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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Romancing the Stone: Deep Thoughts About White Feminism, Fiction Writers, and Forgivable Plot Holes You Can Drive a Bus Through
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Okay, Joan Wilder, write us out of this one.
On this week's episode, Tracie revisits the 1984 film Romancing the Stone. Both Guy girls loved this film in their childhood, enjoying both the romance and comedy of seeing Kathleen Turner's Joan Wilder go from hapless writer to confident and capable badass. Baby Emily, as a budding writer, especially loved how the storytelling made it clear working as a novelist translated to practical life skills.
While the film is just as fun and easy to enjoy as it was 40 years ago, the feminism written into the fiction is only for white women. Joan Wilder is a dynamic, proactive, and delightful character, but Colombia is nothing more than a stereotypical backdrop for her story. Every character in Colombia--other than the white love interest played by Michael Douglas and the bumbling white villain played by Danny DeVito--are either menacing, drug dealers, or background villagers. And Joan doesn't actually need her love interest to save herself and her sister by the end.
Still, there's a lot to love in this film, as long as you remember that Colombia is a real place full of real people, and not just the flattened set piece full of cardboard cutouts used in this film.
Throw on your headphones, keep an eye out for Devil's Fork, and listen in!
Mentioned in this episode:
https://www.splicetoday.com/moving-pictures/the-romance-of-imperialism
This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.
We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com
We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.
there's all of these plot holes that you just don't care about, like I watched it and I was like I noted it but like without even thinking about it, I just hit the believe button and those plot holes are like so forgivable for whatever reason. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. I'm Tracy Guy-Decker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head? Thoughts about stupid shit, because pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1984 romantic comedy Romancing the Stone with my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and with you. Let's dive in. So, em, I know you've seen this. I think we probably saw it together, possibly multiple times but tell me what's in your head about Romancing the Stone.
Speaker 2:I remember loving it. I have wanted to be a writer from tiny childhood, so one of the things that I remember really loving about this was the fact that Joan Wilder, the Kathleen Turner character, is a novelist, and the fact that she is a novelist is important to her character and being able to get out of sticky situations multiple times, and so that was something that I really, really liked. Specifically, there's a point where the Michael Douglas character, whose name I will not ever remember actually says to her all right, joan Wilder, how are you going to write us out of this one when they're being held at gunpoint and it's the menacing Colombian drug lord or something? He's like Joan Wilder, the Joan Wilder, I love you. I love all your books, I have them all and he has all of her Bodice Ripper books and treats them with such kindness because he loves the books that she writes, which. That scene lives rent free in my head, because it's like that is the writer's dream, not specifically that moment, but the fact that you know you never know how what you put down on the page is going to affect someone else. You never know how your stories are going to reach other people. So I really, really loved that aspect of it.
Speaker 2:I loved the romance because I was a little romantic at heart as a child and the mix of like kind of romantic comedy and then action adventure is my jam and then like the fact that it's romance, romance, comedy, action adventure with a treasure map, like totally my jam. So those are the things that I remember. There were a couple of things. There's one scene that I remember making me a little uncomfortable as a kid, which is where there's some sort of mudslide and Michael Douglas ends up sliding down into where his face ends up in her crotch. I remember that making me a little uncomfortable. I remember Danny DeVito being kind of a charming bumbling villain in after, and so Michael Douglas makes sure she's safe first she and her sister, who she's there to get and then goes after the crocodile and you think he might be dead, and then at the very end he comes back and he's got crocodile skin boots. Those are the things in my head. So tell me, why are we talking about it today? I think we have a specific reason, different from usual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you remember a lot. Yeah, so we have a listener, amy, who we met at Fan Expo Chicago, who reached out to us and asked if we would do this movie, and actually it was one that I loved as well, that we both really liked, and so it was an easy yes. So this one's for you, Amy, so yeah, so that's why now. But I also loved this film. I definitely had a big crush on Michael Douglas' character when I was, you know, in 84, 85, 86, when we were watching it on repeat, like damn yeah, yeah, big crush on him, damn yeah. So there was definitely some formative, like sense of romance from this film. But that's why now. So let me give you a couple of postcards from the Destination before I try to do a synopsis. So, actually, amy mentioned that the representation of Colombia was important to her as a young person and like. So that actually was something that made me pay closer attention based on her comment and the representation of that country and the region, like in this film made for North Americans, white Americans predominantly, and I also.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about the romance, since I did have such a crush on Michael Douglas's character, which his name was Jack T Colton, by the way, and he tells us at one point that the T stands for trustworthy. He doesn't. I want to talk a bit about the romance that we're given in these two people. Like I read one commentator who said that she didn't think that they had any chemistry. I completely disagree. Like I would have believed that Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner had an affair from this film. Like there was so much chemistry from what I saw. Like I really believe the chemistry so I think that was part of it.
