A Fish Called Wanda: Deep Thoughts About Comedy, Cultural Commentary, and Cartoonish Con Artists

You're the vulgarian, you fuck!

Tracie expected to enjoy revisiting the classic comedy A Fish Called Wanda, but she forgot just how much of this film's humor was derived from cringe comedy (John Cleese speaking Russian in his underwear when a large family stumbles upon him) and punching down (the dubious "comedy" of making fun of Michael Palin's stutter), both of which made the film painful to rewatch.

Wanda has some truly interesting cultural commentary about the differences between Americans and Britons, and Cleese's screenplay offers some brilliantly funny wordplay and storytelling that allowed Kevin Kline to ham up his role as Otto, the ridiculous epitome of American masculinity, all the way to an Oscar. But the well-crafted fiction comes with a side of homophobia and ableism that's just hard to watch in 2025--although the comedy beats are just as masterful as they were originally.

Throw on some headphones, make sure you're on the correct side of the road, and take a listen!

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/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

We're having a party, please come! A Zoom happy hour, Tue, 11/18, 7:30 ET / 6:30 CT. (THERE WILL BE PRESENTS!) So get ready to pour your favorite beverage, overthink some Thanksgiving-themed pop culture, laugh, and feel a little bit smarter.

It’s free, but please register at guygirlsmedia.com/happyhour, so we can share the zoom info with you! (Also, who doesn’t like knowing who’s coming to their party?)

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. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.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.

We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Wanda Revisited
• 3:10 First Impressions: What Still Lands
• 7:25 Plot Bones: Heist, Double-Crosses, Diamonds
• 14:30 Dog Deaths, Stutter, And Cruel Gags
• 19:45 Archie And Wanda: Is It Love Or Con
• 25:53 Britain vs. America: Manners And Violence
• 32:03 Sex, Power, And The “Professional” Femme Fatale
• 37:23 Ableism And Homophobia: What The Jokes Cost
• 43:43 Fake Intellectuals, Real Insecurity
• 49:03 Cartoon Logic, Cinematic Choices
• 54:13 What’s Funny, What’s Not, And Why

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

There's other hijinks that I forgot. Jamie Lee Cardis gives this delivers this beautiful line when yet again Otto says, Don't call me stupid, and she goes, You're right. Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people, which is maybe the only time I laughed in watching it. Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just up 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? On today's episode, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1988 classic comedy A Fish Called Wanda with my sister, Emily Guy Birkin, and with you. Let's dive in. Emma I know you've seen this movie because I'm fairly certain we watched it together. I feel like our grandma Ruthie took us to see it in the theater. Oh wow. I didn't remember that, but I believe it. But yeah, tell me, what's the furniture of your mind around Fish Called Wanda? What's in the brain? So snapshots mostly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17

I remember I didn't like that Michael Palin's character kept being made fun of for the fact that he was distraught over the death of the dogs that he was inadvertently causing. I really didn't like that. Like it was supposed to be this dark humor, and I just didn't find that funny. I also didn't find it funny, his stutter to be funny. So that is the biggest thing I remember from the film was like how much I disliked that plot point. I remember Kevin Klein character being like a really brash American who is like very prototypical American. And I remember the only thing that I can recall laughing about is that every time, because it's set in England, every time Kevin Klein is driving, he's always on the wrong side of the road. And every time he's going asshole as he's on the as he's driving, because he's on the wrong side, but he thinks everyone else is. And that through line was just funny. I remember that Jamie Lee Curtis is in it and that she falls in love with John Cleese. And I remember she and Kevin Klein are con artists, and that's kind of about it. That's oh, and John Cleese is like a barrister. And I don't really remember what the like the Slister barrister differences. He's a lawyer, he's the kind who wears the wigs. Yeah. Yeah. But that's about all I got. So tell me, why are we talking about a fish called Wanda today?

SPEAKER_00: 3:00

It was on the list, and I really kind of just wanted a comedy. I was hoping for something like I was hoping for just like a fun romp. I was like remembering things that I remembered enjoying. And so I just threw it on there. The stakes weren't super high for me, but boy was I mistaken about this being a fun romp. Wow. It was hard for me to get through it, to be honest. I this, if you love this movie, this is gonna be an unpopular episode. Just heads up, listener. This is not on the top of my list. So I really just wanted a comedy. And this was one that I remember liking, or I remember dad liking it actually. I sort of remember dad laughing. And it is a very popular comedy. Like Kevin Klein won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this film, and the direction and the screenplay were both nominated for Oscars in 1989. So it's it was very popular. And according to the lore, as I'm reading, like some dude, like an audiologist, literally died laughing at this movie. Some screening because his heart rate got out of control and he had a heart attack.

SPEAKER_01: 4:11

So that's that's a Monty Python skit. That's an actual Monty Python skit where they in World War II they had the the weaponized humor.

