
Maddie's got all the female fronted band posters. I identified a Velocity girl and Veruca Salt poster. Obviously, I was looking for a garbage, but other people. I did spot those two. Yeah. So, you know, they managed to scrape through towards the end of high school together. Maddie disappears. suspicious circumstances, and Owen, you know, grows up.
in that same town they they grew up in and adventures ensue and weirdness happens yeah so a lot of weirdness it was weird it was dark um very beautifully shot film very pretty very good performances uh There is one scene in particular where Bridget Lundy Payne's character, Maddie, does, I want to say, maybe a five, six, seven minute long shot with a...
with a lot of camera moves and stuff and it's all a monologue and there are some very long steadicam shots really really impressive stuff yeah um cool lighting interesting moods you know you and the soundtrack is phenomenal it doesn't go on sale till may 10th so i'm listening to what i can but yeah the soundtrack is a whole other thing it's so so good yeah there's so many songs some you recognize some you don't some talented people um
One's Smashing Pumpkins. So the soundtrack really does stand alone as really amazing. But we were lucky to see sort of a preview. yesterday and had had a q a with the director and the director uh came out and was talking to whoever from the theater And was talking about being trans and how this was a trans movie and how there are some scenes of transness. And you and I were on our way home in a car instead of the subway because I looked like I'd wet my pants. Yep.
she spilled the beer was in the cup in between our seats we're holding hands in the theater like you do because we're a couple and we're adorable and I think Kath was reaching over to To hold my hands and then knocked the beer into her lap. I bopped that beer a couple times. That was a tall glass. It was. Or a short cup holder.
And when it poured on me, and it was very cold, I was like, what would a normal person do in these circumstances? Well, they would probably get up and like go to the bathroom and swab off with paper towels, but then still be wet. The whole time. And then what? Go home? Fuck that. And so I just sat in my puddle of beer. And thank you for your hoodie. Because I think I was able to keep the smell down. We saw this in Angelica. The Angelica on Houston Street for those in New York.
not in new york it is a it is a cool kind of art house theater uh plays a lot of indie movies it's it's I love the theater for the movies it shows. I do not like the theater space at all. The seats are very narrow. You can't... There's no way you can get up and pee if you need to without everyone else in your row getting up. I mean, it's a lot of seats packed into the space, you know? It's Spirit Airlines kind of minimum amount of a loud cubic.
inches that a sign per person uh i didn't get either of the armrests either but i just sat there in my beer puddle of shame we're on our way home and there is one sorry two second long scene, you barely see it, where our lead male actor, Owen, has a dress on i'm like oh this is a gay thing there's a trans thing and blp's character maddie smiles and then that's it i also on from it it was so it was such a weird scene and it really hit me because i i
wondered what was like where are they going with this is this gonna be a is there is there a trans connection because there's there's a very odd connection between the two characters they're they're both very quiet like they're both very quiet shy withdrawn um to the point where i think they're both introverts but they're also lonely yes introverts can get lonely uh so that was a part of it and it was also i
I was wondering if they were trying a spectrum thing, like an autism spectrum, if that were part of it. Then there's this one scene you see, and it's this moment where... You see the two of them hanging out and he comes out of the bathroom wearing a dress. Yes. Very short scene and she's smiling and he's kind of... nervously smiling and it's it's this moment that just took me back it really reminded me of like those times when as a trans egg as you say um was able to kind of come out to...
One person. One person that you trusted. Bringing them into the closet. Bringing them into the closet. But it is an important moment. And I think a lot of us have that moment. And it's... it just uh it really took me back and and then they don't it's it's gone and like at the time i was like is this gonna be an element of this is this character trans is it Is this a part of it? And then it sort of doesn't play a part in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was...
I felt bad that I had missed that detail. So Justice Smith, also queer, you know, in a relationship with a dude. So there is some very queer casting. For the rest of the film, and should we get into spoilers? Hmm. How do we want to do this? Just do a spoiler section or... I will say, I think we can do a little bit without spoilers. Okay, so we'll skip spoilers. The... It ends up that...
The show gets canceled and the line between reality and I don't know, distortion, psychosis, the show itself get blurred. Gets blurred. And that's in the trailer. So you're not going to get, we're not going to spoil too much.