Speaker 1:But, there's also, like you know, like he's not trustworthy and there's some stuff that, like you never know until the very end I'm still not sure, you know like she says to at be trustworthy, but she is having fun, yeah, yeah, I wanted to talk about that. I want to talk about sort of you know, race and imperialism and feminism and storytelling. Like we talk about the protagonist, like who is the protagonist, and so we'll talk about that a little bit. The reason that you glommed onto it as a kid, like this is a writer wrote this about a writer, sort of what is the meta commentary there from the screenwriter? So I want to talk about all of those things. So that's where we'll get to, but let me start by trying to give a synopsis. I'll do my best. It is an action-packed adventure, so I'm not going to get all the details.
Speaker 2:And they're not going to be in order, but I'll do my best. It's like a 90 minute film, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it's a pretty tidy, it's like an hour, and 40, 45 minutes, I think, okay running time still, so a little longer, but pretty tidy. Tidy film for action-packed. It is action-packed though. So the movie starts actually with a story within a story.
Speaker 1:It's kathleen turner voiceover of the end of a like American Western historical fiction where, from the point of view of the heroine, she defeats Grogan, who's the man who killed her father, raped and murdered her sister, like, killed her dog and stole her Bible, like it's ridiculous, like.
Speaker 1:And then we see her, her love interest, jesse, who we only see in silhouette with like a hat on or whatever, and they like reunite. And then we cut to Kathleen Turner and she's like in this, like plaid nightgown at her typewriter, she's crying and she's like we see her typing the last few words of what we just saw, the voiceover, and then the end, and through actually very tidy cinematography, to use your word, we learn that Joan Wilder is not great at adulting. So she's crying because she's just made herself cry by writing the ending of this novel. And there are no tissues in the box and there's no toilet paper on the roll and there's no paper towels, and she gets and there's like post-its up all over, like all over her house, and she looks in the mirror, like just outside the kitchen, after she realizes there are no paper towels and there's like a post-it that says buy tissues. So she blows her nose on that post-it.
Speaker 1:So um, at some point we should talk about the correlation between writers and people with adhd, but not right now so we meet her cat romeo, and like we see her drink out of, she has like a cabinet full of those mini alcohol bottles Like they sell in, like they come in like hotel mini bars, and we see her drink a bottle of alcohol. And anyway, the next day she's running late. She has to take the manuscript to her publisher. The lady neighbor a neighbor who is called by her fault like Mrs Something or other, and I can't remember what it is right now Hands her an envelope like a big manila envelope that has all you see, is this flowery handwriting that says Eduardo as like the return address. So she's at this bar with her publisher and best friend, gloria, and Gloria's trying to say, well, what about that one? What about that one About all these men at this like bar restaurant? And she's just not interested in any of them because she's holding out for Jesse, this fictional character that that populates her novels Columbia.
Speaker 1:Elaine's husband is dead and they don't know why and they didn't find the rest of him. That's what we hear and we don't know what happened to him. And Joan says she's going to be fine. She always is, which is like a weird thing to say about, like immediately, but anyway. So we get back to her apartment after this bar thing and it has been rifled through and we did actually we saw a very menacing looking, mustachioed man, kind of watch her leave and then go into the apartment and I think he, he, he kills somebody who's like what are you doing? That's miss wilder's apartment. So he's rifled through her whole apartment and as she's like looking around and kind of freaking out a little bit, the cat's's okay, by the way.
Speaker 1:The phone rings and it's Elaine and we see her. She has Danny DeVito and this other dude, this tall, bald dude, who the character's name is Ira and I do not remember the actor's name. Danny DeVito's character's name is Ralph. So they have Elaine. Elaine's on the phone and she says did Eduardo send you anything? And she says yep, yep here. This is not I'm paraphrasing. She has the envelope. Elaine says you have to bring it to Columbia and initially it's like I can't, and then Elaine says they're going to hurt me, they're going to cut me. We see the guys show Elaine a knife. So Joan goes to Columbia to save her sister. Gloria tries to talk her out of it, but she has to go save her sister, so she's ticked.
Speaker 1:Is joan, kind of agoraphobic or I don't know that I would use that word, but she's very much a shrinking violet, she's very much a home body. So we see her on the street in new york city like with like people like you know who sell stuff on the street, like trying to sell her things like stupid stuff, umbrellas type thing, like a stuffed monkey Okay, like really useless stuff and like she's very intimidated by these people who like buskers on the street or that's not the right word, but you know what I mean like these street vendors, merchants, and we see her sort of like clutching her, she's holding the manuscript in a box and sort of making herself smaller as she moves through these people who are trying to sell her stuff.