SPEAKER_00: 4:23

I read it in two separate places. So maybe the same people were mistaken, but I like more than one person claims that somebody died at a screening as a result of this, or as a result of this movie. So I don't know. And they one person even identified which scene it was. So I don't know. I didn't fact check it. I'm just telling you what I've read on the interest. I it didn't, it certainly didn't make me laugh hard enough to die.

unknown: 4:50

Excuse me.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

So let me give you a couple postcards from the destination, and then I'll try and give you a synopsis. So there's a lot in this movie. John Cleese wrote the screenplay, and I think there's a lot in this movie, his meditations on sort of the difference between American and British culture, which I think is actually kind of interesting. It also, though, is ableist and homophobic. Michael Palin wears blackface briefly, which is really uncomfortable. I think there's I want to talk a little bit about comedy and what's funny, uh, because I think your recollection jibes with my experience of watching it last night. Also, your recollection of Klein as sort of the prototypical American, like in terms of Cleese's kind of meditation on American versus British culture, is sort of interesting. Jamie Lee Curtis is if this were a noir film, she would be the femme fatale. Like she uses her sexuality as a part of it's one of the tools, it's the primary tool in her toolbox. And the film does not judge her for it. So I think that's sort of interesting, and I want to dig into that a little bit. I want to talk about intellectualism and sort of whether or not it's a good thing, according to the movie makers, according to Kleese. I want to talk about, I mean, you named in your recollection that Jamie Lucartis' character falls in love with Kleese's character. I think that's accurate from the film, but I do want to talk about what is love and affection for this character based on what we see from her. And then I want to name that like this film, though it's live action, is a cartoon in many ways. Like the things that happen and the ways that people behave and even the way that like the cinematography is used is sort of cartoonish, which is part of its comedic effect and part of how we know it is comedy, even though like dark things are happening. So I just want to talk about that as like the medium. So those are some of the things I'm gonna talk about. Let me see if I can give you a synopsis. I actually have the Wikipedia up. I haven't done this in a minute because again, since I wasn't enjoying it, I'm not sure I'm gonna remember all of the pieces, but I want to make sure I hit the highlights.

SPEAKER_01: 7:09

Since it's based on since Jimmy Lee Curtis and Kevin Klein were con artists, like that, there is a little bit of complexity to the story, isn't there? With that, I don't know. That's I'm just assuming.

SPEAKER_00: 7:20

You mean with her affection? No, no, no. Just with the, I mean, just because Oh, with double crossing. Double crossing, and yes, there's a lot of double crossing in this movie. So we open up, we are introduced to all of our characters. So we see John Cleason Court in his goofy wig, which everybody wears. It's not just him. I know, I know in Britain they all wear those goofy wigs.

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

They're weird. Like I'm big on like long traditions, but come on, people.

SPEAKER_00: 7:49

So we in these short vignettes, we meet each of our players. So we've got John Cleese's Archie Leach, named after Carrie Grant's birth name, interestingly. We have George Thomason played by Tom Georgson, which has to have been how the name the character's name came to me.

SPEAKER_01: 8:09

Was Cleese just being like lazy at that point in his writing?

SPEAKER_00: 8:13

I mean, I obviously it tickled him that Tom Georgeson would play George.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

And that Archie Leach was okay.

