Rachel & Rachel discuss basketball, teen pregnancy, and Channing Tatum’s locker room looks in COACH CARTER (2005).
Rachel & Rachel discuss basketball, teen pregnancy, and Channing Tatum’s locker room looks in COACH CARTER (2005). Tragically, our explanation of the movie's climactic yet unattributed Marianne Williamson quotation was cut for time.
Our next episode on HAVOC (2005) is coming your way March 16th!
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RSB: You did get a few critics--mostly white critics--who thought it was super inspiring and down with the youth--
RLB: I mean, my favorite part is it is down with the youth, but in the other sense of “down with.”
[AUDIO CLIP]
Samuel L. Jackson (as Coach Carter): Gentlemen! We have six players failing at least one class. We have failed each other.
[END AUDIO CLIP]
RLB: Hi! Welcome to The Channing Salon, the show where we discuss gender, genre, and je ne sais quois, one Channing Tatum movie at a time. I’m Rachel Lee Berger--
RSB: I’m Rachel S. Bernstein!
RLB: And this time, we’re talking about Channing Tatum’s feature film debut, Coach Carter, which was directed by Thomas Carter and released in 2005. So the IMDB summary for this movie is “Controversy surrounds high school basketball coach Ken Carter after he benches his entire team for breaking their academic contract with him. Rachel, do you feel that’s an accurate summary of the movie?
RSB: My suspicion is that that was the pitch for the movie--
RLB: Sure.
RSB: And that that’s where that line of text comes from?
RLB: It’s a decent logline for a movie, certainly.
RSB: I don’t know that they successfully executed that pitch, but I do think it’s what they were trying to execute.
RLB: Yeah, so I would argue … it is an accurate summary of something that happens in the movie. But I don’t think--
RSB: Arguably the only thing that happens in the movie. I would say that it’s also relevant that the team is very bad and immediately becomes undefeated as soon as Coach Carter takes over the team.
RLB: I didn’t notice that, because I don’t understand sports, which is something we’ll get into more. I couldn’t tell whether the team was bad or not. I--
RSB: They win every game and they repeatedly say that they’re 16 and 0.
RLB: Yeah but I couldn’t tell if at the beginning that was like abnormal--
RSB: When he starts the game he says “How many games did you win last year?” and they say “We won four games!”
RLB: I don’t know how many games they played!
RSB: They also say that!
RLB: I missed that because I was distracted I guess.
RSB: I think you hear the word “basketball” and your mind just starts, like, bees.
RLB: Elevator music, I’m telling you, every time! Steering things back to Coach Carter, my more subjective take on the movie, if you’re OK with me elaborating--
RSB: Please, please do.
RLB: Yeah, if I were writing a summary, I would say in this movie based on a true story, Samuel L. Jackson plays Ken Carter, a man with no discernable personality traits--
RSB: OK, we know that he would like to go on vacation in Mexico with his girlfriend.
RLB: Is she a girlfriend or a wife, I couldn’t tell.
RSB: He calls her his girlfriend. And that’s the only thing we know about him.
RLB: Yeah, it’s wild. So he has no discernable personality traits, but he has a lot of opinions on how to solve complex problems, and which professional teaching boundaries don’t apply to coaches, and he returns to his former high school in Richmond, California as the basketball coach and immediately goes on a really weird power trip and decides the best way to handle the problems of, like, the school-to-prison pipeline, and his students’ marginalization due to race and socioeconomic status is to basically just make them do a ton of extra basketball drills, to the point where I was like worried for their health--
RSB: Sorry I just want to pop in and note they’re not actually doing a ton of extra basketball drills, what they’re doing is a ton of extra conditioning--
RLB: Okay, there’s no difference to me between them--
RSB: That’s why I’m telling you! So what he’s actually doing is having them do way more calisthenics and conditioning, and actually less basketball drilling than they were previously doing.
RLB: Yeah, the weirdest thing about this movie is that he just repeatedly refuses to do basketball? He makes them do a ton of calisthenics, and makes their teachers do a bunch of extra work and report to him on how the students are doing, and like tutor them--
RSB: And is really mean to the principal.
RLB: He’s really--he’s just so bossy to the principal and it’s like--
RSB: He clearly thinks he knows how the principal should be doing her job, for no reason? Like he doesn’t really give a reason why he should be the one who knows this stuff.
RLB: Yeah, and he--he does all of this in the name of getting the kids into college, so they can then play basketball in college, and there’s no discussion whatsoever of like non-criminal alternatives to college, or what to do after college, or when they’re not playing basketball…
RSB: Yeah, I mean to be fair, something that’s not kind of elaborated at all is this idea that the parents think their kids are gonna be in the NBA, and he’s saying no, they’re not, so they have to go to college and the only way they can do that is to get a basketball scholarship, but none of this is articulated, we’re just supposed to assume it.