Speaker 1:And it's clear from the house that like she's there a lot and what she said about all the men in the bar, like she just doesn't want to go out. So I did not get the impression that she is agoraphobic, as in a phobia of outdoors, but I did get the impression that she's very much a homebody and a shrinking violet and just not comfortable as opposed to an actual phobia.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we skip the plane ride. She's in Columbia. She gets to Columbia and it's very, very like I don't know where the airport is in Colombia. I didn't look that up but like in this movie, it's just like this bare field with buses. You know, she has to get to Cartagena in order to turn over the map. The envelope was a map that she has to turn over. That's the ransom for her sister. And she doesn't know where to go and nobody speaks English. And she asks somebody it's the same mustachio and she doesn't know where to go and nobody speaks English. And she asks somebody it's the same mustachioed man who killed a neighbor of hers and rifled through her house. He says, oh, this is the bus and we watch them change the signs so we know he's lying to her. This is the bus to Cartagena. She says, oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:So she gets on the bus and it's going to like literally the middle of nowhere. Eventually she realizes this can't be right and tries to talk to the bus driver who, while trying to talk to this woman who has no Spanish, like he, hits this Jeep that's in the middle of the road. All the other passengers, like grumbling in Spanish, get off and they like pick up their like parrots and cockatiels and cages on this truck that's been hit and they're like picking them up and taking them away and they're walking with all their luggage. The same mustachioed guy says to her you don't need to walk, another bus will be along. And then he pulls a gun on her and enter from a high hill like a stranger in a hat who from silhouette, looks a lot like Jesse, the romantic lead from the western that we saw at the very beginning does michael douglas play jesse in the?
Speaker 1:I don't know you only see him in silhouette. Yeah, yeah, it's possible, I don't know. And he sort of fights off the mustachioed man and like scares him off. Turns out it was his truck, they were his birds, that was. That's how he makes a living, is that? He exports these exotic birds? And she convinces him to take her to Cartagena for $375 in American traveler's checks and so they start walking. It's raining like crazy and like all of these adventures ensue the mudslide that you remember that ends up with him with his face in her crotch and then at a certain point, like he tosses her suitcase she's like dragging this big, like 1980s suitcase and he like tosses it off a cliff and she has her shoes off for some reason and they're high heels.
Speaker 2:That was before we put wheels on suitcases, wasn't it? Yeah, we got to the moon before we put wheels on suitcases, wasn't it? Yeah, we got to the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. Yeah, something weird about that.
Speaker 1:So there's a great line she has these high heels and he takes a machete and like just hacks the heels off of them and she says those were Italian. And he goes now they're practical. It's a really great line. And there's this like constant kind of back and forth. They don't like each other, right, she doesn't trust him, she doesn't have a choice and he keeps saying things like would you wake up today and think I'm going to ruin a man's life? They do not like each other Already, though we start to see actually like starting to be more active. So at a certain point, like he's tired from like hacking with the machete and he like puts it into a tree and just is like taking a rest. And she's like aren't we gonna keep moving? And he says be my guest. So she does, she takes the machete and she starts hacking and they end up they find this downed plane which was drug runners, which so it's full of marijuana in these like cubes. They start a marijuana bonfire and he's surprised that she knows what it is. She says I went to college, so they're sitting around this fire and they're talking and he kills a ginormous snake so big. That's like really scary. And that's when he says his middle name is trustworthy.
Speaker 1:So shenanigans ensue. Okay, they end up in this town that you remember, where they're told like there's only one car in the whole town. The bell maker has it. And they go over to that house and they knock on the door and exactly exactly the way you remember it verbatim, like the guy at the door is holding a gun on them, and then the gang of the villagers all have guns trained on them and he says, write us out of this one, joan Wilder. And the guy inside the house, the Joan Wilder. And it turns out he reads her novels to the whole village, like instead of a telenovela, every Saturday. And they're all like hi, like they're so delighted.
Speaker 2:I mean, that is the dream.
Speaker 1:So the sadistic mustachioed guy shows up and we learn his name from Ralph and Ira Danny DeVito. And the other guy. He has a military like credentials, but he's like just running. He's just kind of rogue like running his own thing. So he and his people show up and the guy Juan I think is his name who reads her books to the villagers, helps them escape in this like delightfully manic sort of like dangerous kind of way and he gets them out of the village and away from the bad guys, at least for now. They end up seeing this tree that's like shaped like a trident, which is on the map. It's called the devil's fork in spanish on the map and they both recognize it, though they don't say it to one another.