SPEAKER_00: 8:19

All right, continue. Then so George's like right-hand man is Ken Pyle, played by Michael Palin, who we immediately learn is an animal lover and also has a pretty severe stutter. His girlfriend is Wanda Gerschwitz, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Um whose girlfriend? Sorry, George's George's girlfriend. Okay. George's girlfriend is Wanda. Ken also has the hots for Wanda because he's named his favorite fish in the tank, Wanda. Wanda brings in her brother. I'm putting quotes around brother, Otto, played by Kevin Klein, into a heist that George is planning. They're stealing diamonds there, and they give us the details. There are like five of them, and each one is worth four million. So there's it's a$20 million heist, and they're only going after the diamonds. Otto is a weapons expert. We learn fairly quickly he is not, in fact, her brother. She's sleeping with him too. And he's a little jealous of this con that she's George's girlfriend. They do the heist, it goes over, they get the jewels. We see them like ignoring other jewelry. They get the diamonds, they escape. On their escape, they almost hit this old lady walking three little dogs, three little Yorkes, and she like yells at them and she makes eye contact with George. But they escape, they like, it's there's all these like costume changes and car changes, like they got it all planned out. They put the loot in a safe in a garage, and then they go their separate ways and say they'll meet up in in 48 hours or something. Otto and Wanda call the cops and anonymously tip them off to the fact that George was the one who did the heist. He gets arrested immediately. They go back to the garage, Otto breaks into the safe, the diamonds are gone. We see in court when he's like the initial, I don't know what it's called, arraignment, the initial court date, he sneaks a key. Key who? Sorry, George sneaks a key to Ken. It's a safe deposit key. Wanda witnesses Ken hiding this key in the little treasure chest inside his fish tank. She takes it and puts it inside her locket. And so now she decides she needs to seduce Archie, who is George's lawyer, because she figures that George will tell Archie where the loot actually is. So she's not sure how she's gonna seduce him, but that's what she's gonna do. She ends up like coming up to him on the street and like she puts on her glasses so she looks smarter, I guess. Claims to be a law student from America who is a big fan of his work in the courtroom and asks for his autograph. And like he tells her later she's the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. So he like doesn't buy it, but buys it because she's gorgeous and coming on to him. So shenanigans ensue. We learn that the old lady with the three dogs, with the three dogs who made eye contact with George as they were escaping, she actually picks him out of a lineup. So she's the only actual evidence against him. George asks Ken to kill her. So meanwhile, Kevin Klein's Otto sort of suspects that Ken knows more than he's letting on. So he chases after Ken and comes on to him and says, Otto says that Otto is gay and comes on to Ken like really strongly and obnoxiously to shock him and like I don't know, get him off balance or whatever. Meanwhile, Otto, from the moment he met Ken has been making fun of the stutter and continues to, even as he's like coming on to him, supposedly hitting on him. And Otto realizes that Ken has been asked to kill this old lady. He says, There's no way you can do it. I bet you a pound that you can't do it. And Ken takes that bet. And Otto says something like, You're so, you know, I don't remember what the insult is that Otto levels at Ken, but Ken says it's better than buggering people and then runs away looking over his shoulder. As Otto says, I love watching your ass as you walk away. I mean, it's just really gross, gross. Yeah. Really gross. So then there's a through line. Other things are happening meanwhile, but a through line that you remember clearly where Ken is trying to off the old lady and ends up killing each of the dogs inadvertently. The first one, he has a attack dog that he likes to gives the attack dog something of the old ladies to smell and like sicks the dog on her, but the big dog picks up one of the little dogs and runs off with it and kills it. And then so he kills each of the dogs accidentally as he's trying to kill the lady. One of the middle ones, he's in, he's dressed as a Rastafarian and wearing black face and driving a truck that ends up running over the dog when he's trying to hit the lady. And then it's each of the dog's deaths are followed by like a religious burial service in the pet cemetery that Ken goes to crying. And he's getting more and more beaten up. Like the mean dog scratches and bites him, and he's messes up his eye in the car accident. Eventually, the final attempt to kill her, which kills her final dog, actually, she has a heart attack as a result. So that's that through line. Simultaneous with that, Wanda is trying to is seducing Archie. She shows up at his house and he's married, isn't he? He's married, but it's very it's clearly a loveless marriage. So we have this scene that's like a cut back and forth between Otto and Wanda, and Archie and his wife Wendy. And Otto and Wanda are having sex in this cartoonish way, and Archie and Wendy are undressing themselves and getting in like very perfunctorily and like getting into separate beds. And Wanda has a thing for languages. It's the only reason, it seems, that she's with Otto. Although we saw actually when he opened the safe, she was ready to knock him out. And so she was already, we know she's not, she was ready to double cross him. So she's seducing him. She ends up at his house to seduce him, and somehow her necklace falls off. And Otto, who is very jealous, has shown up and like interrupts. Well, the wife comes home and he like thinks he's saving things and he's which tells this Otto. Sorry. Otto thinks he's saving the situation because the wife comes home and is like, whose car is that blocking the drive? And he's and he like steps out. Archie doesn't even know he's there, steps out from behind a door and says, It's mine. And he says that he's a CIA agent and they have a KGB defector in a safe house nearby, and he's like keeping people informed. And the wife, Wendy, is like, Why are you telling people? You're not supposed to tell people that. And he's like, Well, you obviously don't know anything about the intelligence community because it's a double cross or I don't know, whatever he says. And she says, Actually, my father was in the Secret Service, and I know you don't do this unless you're blah, blah, blah, stupid. And he's don't call me stupid again. This is a thing that he does. Don't call me stupid. So anyway, Otto and Wendy, Wanda, excuse me, Otto and Wanda manage to get out of Archie and Wendy's house, but the necklace has been left behind. She wants it back. It's got the key in it, remember. She's the only one who knows the key is in it. Wendy picks it up off the floor and thinks that Archie has bought it for her and she loves it. It's got her initial on it, and it's she tells him it's the nicest present you've ever gotten me. So he tries to get it back. He tells Wendy that it was actually they shouldn't have sold it to him because the old lady didn't want to give it up. I don't know. He tells her story, she doesn't buy it. So then he buys a separate, like a tennis bracelet in exchange, she doesn't want it. He tries to offer the tennis bracelet to Wanda in exchange, she doesn't want it. So he tries to burgle his own house to explain it's missing because he needs to get it back to Wanda's made it clear she can't have sex with him unless he gets her necklace back. So he tries to like burgle his own house. Otto has come to his house to apologize to him and doesn't realize it's him and like attacks him and knocks him out, then realizes it's him. He gets really mad. He's like, Why would you burgle your own house, you stupid? And then he kicks the Klee while he's like laying there. Oh, it's awful. It's so hard to watch. Kleese returns the necklace the next time he sees Wanda, and she's delighted the key is still there. George tells Ken where the diamonds actually are. Otto realizes that Ken knows and tortures Ken to get the information. Basically, he ties him up, he sticks food up his nose and in his mouth so he can't breathe, and then eats his fish live in front of him. Oh god. Oh, I remember that. To try and get the information. Meanwhile, remember, Ken has this terrible stutter, and the name is like the Katoctin Towers or something. It's not, that's not quite it, but something like that with lots of like hard k sounds that are difficult for this stutterer to get out. In court at the actual trial, John Kleese's Archie thinks that George didn't do it. He doesn't know that he actually did it. And he knows that Wanda is the alibi. So she's on the stand. She needs George to go to prison. She doesn't want to be saddled with this dude. And now that she knows where the diamonds are and she's got the key, she's gonna get rid of him. So she changes her testimony to incriminate him, which leads to Archie actually sort of slipping and calling her first by her first name and then Darling. Wendy is in the gallery listening, and she had overheard Otto apologizing and saying, I don't even care if you fuck her. Fuck her blue. And so Wendy's like sort of suspicious. And then when Archie calls Wanda Darling, she knows what's going on. So she basically tells him he can shove this marriage up his bum or something like that. He goes to talk to George and realizes that Wanda and Otto were both there for the heist and are all in on it. So he tries to figure out where the diamonds are from George. He's not sharing. So realizing like his career and his marriage are over, he decides to like fuck it and try and run away with Wanda. So he sees her fleeing the courtroom and hustles her into his car, and they go back to George's place where she also was staying to try and get the information from Ken. Otto has the information because he tortured Ken. He ends up stealing Archie's car with Wanda still in it. They end up at the airport where everybody confronts everybody. I mean, it's five minutes of so much action. Wanda knocks Otto out and locks him in a broom closet. He shoots his way out and confronts Archie and almost kills Archie, but then gets distracted until Ken runs him over with a steamroller into wet cement. Archie manages to get onto the plane and sits with Wanda, and they are going to Rio de Janeiro. And like actually, Otto's cement-encrusted face shows up next to the window, and he sort of falls off the plane and does the asshole that you remember from whenever he would do the driving on the wrong side of the road. One important thing that I forgot: I did say that Wanda's super into foreign languages and Otto speaks Italian, though I question if he's actually speaking Italian. I don't speak Italian, but at one point when they're in bed in the sort of cartoonish scene, he just says Benito Mussolini, which like, what the fuck? And she asks Archie if he speaks Italian at what point when they're like together for a tryst, and he says he does, and he speaks a little Italian. He says, But that's not my favorite language. What about Russian? And they start speaking in Russian, which totally gets her hot as well. So he has confessed his love. Archie has confessed his love to Wanda. They're gonna go off to Rio together. They have the diamonds, and we see some final credit card, like cards in the credits, like epilogue that say that Wanda and Archie were married in Rio and had 17 children and founded a leper colony. Otto moved to South Africa where he became the Minister of Justice. Okay. And Ken went on to become the master of ceremonies at SeaWorld. Oh, I forgot that after steamrolling, and presumably he thought killing Otto in revenge, you know, as revenge for eating the fish, Ken lost his stutter altogether. In fact, he's like, I don't stutter anymore, you know. So there's other hijinks that I forgot. Jamie Lee Cardis gives this, delivers this beautiful line when yet again Otto says, Don't call me stupid. And she goes, You're right. Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people, which is maybe the only time I laughed in watching it. Apparently, the lore is the dude who died as a result of laughing at the torture scene when Kevin Klein was shoving French fries up Michael Palin's nose. So I honestly had to like pause it and take breaks. It was so hard for me to watch. There's a scene where Wanda is off, like getting herself ready, I guess, for sex and says, get undressed. And so John Cleese like undresses while he's speaking Russian, and we watch him undress, and he's like a million feet tall. And so he's all gangly and stuff, and he's like dancing around, and just as he takes his underwear off and is like dancing around with it on his head, a large British family walks in the door. So it's like that like secondhand embarrassment that I hate so much. Yeah. Okay. So let me start with Beckdel, because that's easy. It does pass Beckdel because Archie's wife, Wendy, and daughter Portia, talk to one another on multiple occasions about things other than him. They're short scenes and they're not actually like meaningful to the plot, but it does happen. Okay. How old is Portia? Teenager.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 23:45