RLB: We’re just supposed to assume it, but it’s also like, if any of these kids don’t wanna go to college, he’s basically just telling them that they will go to prison. And I understand where he’s coming from in terms of, like, the statistical trends, I suppose, but it’s a little weird in like, specific circumstances with actual real individual children in front of you to not be like, why don’t we come up with a plan for what you will do if you don’t go to college?
RSB: And the thing is, at no point in this movie does Ken Carter recognize that there are real individuals in front of him in any context.
RLB: That’s also true, because yeah, as I was gonna say, he seems to be a pretty decent coach--
RSB: They become undefeated.
RLB: They become undefeated, and he does manage to win over the skeptics on the team--
RSB: Largely through bullying.
RLB: Through bullying, yes, but he does encourage the team to bond with each other and work well together--we may not agree with his tactics, but he does succeed at doing that--I mean I guess giving them a common enemy works, but then they like him--which might be Stockholm syndrome--but when he finds out bizarrely late in the film--like, we’re talking what in most films would be the Act 3 turn, he finds out that some members of the team didn’t meet his minimum GPA requirement, he locks everyone out of the gym, possibly including all the other student athletes--
RSB: And, like, gym classes!
RLB: Yeah, and gym classes--
RSB: Like this is a broke school, they don’t have two gyms--
RLB: He definitely doesn’t know or care about any of these other people and it’s genuinely unclear how or even if he has that kind of authority over--the principal at some point just gives up on telling him what to do, it’s clear, and there was a padlock involved, like, I don’t know--I don’t know what was going on with other people getting in, that was--
RSB: Can you imagine showing up for class and you don’t pay attention to school sports so you have no idea what’s going on, and you can’t go to gym class because the door is locked?
RLB: I mean personally I would’ve been thrilled--
RSB: Oh, hard same, as this actually happened to me in high school because they renovated the gym--
RLB: Amazing. So then he like, supervises the team in a bunch of montages of them painting over graffiti for some reason? This is never, like--
RSB: Elaborated on--
RLB: Yeah, they never discuss that as, like, something they’re doing, it’s just in a montage--
RSB: Well, it’s because part of their contracts with him, they had to do community service, which is like, dark.
RLB: Okay, but for one thing, there are other things you can do.
RSB: No.
RLB: For another thing--did he ask anyone before, like, having the kids paint the walls there?
RSB: At no point does this school--does this movie recognize that this takes place in a public school, and there’s a lot of rules!
RLB: Yeah, there’s just so many things here, but yeah, these montages have them painting over graffiti and hanging out in the library, which is supposedly I guess them studying. But there’s no evidence they’re like, studying--we don’t know what they’re studying, what that means--studying can take multiple forms, but we have no idea what they’re doing.
RSB: Also, fun fact, so when they finally have a big montage that they all did learn stuff, the big scene is that we see someone filling in “What religion--”
RLB: “The Mormon religion!”
RSB: First of all, isn’t even true! Okay, so, backtracking, there’s this moment where it zooms in on this guy getting his paper back, and it says “What religion was Gerald Manley Hopkins?”--“What religion was English poet Gerald Manley Hopkins,” and it’s been marked correct, and it’s been written in “the Mormon religion,” which is especially funny because Hopkins was Catholic.
RLB: Absolutely wild. And I did notice at the time but was so thrown by like the concept of zooming in on a paper that says “the Mormon religion” that I like, forgot to even pay attention to what the question was.
RSB: Right.
RLB: Like cool, they’re getting good grades, whatever…
RSB: None of them, like, discover the joy of learning though.
RLB: No, they don’t. Well, maybe they do? I couldn’t tell.
RSB: Well, one of them discovers the joy of Marianne Williamson.
RLB: But it’s hard to even tell what their individual attitudes are about anything at almost any given time because like, there’s so little character development for each of these kids--there’s a little bit for some of them, but we’ll get into that. So he gets a lot of media coverage for this shutdown, and the community gets really mad and harasses him about it--
RSB: Although actually still less media coverage than in real life because he was on, like, GMA. He was on multiple nationally televised shows.
RLB: So the community, like, hates him for this. And they’re like, a little overboard about it. They’re also--whenever they actually say anything, as like a specific objection to what he’s doing, it sounds pretty reasonable?
RSB: Yeah, they’re basically right.
RLB: Like, they’re definitely right.