Speaker 1:They end up in a town and Jack buys them new clothes and they go dancing and on the dance floor it's this beautiful scene where they're dancing, he's teaching her to dance and then they start kissing and then everybody around them is moving in like double time and they're standing there like making out. Danny DeVito, meanwhile, is there in this like farcical. He's on the phone with Ira saying he lost her and like how is supposed to find her? She's got this partner. And now the other bad guy, zolo, is here. And then he's like looks up and they're walking toward him and he's like she's here, she's here, so he's trying to get her bag the whole time, like sneaking under tables and getting beat up by Colombian women whose table he's under Like it's just ridiculous. So they end up in bed together. We cut to them like sort of I guess it's supposed to be post-coitus, but they're both naked, like lying on top of one, like he's laying on top of her, and they're talking and she says, I guess maybe I should. He had been trying to convince her to go get the treasure, whatever it is, and they'd have more leverage, not just the map but actually the treasure. And she's like, yeah, maybe that's a good idea. And then we see him sort of pull the map out from under the mattress and stick it back in her bag. So they follow the map. They actually like steal a car, which happens to be Danny Vito's car, that he happens to be sleeping in the back of, and they find the place where the thing is buried and they're like digging through this, like muddy water, just inside a cave, and that's I'm pretty sure that's when she says you're the most fun I've ever had. And they find it. And she says it're the most fun I've ever had. And they find it. And she says it's a priceless statue. And they turn it over and it's this weird, like Easter bunny statue, like from the 60s. And here's another moment where her being a writer actually advances the plot. She says oh, in my first book the real treasure was inside the statue. So they break the Easter bunny and this heart-shaped, faceted green gem falls out. And then Danny DeVito shows up and takes it from them.
Speaker 1:And then Zolo's people show up and there's a chase and the car ends up in a river and she's like still searing. He's like what are you doing? And they go down the falls, they both jump out and they end up on opposite sides of this giant river. They yell across to one another. She says like she doesn't trust him. She's like you're never, I'm never gonna see you again and I need that to save my sister. And he says you still have the map. They don't know. We have the stone. So he says he's gonna meet her at the hotel where she's supposed to do the handoff. So she goes and we see her talk to Ira and they make the plan for where the handoff will happen for the map. And she calls the front desk has Jack T Colton checked in? And the guy on the other line says not in the past two minutes, meet the kidnappers. She hands over the map and Ira is delighted. He's so excited. And then Jack shows up and he says I missed you at the hotel. We all did. And then he gets pushed into the full view and Zolo's people are behind him with guns and stuff.
Speaker 1:Zolo burns the map. He says this is useless. They already have the gem. Where is it? She says I don't have it. And then they say well, jack must. And so somebody like puts a rifle butt into his crotch. But it makes a funny sound and he does this weird little hip jiggle and the stone falls down his pant leg and lands on his boot. Oh yeah, I remember that, yeah. And he says you can choke on it. He like kicks it up into the air. Zolo reaches out and catches it and says thank you.
Speaker 1:And then he gets Captain Hooked and the crocodile bites his hand off with the stone in it and then a whole bunch of fighting ensue and Joan is a badass, she's a total badass. So she like stabs the bad guy, she hits his you know amputated stump with a like a wooden board, and then she pushes him into this like lamp and so he's on fire and his hand shuts off. And then like he ends up falling down into this pit of crocodiles. So he's gone down into this pit of crocodiles. So he's gone, so in the interim, like she'd been calling for Jack to come help. He actually like scales a wall. He had chased after the crocodile that first bit off his hand and he's like scales this wall to come save her. By the time he gets up there she's already taken care of everything. So Elaine has fainted at this point. So he says so, elaine has fainted at this point. So he says I'll come find you, or something like that. And he like dives off this huge rampart like into crocodile-infested water.
Speaker 1:And so we like skip a whole bunch of shit, we just fast forward. And she is now she's in Gloria's office and she just looks much calmer and more practiced. And Gloria is crying and she says, oh, my god, that ending. When he like jumps off the ramparts and then meets her at the airport, oh, and it's your best book yet, and then she's walking back on the New York street. Now we see all those same merchants, like trying, and she's like, no thanks, no thanks. She's like not bothered by them.
Speaker 1:Now and there's this giant sailboat which had had been a running thing. This was his dream. Jack's dream was to get a sailboat. He was trying to make enough money that he could get a sailboat. This giant sailboat is like, parked on whatever you carry a sailboat with on the street in the middle of New York City. She looks up and it's him and he's wearing, as you remember, crocodile skin boots and she puts down her grocery bag, pulls out the flowers and climbs up and then they sail. I'm putting quotes around that off into the sunset on a New York City street, and that's the end of the movie, some through lines that I want to name, that I that feel important for some of the things before Before you do that, I just want to say do you know the two best days of a boat owner's life Day they buy the boat and the day they sell the boat?
Speaker 1:I mean I don't know, but anyway, please go ahead. So the boat thing was important throughout and initially he was saying he was going to be by himself. And then when they were naked in the bed, he like shows her the picture. He's like maybe we could go together. So that was a thing, that was a thing, that was a through line.