Like 16, 17, I think we're meant to think. Which honestly, that makes me feel even grosser.

SPEAKER_01: 23:53

I know that it's not intended to be like a good marriage, but like anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 24:36

Yeah. So I'm gonna start with what's good or what's interesting to me about this film. So as I said, Cleese wrote this film, and there is I embedded in the screenplay is a meditation from him on what the problems are with British culture and the ways in which American culture is superior, but also the ways the like the inverse. So at one point he actually says, Archie actually says to Wanda, Do you have any idea how hard it is to be English? We walk around terrified all the time. And the things he's terrified of are being embarrassed of saying, How's your wife? and hearing we separated yesterday, or you know, dancing around the other.

SPEAKER_01: 25:29

If you're gonna put your underwear on your head to find to turn around and see a large family seeing you.

SPEAKER_00: 25:34

Yeah. But I mean, the things he named to her were much lower stakes, embarrassment, even than that. And he said, That's why we're all dead. All my friends are dead. I'm dead, but not you. You're alive. That's what he says to Wanda. And so that feels like an important kind of it's a revealing moment of what Cleese thinks about sort of the culture that is his. At the same time, Otto, Klein's Otto, is, as you named, a prototypical American and he is a buffoon. He may be alive, but he's an unsophisticated idiot who is dangerous, but truly deeply dangerous. And in fact, at one point, Otto, in one of the airport confrontations, Archie has picked up the gun and is training it at Otto. And Otto says, You don't have the guts to shoot me. And he says, Why don't you fight me like a man? Like God intended, or something like that. And so Archie puts down the gun and puts up his fists, and they're circling each other with fists. And he says, Archie says, I boxed at Oxford, and Otto picks up the gun, trains it in him, and says, Well, I killed for the CIA. And so there's this like Kleece, the screenwriter, has critique of British culture, and there are ways in which American culture is more alive, but also has no integrity and is like unnecessarily violent and vulgar, deeply vulgar.