The interesting thing was, so there was a Q&A with the director. The director, I believe, is a trans woman. Yes. And she comes out, and there's another trans person doing the Q&A with them. And... talks about oh this movie's trans this movie's trans everything in this movie is trans it's the most obvious thing in the entire planet that this movie is a metaphor for transness and even non-queer people would come up to me and be like i don't care how big
an egg you are and now everyone's talking about eggs and i missed okay that reference entirely i'm a trans person and have been since it was trendy which is when i decided to transition now i've been trans my whole life and i grew up literally probably the same time this person i think they're the director is a little younger than me yeah but only by maybe like two or three years
Because our music taste overlaps or a lot of our shows overlap, things like that. They mentioned Velocity Girl in their Q&A. So clearly, Velocity Girl, very 90s. I didn't get that. And I felt like, am I stupid that I'm kind of not getting this? The transiness, because I swear to God, I read transiness into so many movies where they're not even there. I have a whole essay on my old blog, which is still up.
about how supergirl is a metaphor for you know transgender stuff like i see this stuff everywhere and i did not see it other than that one scene we mentioned didn't see it so i wonder if this is the next step in the evolution of movies with trans content where it's not like the whole thing it just happens to be a detail of
one or more characters lives and maybe causes some distress. This kid clearly had problems, uh, at the very least a neglectful parent, uh, the worst, um, you know, could have been bullied at school who knows he was sort of a nobody they show him being bullied kind of by co-workers but oh yeah his co-workers are assholes yeah the so it could be that
This is a movie about one or more trans characters, but it's not all about the hormones and the doctors and the surgery. It's just someone having a rough adolescence. I think it also just...
Even watching this as a trans person, it's about people with... who are lonely looking for a connection they feel like something's wrong with them but they can't really articulate you know what's wrong with them because they don't have the words but that's just screenwriting 101 what's your character's wants what's their needs etc that to me didn't feel trans but i get i get ultimately that that kind of metaphor of
of are we someone else is the world something else is this a chance we're going to take to potentially realize our destiny and i'm not giving anything away really yeah um Can definitely come across as trans. So you think more. But so could anything. Metaphorical? Friggin' Star Wars could be. You know.
luke always wants to be a jedi i.e always trans and the so let's let's play a game then uh the director death stars getting on hormones whatever you could make that metaphor for anything okay so let's let's see what we can interpret we had the uh the director refer directly to a particular scene and let's just it's not a spoiler but let's just walk through that and see if you can see what any
issues are so uh our character owen is driving and the road is blocked because a power line is down and you know it's it's spitting sparks you can see it i think it's night so it's dark so you can see it like you know jumping around like a snake spitting sparks there's uh some tree branches down and he gets out of the car to take a look but not get too close to the power line um and sees burnt scattered pages of
a episode guide a book about their tv show the pink opaque which is what blp's character maddie is reading the first time we meet that character so it may or may not be maddie's book I'm guessing it is. I assumed it was. And the power line is down and our character Owen is looking at it. The director mentioned how that... Was a trans thing. Was an egg. Was an egg, yeah. Specifically. So let's play with that. Of those details, what was that? Did anything resonate with you back in the egg days?
no not even remotely like danger like something you love might be destroyed maybe and i think there's there's always that that and again this plays into this yes could this be in this movie where it's like you have to take a risk to find your destiny and become
the person you are and you know live the live in the world as it as it really is and get out of your cocoon and all this stuff and yeah but that again i also feel like that could be almost any other movie if i hadn't had a transgender director come out and say
This is a trans movie. Duh, this movie is transgender. I really wouldn't have picked it up even remotely. I picked up Lonely, like I was telling you yesterday, I picked up Asexual from his character. I did pick up Asexual, and I think that's not even...
blp definitely gay she literally says i like girls yes and talks about one of the girls um in the show the show is the show the pink opaque involves two girls who meet at camp realize they have a psychic connection uh they never meet again until uh the end of the show and they They are able to fight monsters across by connecting across the psychic plane. They have a psychic connection. Yeah. So, yeah. So obviously we're going to see it again because we liked it.