Speaker 1:There's also felt important as I was watching in the very first scene that story within the story, with Grogan. Grogan says you can die fast, like I don't remember what the simile was, or you can die slow, like molasses in January, and she's like it's May, and he goes I don't care if it's the 4th of July, anyway, but that you can die fast or you can die slow. And then the heroine in that show, like in that book that she was writing, pulled a knife from her garter belt and tossed it at the guy and that's how he died. When she's facing Zolo after his hand has been bitten off, he says to her do you want to die fast or die slow? Different similesiles, but fast or slow. And she, like you see her wheels turning because she like has a knife and she throws it at him, but he catches it on a piece of wood he's carrying, and now he's got a knife. So there's like this interesting moment where we see this like mirroring and it ends very different. It ends differently that specific scene, though. Joan still ends up killing the bad guy. So I just wanted to make sure that I named that piece because I felt like that was really interesting writing.
Speaker 1:So I will start with the Bechdel test, because I think that's it's fairly straightforward. So the Bechdel test from Alison Bechdel, who does want to be known for this, but it's so useful are there at least two named female characters? Do they talk to one another, and do they talk to one another about something other than a boy or a man? This does pass, because Joan talks to Gloria about the book. She also talks about men, but she does talk about the book and she talks about Elaine too. Yeah, and she talks about her cat with Gloria and going to Columbia, yeah, so they talk about various things. She also talks to Elaine about various things, not just a man, yeah, yeah, so it does pass Bechdel, but that's it, and I think it's worth noting and this can maybe segue me into some of the other things that I want to talk about. There are no women. We see very few women in Colombia at all. We see the woman who beats up Danny DeVito because he's under her table in a restaurant.
Speaker 2:So meaning we see very few Colombian women.
Speaker 1:We see very few women at all. Oh, okay, like we see Joan, that's pretty much it. But while she's in columbia, yeah, there are very few colombian women. There are a few like extras, like on the bus, or the woman who beats up dan duvido, or there's like an abuela, like a grandma who's sitting, like she's in the town where the drug dealer reads her books. We like, as part of the evidence of Zolo's sadism, I think there's an old lady sitting there using two dried corn to get the kernels off the corn into a basket and he comes and asks her if she's seen any gringos, if she's seen any Americans, and she's just like, well, I don't know, and he drags her away.
Speaker 1:So actual speaking parts from women is minimal. It's those two are the only ones. There are some extras on the bus or like in the dance scene, but like we see very few Colombian women at all or women at all, beyond the sort of white women at the beginning and the end, the other white women and I think that's worth noting, like I'm going to use that like sort of Bechdel to the lack of women in the scenes in Columbia, to the kind of Joan Wilder is very much a protagonist based on our deep thoughts definition, she is the character who changes the most. Not only is it from her point of view, we also see her grow and change.
Speaker 2:Now, we talked about this before we hit record, but the screenwriter was a woman.
Speaker 1:Yes, she was, and I feel like I should have her name, but it's Diane Thomas.
Speaker 2:Because I feel like that does that explains a lot of like why. Like it centers a white woman, it centers a white woman writer. It is, in a lot of ways, like it centers a white woman, it centers a white woman writer. It is, in a lot of ways, like a wish fulfillment for a white woman writer.
Speaker 1:Right and so, with that context that you've just named, armed with that context, looking at the fact that so this shrinking violet, who writes these very successful romance novels but has no romance in her life and actually is sort of disdainful of the possibility, we see she just turns down without even thinking the men that Gloria is trying to encourage her to pursue. She goes to Colombia and falls in love with a white man. There's something really problematic, problematic about that. In some ways this does feel like a feminist movie. Like, over and over again, we see joan is is in fact capable, right, she takes the machete from jack.
Speaker 1:At one point there's this like rickety old rope bridge that he's like I'm not going on that and while he's like doing something else, she does and she gets herself across the ravine and he ends up sort of swinging on a vine, which is how she gets the rest of the way, because he hears her sort of yell as she does. But like, over and over and over again, we see Joan actually is very capable. And so there's a certain degree of like, there is a pushing back against patriarchy, but the fact that it's done in this way in Colombia, where it's this like the vision of Colombia, even in Cartagena, which we don't see very much of, is. The only word that comes to mind is backwater, like that's the way we were meant to see it. It's this like savage.
Speaker 2:I'm putting quotes around that jungle and that starts to look imperialist to me of as wild and as far away and as dangerous as possible to be the place that would like be a trial by fire for her protagonist.
Speaker 1:Pretty much all of the people that we meet while she's there are in some like they're drug runners or they're drug dealers, like every single one, or they menace her in some other way, you know, and then they end up liking her because of the writer thing. But it's just. I don't even fully know how to articulate the sort of. I guess, because it is so not fully thought out. It's exactly what you just named. It's just a backdrop and therefore it's inaccurate and insensitive portrayal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's really what it is.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's frustrating because I have no doubt that Diane Thomas felt what I'm thinking of is what I was talking about in the Golden Girls episode we recently did, where it was so meaningful for me to see Betty White's example of like overcoming people underestimating her. You know like and so you know just. And this is a similar sort of thing where Joan Wilder is like showing herself to be capable because people underestimate her, because she writes romance novels and she also is a homebody and doesn't like to like, she doesn't like the conflict, she doesn't like dealing with these things, and so she also underestimates herself. No-transcript, it made me feel great as a kid. On the other hand, it's ignoring how that is underestimating and like overlooking and completely just flattening, flattening, yeah, flattening an entire country of people where, like, the entire country of columbia is reduced to stereotypes of drug runners like drug runners or like.