SPEAKER_01: 27:05

Well, and there's also the critique of American masculinity versus British masculinity, and the critique of British femininity versus American femininity.

SPEAKER_00: 27:16

Thank you. Yes, that is a I love that as a nuance on this because Wendy is just constantly annoyed. Like when we first meet her, she's sitting on a lawn chair, like reading a magazine in her sunglasses, and he comes up and he says, How was your day? And she complains about how she had to have lunch with so-and-so, and all she does is complain. And he says, I won my case. And she says, This is the first moment I've had to myself all day. And he says, Well, can I make you some tea? So she's just sour. She's just sour. She's smart, she's very smart, but she's sour. And I so I think that you're right, there is definitely a gendered component to the critique as well. And that actually felt interesting to me in this mixed cast. And like George, when Wanda gives her actually false testimony that incriminates him, he loses his mind. You bitch, you fucking bitch. And he like jumps out of the little, I don't know what to call it, the little stand where he is and gonna attack her. And it takes four, five, ten people to restrain him and protect her from him. So it's not the case that Brits in this movie are incapable of violence, but there is, and it's called out explicitly. Archie says, You really are a Vulgarian, aren't you? To which Otto says, You're the Vulgarian, you fuck. Right. That is very, very well written. So, you know, there's just the pictures of the two cultures, and you're right, the masculinity and femininity from the two cultures is, I think, really interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 29:07

I would like to tease out something a little bit there too, just that in that, because Wanda is like Otto in that she does not play fair. She double crosses, but she uses sexuality, not violence. That's right. And John Cleese as the author writes that as being alive in a way that is admirable or something to something that at least Archie wants. Yes. And yes. So Archie is dead but plays fair and is brought to life by someone who double crosses using sexuality. Wendy, the wife, is dead, intelligent, plays fair and sour. And just I'm just thinking there's this interesting meditation on there's a kind of fetishization of American women there.

SPEAKER_00: 30:10

Well, in particular, since Cleese literally self-inserts as the person who ends up with him, all of the male characters, because Ken has the hots for her too, and she knows it. At one point, he's gonna tell her something and he's stuck in a stutter. So she kisses him. And that kiss calms him enough that he can get his words out. And she says to him, if it weren't for George, like she allows him to believe, she allows Ken. Tend to believe that she would be with him if she could. So sh yes, I think you are exactly right. It is something to be, I don't know if admired is the right word, but at least is wanted. And specifically for Cleese, wanted, I don't know if I want to use the word possession, but at least he wants to be the object of it. The object of that alive sexuality, even if it's dangerous. Or maybe because it's dangerous, maybe that's what makes it alive.

SPEAKER_01: 31:11

Yeah. Well, and it's like you one of the things that you said, and I can't remember if it was before we started recording or in your synopsis, that the movie does not judge her for using her sexuality as part of her toolbox.

SPEAKER_00: 31:23

Yeah, I don't, I do not, I am not left with like, because Otto, who gets jealous, is such a buffoon. And the way in which he exhibits his jealousy is so absurd and reprehensible that you can't help but think she's in the right. And like at one, they're in the car at one point. He's like, Well, well, what are you gonna, what are you gonna do? Like, is are you gonna let him touch your tits? And she's like, Yeah, probably$20 million. It's worth some tit touching or something like it's like that. I don't, that's not verbatim. And he was like, Well, what about penetration? And he is meant to appear ridiculous, whereas she is getting the job done with the tools in her toolbox.

SPEAKER_01: 32:07

She's being professional.

SPEAKER_00: 32:09

Uh-huh. Yeah. And I like, here's the thing that because it's a self-insert, maybe it's more complicated. Like, I genuinely don't know how to feel about her affection for Archie. I believe she has it. I believe it's by the end, it is not part of the con. In the car on the way from the court, when he's like, let's, he had already said let's run away together at one point. So now he's like, let's go get the diamonds. And she had, he had broken up with her. He had called her and said it's over. I'm sorry. And we see him crying after, or like a single tear, not like weeping. And when he says, Let's run away together, and she's like, But you broke up with me, he said, No, I fell in love with you, but I wasn't rich enough, remember? Because at one point while they're together, she asks if he's rich, and he says, No, the money's on my wife's. And so, and she's hides her disappointment, but we see her hiding it. So theoretically, Archie saw it as well. So when he says that, I wasn't rich enough, like she like softens and like slides over on the bench seat to sit next to him while he's driving. So there is a there, the movie definitely wants us to believe that there is genuine affection from this woman who uses sex and affection to get what she wants. And layered on to the other things that we've talked about today, about a sense of like American femininity and a sense of like being alive but without integrity or not playing by the rules or being dead, but playing by the rules. Like, sort of, I think Cleese has a hierarchy or the movie has a hierarchy of what in that matrix of what is better, but I'm not a hundred percent sure kind of how it shakes out. We're meant to believe his affection for her is real. He says he's in love with her repeatedly because she makes him feel alive again. And that's I think meant to be his response at least is meant to be real. The fact that it happened through not real because she was conning him.