And it was pretty. And I like to support independent film. Let's bring some other friends. Yeah. See what they think. See what their interpretation is. And we challenge you, the listeners. Go out. See it. And let us know what we missed. What else is there? And after everyone's had a chance to see it, we'll jump on the microphone again and talk about it with spoilers in it. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I...
I don't quite think I understand the ending because we debated the ending. Is it spoilers to say the ending is ambiguous? Or am I stupid? the the ending is either ambiguous or faith is stupid and you the listeners yes don't tell them what the ending okay i know what you're saying yeah the director was like well the ending is very obvious and i'm like
I want to be there with you with this obviousness. Which I think I got it. But again, I don't know if that's the ending that... you know i mean i missed all the queer stuff so who knows i feel like we i feel like it's a movie we have to watch again we're gonna watch the soundtrack and the fact that we like the actors who are in it we're gonna read up on it a bit we want to hear from you um
But even from what I took away from it, which wasn't a ton of trans or queer content, I really, really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too. It was dark and unsettling and it... kind of makes fun of those shitty 90s kid movie tv shows not just buffy but but buffy had some shitty special effects also oh yeah buffy had some very shitty special effects they the director literally mentioned Buffy um it's not a spoiler to say there's Buffy there's some Buffy cast in this um in minor little
blink and you miss it kind of moments. Apparently, also... One of the actors from Pete and Pete was in it. Or possibly both of them. And I didn't recognize them, which is funny because I was friends of a friend with... Oh, dang. With younger Pete. All right. And... like hung out a couple times in New York in like 2002 that's so funny and also didn't realize who he was so at the time and not not a close friend just
friend of a rent kind of thing it was actually a friend of a co-worker um but uh still it's kind of funny yeah and then apparently you know there's a lot of other little cameos fred durst Weirdly enough. Plays the best role Fred Durst could play. Really did not get out of the park. Which is a horrible stepfather. A shitty stepfather. Yeah. Or maybe regular father. Maybe real father? Yeah. I thought he said you're not my father or something. I don't remember. I don't remember.
Maybe that was something we didn't pick up on. Sure. Obviously, there are details we missed that we will catch the next time around. But either way, yes, please watch it when it comes to your town or if you're already in a place. I think it's in select theaters.
3rd in all theaters may 10th something like that yes so we're gonna get this out to you before that uh before may 10th certainly but let us know what you thought and stay tuned we're curious to see you tune in apparently the director has another movie that i briefly read that it was uh a very low budget kind of arty film so i don't know this this may be their their accessible film or her accessible film Her first feature was, we're all going to the World's Fair.
coming-of-age horror drama okay that sounds kind of good i actually wait a second i saw the trailer for this and i wanted to see if you wanted to watch it it's about some online world's fair challenge thing so i think we're gonna have to watch that yeah okay we're watching that tonight cool cool so so they've done a couple movies she's done a couple movies we didn't even realize this was trans we literally went
Because the trailer looked good and it has one of our favorite actors in it. BLP. Yeah. BLP. BLP is my favorite actor. They might be leaning there. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for taking me. We had a nice little date night except for the puddle of beer. Except for the puddle of beer. Which I did to myself and I wanted to see the movie and I just didn't want to stink too bad. And we got a little surprise trans thing out of it which we didn't expect.
yes always nice which is kind of fun yes yes yes and then like walking out of the theater and like oh god we all have blue hair and purple hair and green hair it was a very queer audience we walked we literally walked out of the theater and i walked right into the director was like as i exited the theater the director is standing there and i i tried to be like yay this is a queer thing i tried to explain about the dress thing and i think i just kind of embarrassed myself and uh
I felt very cringe, and then I was like, okay, bye. If anyone is an artist, writer, performer, singer, anyone, back me up. I told Faith that... they like to hear nice things yeah because you get all the praise in the world you want but it's that bad review that sticks in your brain so this is a good thing let them know yeah
All right, cool. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. And we will talk to you next time. This is a short episode, but we'll come back with another one soon. Sounds good. All right. Talk to y'all later. All right, everyone. Bye. Bye. If you've enjoyed this episode and want to help us keep making great content, go to patreon.com slash gender rebels.
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