Speaker 1:know the villagers who just like gather up the birds and keep walking yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that, and the only way in which it's like pushing back against stereotypes is like they like my writing Right, which is still a charming moment, but it's that, yes, it's the wish fulfillment. It's like the pushback isn't even. It's not surprising. It's not pushing back in a way, that is, it's still flattening them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it is worth. It's interesting that even though he's meant to have been there for I think he says like two and a half years or something he's still surprised when the Colombian folks respond in English to his broken Spanish Jack is. We see that happen like several times and he's like, oh, you speak English, great. And he's speaking to them in this like I don't know if broken's the right word, but like poorly accented. I mean, he seems to speak and understand Spanish, but he speaks it like poorly accented, like a very thick American accent, and then is surprised when people reply to him in English, which is like an interesting I hesitate to call myself fluent, but I was as fluent as I'm capable of being and it was pretty good.
Speaker 2:But I have an American accent and as soon as people heard the American accent, they would speak in English, even if my French was better than their English. Right like just immediately there was something.
Speaker 1:It was, honestly, it was like a charming. It was a charming detail, but let's talk about the romance though. Let's talk about the romance for a moment, because this movie, for me, was definitely formative in terms of like, what romance looks like. And Joan describes herself Well, gloria calls her a hopeless romantic. And she corrects Gloria, at least at the end, and says no, I'm hopeful, I'm a hopeful romantic, I'm a hopeful romantic. And as I'm watching it now, as an adult, thinking about, like, looking for this specifically, you know, it's one of those sort of enemies to lovers, enemies to friends to lovers, kind of a trope which I love. I love those, but in this context it also was a little bit of like the beauty and the beast.
Speaker 1:Not that Michael Douglas isn't attractive, he's very attractive but he's a jerk, you know, like he's a ne'er-do-well and we never know if he's going to abandon her at any moment. In fact, he threatens to Like it's not worth the money anymore. We see that he's going to try to take the map from her. She knows it. She says why haven't you taken the map from me yet?
Speaker 1:And I think that, like the core assumption there, the one that is so dangerous, that has gotten me into trouble with so many boyfriends is the idea that, like, yeah, he's kind of a bad guy, he's not ideal, but it's just because nobody's loved him hard enough. You know, like if Joan loves him hard enough, like he will be a good guy. He will transform into a good guy and I feel like this movie contributed to that idea that, like you don't understand him, like I understand him, yeah, like that we can fix him. I think this movie contributes to that idea. You know that, like, the love of a good woman can fix him, and I'm kind of mad at it for that you know, that's something that I've seen.
Speaker 2:like you know, when I see people talking about the enemies to lovers trope they talk about, they don't like it for that reason, because there is something about that. The delicious bickering where there's that undercurrent of sexual tension in the bickering is just, oh, it's delicious. But you do end up so often getting that undercurrent of misogyny, in part because and I'll include a link to this I saw there's a sub-stacker that I like Zahn Valines, who talks about how misogyny is present in pretty much all heterosexual relationships, which is one of the reasons why I right now almost exclusively read MM romance, because if I'm going to read an enemies-to-lovers trope, it's much less likely there's going to be abuse in the center of it.
Speaker 2:And so you still get that delicious bickering and bantering in there, but they're coming at it on an equal playing field, whereas, like, there's still a possibility, like, but I'm less likely to get an emotional jump scare of someone being an abusive asshole. Yeah, but the assumption built in is that, and within, like the romance community and actually this is more like soap operas we'll talk about how, like, a woman will have a glittery hoo-ha is what turns a bad man good, but that's, that's the sort of thing where it's just like, yeah, you know, she's the love of a good woman. The glittery hoo-ha, the like, it's just that is what's gonna make it so that he will be actually trustworthy, that he will actually climb the wall and save her rather than go after the jewel, and it's like she doesn't actually need him. She does, I mean at the beginning.
Speaker 1:She does the beginning at the end, she does not need him but that's after you know.