SPEAKER_01: 34:15

It was a performance on her part.

SPEAKER_00: 34:17

It was, but then because he fell in love with her, it stopped being performance. Like the actual like narrative of that affection is muddy for me. And I'm not sure, I don't know. I at the end of the day, honestly, I just feel like they're all kind of reprehensible, and I just yeah, sure, okay, you love each other. Like in some ways, she's the most honest because she's like, it's all about the money and her own comfort, and like she'll do what she has to, yeah, yeah. And she gets pleasure where she can. Yeah, right. Like, that's why she she knew she was gonna have to sleep with him, but if he speaks Italian, maybe it'll be fun for her too.

SPEAKER_01: 35:01

Yeah, like look, this is the job, but you know, if the job can be fun, great. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It this brings up for me, we tend to we have this thing in society where we judge women who get power by being the wife of a man in power. Right. I've been thinking about this lately because of Erica Kirk taking over Turning Points USA. And people are judging her for that. And I'm not gonna get into the politics of what they do, but the thing is, that was the way that women had. That was the path women had to get to power. And using sexuality and using looks was the path that women had, and pretending affection was the path that women had to get to power. And I I felt into this as well. I judged women for flirting. Well, you were you were taught to, I mean, yeah. Whereas, like, I think it's absolutely reasonable to be like, no, she's being professional.

SPEAKER_00: 36:01

It's one of the tools. Why would you not use it?

SPEAKER_01: 36:03

Whereas Otto is being unprofessional. Completely unprofessional. But he's the worst. He's the worst. And actually, so one of the things you talked about, I think the homophobia and the ableism in this, which is like that shows to like within the character that the unprofessionalism of Klein's character, but also let's talk about it as Cleese as the screenwriter.

SPEAKER_00: 36:27

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I wonder if this was some early clues to who Cleese is. I mean, he now lives on Turf Island. I've heard someone's call it that way. He joins his fellow Brit J.K. Rowling in sort of attacking trans folks and gender non-conforming folks.

SPEAKER_01: 36:47

He also says, like, you can't have comedy anymore, which is just no, you can't paint himself as a victim anymore.

SPEAKER_00: 36:53

He paints himself as a victim as a result. And I think we wanted to believe the broadest we I was 12, but the broadest we, we wanted to believe that Cleese and the whole Python gang were using their serious comedy skills to take on the powerful. But I think actually they were using their comedy skills, or at least Cleese was, to just make fun of people he didn't like. And the, I mean, it is interesting that most of the ableism and homophobia come through the this buffoonish American character that is worth noting. And we're still meant to laugh at it. Cleese, Cleese's Archie gets very gets frustrated with Palin, Michael Palin, Ken's stutter at the end when he's trying to figure out he he keeps saying, like, no hurry, take your time. No hurry. Like he gets frustrated and eventually he's like, just spin it out, man, and immediately apologizes. And so in that, I feel like Cleese had his cake and ate it too. Yes. Because he made his character sort of know that he shouldn't make fun of the man with the stutter, but still made us, the audience, laugh at the man with the stutter. And it really felt at him. I think one might try to argue that we're laughing at Klein's auto's buffoonery and assholishness, but it was still through making fun of the man with the stutter. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it just it's really ugly. I find nothing funny about it now. And I don't know, maybe I'm uptight, but I'd prefer to think of it as empathy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 38:33

Yeah. It well, there's I had a like a teeny bit of a stammer as a kid. Just a teeny bit of one. Sometimes. I just remember not liking the way Palin's character was treated. And I remember hating the way he was treated about like how it was funny that he was brokenhearted over the dogs and his fish.

SPEAKER_00: 38:56

Yeah, it was we're meant to see it as a weakness. The other characters do. And I think the audience is meant to see it as a weakness as well. It that gets exploited by Otto when he eats the fish.

SPEAKER_01: 39:06

I just I couldn't understand that. And I I I think the dogs were supposed to be like yappy dogs that, oh, like nobody likes those kinds of dogs. But I'm like, they're dogs. Yeah. They were little yorkies. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 39:17

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 39:18

The homophobia, I I really want to spend a little time on that just because I had you look up before we started recording when Graham Chapman passed away, who's the first of the pythons to pass away, he was gay. And I can remember John Cleese gave a eulogy that is quite funny and actually quite beautiful. And it was at a, I can't remember like Westminster Abbey or some some major cathedral in London, where he said a bad word where he's like, no one would have expected that. And he truly loved Chapman. But I can remember him giving an interview at some point, I think it was after Chapman died, saying that when Chapman came out to the pythons, it just bewildered Cleese. And he said, it would have been like if Michael Palin came to me and told me he was Chinese.

SPEAKER_00: 40:08

Yeah, we talked about this when we did the episode about the Holy Grail.

SPEAKER_01: 40:11

Yeah. And that's I remember the first time I I heard that interview and it like it didn't sit well with me. And I I've never been able to articulate exactly why. And then some of it is just because it's so othered. That there's like the othering of, you know, if you came to me and told me you were Chinese, when I've always assumed you were normal, quote unquote. And I know that this is a privileged white dude trying to grapple with something he doesn't understand in someone he loves. Uh-huh. And there you gotta give some grace for that. But in this one year, so this movie came out in '88. Graham Chapman died in 1989. Right. So, and after Chapman came out, which would have been in the 70s, so he'd been out for about 10 years, writing this kind of homophobia, and Michael Palin, who, as I understand it, I saw someone on social media at some point saying, Michael Palin's the only python who wasn't tripped over his own dick at some point in the 12th 2000s. Like it makes me sad that like he also is participating in this homophobia. I'm sad that Kevin Klein is participating in this homophobia.

SPEAKER_00: 41:25

Yeah. And I mean, again, as I said earlier, like, I think one could argue that by putting it in the mouth of this reprehensible character, I think one could argue that there was a critique of it potentially. But again, it's like saying, like, I would never tell a fat joke and then like the one that so-and-so said when he said. So that you get to like distance yourself from it while still telling the fat joke. That's I so I think one could make something of an argument that putting it in the mouth of Kevin Klein's auto like puts a grain of salt in there. But it's still there. It's still there. The homophobia is still there.

SPEAKER_01: 42:08

And it's it's just frustrating because we know that John Cleese had someone to whom he was very close, yeah who could have told him how hurtful it was.

SPEAKER_00: 42:23

Yeah. I mean, it was the late 80s, and also even though it would be like he came to me and said he was Chinese. It's sort of like, yeah, I loved him anyway. Yeah. Which, like, as soon as that anyway comes into the sentence, it brings the homophobia with it. Yeah. And that is the way I perceived Cleese talking about Chapman. Yeah. I loved him anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 42:42

Yeah, it's well, he's one of the good ones. That's yeah, I have experienced that where like someone where if I'm one of the few Jews that someone knows, I recognize that I'm in the like, oh, you're one of the good ones. I'm in that paddock.

SPEAKER_00: 42:57

Right, right, right. I want to talk about one final thing before I kind of wrap up. And that is mixed up with the American-British thing is sort of complicated feelings about intellectualism, right? Because Otto is a fake intellectual. Like when we first meet him, he's fallen asleep reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. He quotes Nietzsche all the time, but it gets it all wrong. He gets it all wrong. Like at one point, Jamie Lee Curtis tells him all the mistakes he's made and they're ridiculous. And she also like laughs about it with Cleese's Archie at one point. And like there are things like Aristotle isn't actually from Minnesota, or I don't remember that maybe isn't it, but it's stuff like that. Well, I remember she wondered why they named Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Otto wondered why Archie and Wendy named their daughter after a car because her name is Porsche. And there are other things like that. They're just ridiculous. And so there's this making fun of wannabe intellectuals. The actual intellectuals are miserable because they're British. I mean, that that does seem to be Cleese's hazis. Wanda is not an intellectual. She can play one on TV, but she's not. Like when she tells Otto that those things were mistakes, she says, those were all mistakes. I looked them up. So there's the implication that it's she didn't just know. Although when she's laughing with Archie, it is the implication that she she just knows. So it's, I mean, she is such a con artist, it's hard to know what's real. But I do, I am left with the impression that she is smart but not intellectual, although she can play one on TV. So, like where Khalise lands on that, like, is or where the movie lands on that is like interesting and complicated. And I think I just wanted to name that because it, with this thread of auto quoting Nietzsche all the time, it feels significant to the kind of constellation of what it means to be British and American and smart and following the rules and not following the rules and like all of those things feel significant. So I just wanted to bring that forward before I close the conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 45:22

That does kind of fit with the sense that I can see where British might see a British person, a British intellectual might see Americans as writ large, as pretenders.

SPEAKER_00: 45:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 45:38

So all right. Because we don't wear weird curly wigs to go to court. We do not have a sense of tradition.

unknown: 45:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 45:51

Bulgarians, all of us. You're the Vulgarian, you fuck. He's right.

SPEAKER_00: 45:56

That is, I will say, that is brilliant writing. No, I mean the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, so there's there John Cleese is a brilliant comedian in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01: 46:12

He just, I just don't think he's self-reflective.

SPEAKER_00: 46:16

Well, yes. Also, I think this is much of the comedy that he finds very funny, I don't find funny at all. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that obviously a lot of people do. It did really well at the box office. Like people really enjoyed it. Like Klein's manic performance is beloved. I find it difficult to watch. So I think there's something too there that we could probably do a whole podcast on comedy, like a whole show about what is funny and what in the receiver of comedy is activated to make it laugh. I mean, we've talked about subverting expectations and things, but there's subverting expectations in ways that disarm and make me laugh. And there's subverting expectations in ways that make me absolutely cringe and want to turn the TV off.

SPEAKER_01: 47:01

So, like 25 years ago, there was a study on the jokes that made specific cultures laugh. We've talked about that in another episode too. Yeah. And the things that like make Americans laugh is feeling superior.

SPEAKER_00: 47:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 47:18

Yeah. Um, which is Klein's like whole character in this film. Because we have a couple minutes, I'm going to tell you my favorite uh finding was that the joke that made the French laugh most was a dog goes into a telegraph office and says, I'd like to send a telegram. I want to say woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. And the telegraph operator says, Well, you know, for the same amount of money, you can send three more woofs. And the dog says, Well, that would be silly. And that I think that encapsulates the French right there.