Speaker 2:He has threatened to leave her multiple times and she doesn't know if she's she can trust him and it's, and he throws her possessions away, yeah, like and like yeah, I, I, you know the, the line that I mentioned. Like when she says you're the most fun I've ever had, that's appreciated that. She's like okay, I'm having a good time here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean when he kills the snake, when they're in the plane, she's talking to him and she's like you, okay, I'm having a good time here, yeah, yeah, I mean, when he kills the snake, when they're in the plane, she's talking to him and she's like you're not even looking at me, like it is so rude, like I'm talking to you and you're not even looking at me. It's because he's looking at this giant snake that he then kills. But even that sort of setup, like it's funny and it's played sort of for laughs, but it's that same sort of like oh, she's nagging and he's saving her life, you know, like the punchline is a little bit of misogyny again, you know. Yeah, so I feel like I'm a little bit annoyed when I look at it and I'm particularly annoyed because I still really love this movie. I watched it two nights ago and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was really delightful and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was really delightful and I still was rooting for them, even as I'm looking at it and going this ain't cool, oh, but look, I wish it didn't still hold that kind of power, but it definitely did.
Speaker 1:Let me very quickly talk about Danny DeVito's character here, because I think and sort of storytelling in general. So this film, like Danny DeVito is this bumbling villain. He's kind of like, like in Splash, eugene Levy's character. He's constantly like he's getting hurt as he's trying to get them and get the map and I think that helps keep it a comedy, because the sadistic, mustachioed guy who is like a colonel or whatever they call him different things Zolo, like he's actually really terrifying. We see him kill people. We see him, you know, doesn't care about anything. Like when he menaces this abuela that's just living her life because she hasn't seen them. He's a bad guy and that could make it like actually like raises the stakes, like he's really going to hurt people. Danny DeVito can't, you know, and he's constantly arguing with his cousin Ira on the phone and Ira's just weird and really into crocodiles for some reason, and like Danny DeVito ends up getting like abandoned by Ira at the very end, like so I feel like, in terms of the actual storytelling, there's a way in which his character kind of relieves the tension of the drama, part of this film of comic relief and the like really charming chemistry between the two leads. There's all of these plot holes that you just don't care about.
Speaker 1:Like I watched it and I was like I, I, I noted it, but like without even thinking about it. I just hit the believe button. So the map appears to be from a much older era, like it appears to be like the the way it's written and the way it's drawn. It looks like it's I don't know 19th century at the most recent, you know. And then there's this like 1960s bunny statue that the thing is in and like the devil's fork tree would definitely have rotted if it had been actually drawn 150 years ago. We have no idea who originally had this stone and hid it, how the brother-in-law found out about it and ended up with the map, how Zolo and Ira and Ralph knew that the brother-in-law had them. We have no idea and it's never answered. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:And that piece of it also feels like I didn't care. As I was watching it I didn't care at all and part of me wonders if that's also like a meta commentary on romance novels, right, that set up these things with these high stakes but like just waves away the details which I'm not mad at, like I think we've talked about. Like your spouse, who's an engineer and like needs some of those details to like line up. Like I wonder if he would watch this and be like what's with the jewel? Who, why, what, huh, whereas I just was like go with it, just go with it, which is also, I think, maybe part of the meta commentary. Like she's a romance novelist and this is a romance novel, and like maybe we're watching the movie of the book that she ultimately wrote.
Speaker 1:Like maybe this didn't even happen or maybe it happened, but this is the fictionalized version of what happened to Joan Wilder. Like maybe the drug dealer wasn't. Like oh, I read your like in real life, real life in the movie, I read your books to the guys every Saturday. Like maybe it was just like, oh, I've heard of you, I don't know, I don't know, but like that doesn't.
Speaker 1:Like that's kind of that's part of the charm and those plot holes are like so forgivable for whatever reason, and I don't know if that's the genre or if it's the chemistry of the two leads that carried it, but I, just I, like I wanted to name that. I wanted to name both the Danny DeVito character as sort of like lowering the stakes, and also the fact that these big holes in the plot, that just didn't bother me and another viewer maybe was, but it won like a screenwriting award for Diane Thomas in the Oscars that year. So, and it was, it did well in the box office like well enough to make the sequel. That did not get Diane Thomas or Robert Zemeckis back who was the director.
Speaker 2:Well, it didn't get Diane.
Speaker 1:Thomas back because, no, she died after it was released. She died after the second one was released. Oh, what Did she?
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 1:I think it was like two years later, okay, okay, I think it was like two years later, okay, okay. So, listener, she tragically died in a car accident in a vehicle. That was actually, apparently, a gift to her from Michael Douglas as like a congratulatory, which is, like I don't know, some kind of sick karma, alanis Morissette-level irony.
Speaker 2:Anyway, those were the things I wanted to talk about, about romancing, the same you mentioned before. We started recording about how not airbrushed they looked.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, thank you. Yeah, there is a scene where they're in bed together. It seems to be post-coitus, but they're both naked. You don't see any naughty bits, but he's kind of laying on top of her and they're both just them. Like they're not airbrushed, they're not like there's no, like cleaning it up in post, like it's just them and they're beautiful people. They were beautiful people in 1984, but they're real and I found that very refreshing. We don't see that anymore. Like, if people are naked on screen, they're like not actually human, you know, they're plastic in some way or another. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in that love scene, in that scene where they're both nude or semi-nude, they're real and that was really refreshing. Yeah, thank you for reminding me of that.