SPEAKER_00: 47:50

Yeah. I think it was our airplane episode where we talked about that in the past. So, listener, if you want to hear about what other nationalities think is funny, you should go listen to the airplane episode. All right. So this film passes Beckdell because Wendy and Portia talk about things besides Archie. There's a long kind of meditation or kind of exploration of the differences between American and British culture. Cleese seems to think that in general, Brits are rule following and dead. And Americans are con artists, but somehow alive. He, and you brought in the nuance on that, that he and the movie seem to think that con artists and alive, if also female and sexy, is cool. But con artists and alive but violent and wannabe intellectuals like Otto, so the masculine version of this is not so cool. And all like part and parcel with that is like sort of assumptions and judgments about sexuality, about violence, about masculinity, about femininity. It's all wrapped up in this kind of juxtaposition of these two cultures through this screwball comedy, which is ableist and homophobic, especially through the person of Otto, played by Kevin Klein, who is ableist and homophobic in the direction of the same character, which is Michael Palin's Ken, who has a severe stutter that Otto makes fun of repeatedly and literally tortures him with, and then comes on to him and like pretends to be gay in order to make Ken uncomfortable. We talked about this ablist, homophobic, brash, would-be intellectual who's actually calling him stupid would be an insult to stupid people, as in some ways a prototypical American. He's gun happy, he thinks he's much smarter than he is, he's prone to violence. When he gets agitated, he gets more violent. He drives on the wrong side of the road and then blames other people for the accidents and is a true vulgarian.

SPEAKER_01: 50:15

Honestly, it feels kind of prescient right now.

SPEAKER_00: 50:19

One sort of remaining question mark for me that I think is answered to a certain extent by the fact that Khalise is literal in self-insert in the person of Archie is where Jimmy Curtis's Wanda affection actually lies and how it is that she fell in love with Archie. It seems to be just because he fell in love with her first. And there's a certain degree, I mean, this woman who, as we named, uses that tool, that very useful and powerful tool as a professional in her toolbox, that tool being her own sexuality and sex. And she has a good time if she can, but that's not what it's about. She's doing what she needs to get the job done because there's$20 million on the line. And she doesn't muddy the work with feelings, right? I mean, at one point she says, she they lie, and I said they lie and say that she and Otto are siblings, but at one point she says to him, even if you were my brother, I'd want to fuck you. But then she also is gonna knock him out and take the diamonds and leave him behind. So she doesn't get tripped up by stupid things like feelings, and yet she falls for Archie. So that that remains sort of like a question. And right, or does she? I mean, we are meant, I think we are meant to believe she actually does. But I wonder if someone besides John Cleese were writing this and Archie weren't John Cleese himself, if that's how we were would be meant to read it.

SPEAKER_01: 51:51

And also like he loves her if he genuinely loves her instead of just wanting to possess her. Yeah. Which that would make a difference for someone who has been who consistently uses her sexuality as a tool.

SPEAKER_00: 52:06

Using, yeah, she uses wanting to be possessed as a way to get things for herself. Yes, that's a good point. So we talked about to the homophobia and the ableism in here potentially as a clue to what we now see as Cleese's like intolerance and meanness. You brought Graham Chapman into the conversation, and we sort of landed on the fact that, yeah, Cleese loved Chapman anyway. And as soon as that anyway comes into the sentence, then it brings homophobia with it. So there's a certain degree to which looking backward, it's it makes sense that homophobia is there, despite the fact that Graham Chapman was a very close friend of Cleese's and was gay and Cleese knew. Let me see.

SPEAKER_01: 52:53

I feel like I'm forgetting something. We talked about how this movie, even though it's live action, is a cartoon.

SPEAKER_00: 52:59

Yeah, it really is. And that shows up especially in for me, it showed up especially in the sex scene between Otto and Wanda, where like when Klein actually climaxes, when Otto climaxes, he sort of stops, almost looks at the camera, his eyes cross, and then he kind of like melts. Like, oh, it's ridiculous. It is so cartoony. And as they're having sex, like she's on the bottom, her legs are straight up in a V with knees locked. Like it's ridiculous and very unsexy. So that was the place where to me, I was like, oh, this is a cartoon. Yeah. But throughout, there's a degree to which it's a cartoon. And even in the cinematography, like everybody wears muted colors except for Jamie Lee Curtis, who wears these very bright colors and stuff like that. So even like where the camera is, like angled, like to make different, to make Otto feel more dominant or to make Ken feel more childlike, things like that. So yeah, thank you for naming that. Which makes sense with Kleece as a a python. The Monty Python was cartoony with live action. So yeah. So and just sorry if this is one of your favorite films. Like I will never see this film again. It was just not funny to me at all. There was like maybe two moments that I smiled. And otherwise, I had to kind of cringe and grit my teeth and keep going. So but what are you gonna bring me next week, Em?

SPEAKER_01: 54:31

My Em bring my deep thoughts on weekend at Bernie's.

SPEAKER_00: 54:38

Yeah, me neither. I'm a little bit worried that it's gonna be another fish called one. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. See you then. Bye. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link in the show notes. Or leave a positive review so others can find us. And of course, share the show with your people. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin McLeod from Incompotech.com. Find full music credits in the show notes. Thank you to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture. And shouldn't you know what's in your head?