Speaker 1:In the middle, not so much, and even more so. Like, though most of the movie takes place in Colombia, we don't meet any Colombian women and the only Colombian men we meet are bad guys in some way. And now the bad guys turn out to be the good guys in terms of, like the drug runners and I think his name is Juan who saves them in this truck and this absolute manic escape shenanigans. But when we first meet them, they're bad guys, and so the whole picture of Columbia is just a backdrop. It is completely flattened, a jungle, a savage place where scary things happen. That then Joan can have this romance with a white dude on top of. So in that sense the romance is like smacks of imperialism.
Speaker 1:On the other side of that, or sort of part and parcel with that is, there's a degree of feminism in making Joan truly a protagonist who, by our deep thoughts definition, is a protagonist because she is the character who changes and grows as a result of the action. What we see is that she is actually capable, from the very beginning, of so much more than even she realizes, and that's what this adventure proves to her. And so that by the end, though she calls for him to save her, she doesn't need Jack to save her, she saves herself. She kills that dude eight ways till Sunday, like with a knife and with fire and with crocodiles and with a big wooden board that she smacks on the hand, the stump of his hand, like she's a badass.
Speaker 1:She's a badass, which we suggested as a little bit of like self-insert for Diane Thomas, right, it's a writer who wrote about a writer who was a badass and like the way you put it I love. It was like, look, ma, I can do stuff. And like the fact that her being a writer served her well in multiple occasions was like, look, ma, writing is a good thing and it could save me, which I love. Let me see what else.
Speaker 1:The romance itself I am annoyed that it is another sort of Beauty and the Beast, or like Bender and Claire from the Breakfast Club, where there's this sense, like it starts out, it's an enemies to lovers trope. And so there's this sense, like it starts out, it's an enemies to lovers trope. And so there's this underlying assumption that, like the love of a good woman or a glittery hoo-ha can like transform a kind of shitty dude into someone you would want to be with and I'm mad at that and I'm mad at myself for continuing to enjoy it as much as I do. And you pointed out the fact that inherent in every heterosexual relationship or most of them, many of them, a great number of them comes with misogyny and like, leads to like what looks like abusive, abusive dynamics. And you named the, you're exclusively reading MM romance if it's going to be enemies to lovers in particular, which I'm with you there.
Speaker 1:I am with you, and then the last thing you reminded me that I had shared before we hit record was the fact that we have this moment of like actual flesh that is not plastified or photoshopped or like fixed in post in this sexy scene, which is really refreshing and, honestly, pretty sexy.
Speaker 2:What did I forget Danny DeVito as a bumbling villain? What?
Speaker 1:did I forget Danny DeVito as a bumbling villain? Right? And Danny DeVito as a bumbling villain is part of what keeps this as a comedy, a romantic comedy. He lowers the stakes for us.
Speaker 1:I think it's significant that that happens in terms of sort of storytelling. Also, the fact that he's a white guy who is the bumbling, you know, so we have all these like scary Colombian bad guys, but it lowers the stakes a bit with this guy, which makes it easier for us to sort of. You know, so we have all these like scary Colombian bad guys, but it lowers the stakes a bit with this guy, which makes it easier for us to sort of keep going. Oh, and then also, I think maybe he contributes to this, like he just hit the I believe button, you know, without even thinking about it, for these huge plot holes and DeVito's part of it, like how does he know about this gig? Like how does he know about this gig? How does he know about this map? There's just no answers and to a certain extent, for whatever reason, thomas wrote a script that it didn't matter, and these two actors, and there's a lot more than just the script.
Speaker 2:I will say this does give for creatives. This is a masterclass in how to have stakes that are high enough that you care, but you can lower them so that you're focused on the humor and the romance. So that, like it is a romantic comedy, thriller or action, it's a romantic comedy, it's action adventure, action adventure, romantic comedy. Yeah, thriller is the wrong word. That's a difficult needle to thread, yeah, and some of it has to like there's there's a bunch that goes into it. But diane thomas wrote an excellent script and then they did a really good job with the actors, like who they cast, and then zemeckis did a good job with directing. I mean, like it's a really good indication of like how much goes into these things to make this a fun thing to watch.
Speaker 1:But still it is. It is what a reviewer might call a fun romp.
Speaker 2:Speaking of fun romp, we've got a guest coming next time, oh, is Aaron coming next episode?
Speaker 1:Next episode Amazing Y'all. Aaron Reynolds from F-ing Birds is coming on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit. I know it's so exciting, All right. Well, I look forward to seeing him and you To see what he has to say All right, see you then.
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