RSB: Like, even at the beginning when that one parent is like, “Uh, we’re not gonna buy our kids suits and ties--”
RLB: Yeah, and he’s like “go to Goodwill,” and they’re like “We don’t need to go to Goodwill, we’re not … poor?” It’s like--there’s a weird scene.
RSB: It’s a very weird scene.
RLB: They start debating, like, whether to shop at Goodwill instead of debating whether the kids should be required to wear suits.
RSB: Yeah, in general, like, you don’t want a movie about Black respectability politics written by two white guys.
RLB: Yeah. You also generally don’t want it discussed by two white women, but yeah, I mean, I think we’re not the people to speak to that, but there’s some stuff that’s transparently, like, “oh yeah, this was written by white guys.”
RSB: And I think there’s plenty of other things in this movie for us to talk to without us making our pronouncements on the Black respectability politics, but I do just want to point out that’s a huge thing that the movie, which, while it does have a Black director, is written by two white men.
RLB: So, eventually the basketball team stops getting collectively punished for a couple of them having bad grades--
RSB: Illegal under the Geneva Conventions.
RLB: Yeah!
RSB: Not even having bad grades, because they’re all still academically eligible to play.
RLB: They go to a big game--can you elaborate on what that is?
RSB: They go to State.
RLB: Oh, was it State? I just--I couldn’t--I’m telling you, elevator music.
RSB: It literally says they’re going to State.
RLB: Okay.
RSB: The thing about this movie that does cause a problem is that every game is treated as The Big Game--
RLB: Right! That’s what I found confusing, is there were a couple times I thought they might be going to State, and then it hadn’t happened yet I guess, but--
RSB: So first of all, they go--initially, all of their games are treated like that, and then they go to an invitational tournament, and then finally they do actually go to State, which is--in the movie something that they get like an invitation--I don’t know how this works in California, because I grew up in Texas, so I don’t know if that’s the case, but it’s treated as an invitational, rather than something that automatically happens based on the standings, which I thought was a little weird.
RLB: I had a question about that as well, but I wasn’t sure if that was just me not knowing about sports, so I’m glad to hear that you were also a little bit confused.
RSB: Yeah, and that may just be a California thing, or a basketball thing, but I don’t know.
RLB. Yeah. So anyway, they lose the game, but it’s okay, because they learned about the power of college.
RSB: And suits.
RLB: And suits--suits, I think that’s more legit. Suits are powerful.
RSB: Suits are great! They actually have really nice suits.
RLB: They do! They have really nice suits and they look great in them, and you explained to me a little bit that it is a real thing in professional basketball that it is a real thing that people wear suits on game day and everything, because I got confused because I was like “Don’t they wear uniforms? To basketball?” And Rachel patiently explained that sometimes they’re going to and from the game, and also there’s like a whole school day before that and everything which makes a lot of sense now that I think about it--yeah, I think having that context the suit thing was less ridiculous than most of the rest of this contract that he had them sign, although I do think it’s a little bit ridiculous to require high schoolers to have really any kind of uniform that’s not provided by the school for the extracurriculars--for an extracurricular activity--
RSB: I did have to buy a suit for school, for speech tournaments, and I was very resentful of the whole thing, and it was expensive.
RLB: Yeah, I think that’s not great, but that’s irrelevant to the movie. So they lose, but they all learned how important college is or whatever, and--
RSB: And we find out that the real people that it’s based on did go to college and graduate.
RLB: They did normal things is what it sounds like.
RSB: Yeah, they graduated with like degrees in communications and business and stuff. A couple of them played college ball.
RLB: Which is great for them. They seemed like a good group of kids!
RSB: They do!
RLB: Which is also--
RSB: Much better than they’re treated as.
RLB: Yeah. There’s also a subplot about a teen pregnancy--
RSB: Featuring Ashanti--
RLB: Featuring Ashanti--
RSB: As the pregnant teen. And Adrienne Baillon as her friend!
RLB: Yeah.Truly iconic 2005 content.
RSB: Like truly.
RLB: There’s like half of a subplot about drug-dealing cousins, and there’s about a fifth of a subplot about an incredibly strange father-son relationship, the likes of which I’ve never seen.
RSB: It’s super weird. And we’ll get into it, I think, when we get to gender.
RLB: Yeah, and it’s weird, but not in the ways you expect.
RSB: Very much not.
RLB: Like, when I say “weird,” I’m not using that as a euphemism for anything. It’s just weird.
RSB: Yes. It’s never explained why these characters feel about each other the way they do.
RLB: Yeah, there’s nothing creepy about it, and there’s not even really that much conflict…
RSB: The son has a very unusual attitude toward his father that isn’t unrealistic if we had any explanation for why.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: We should explain what Channing is doing in this movie which--he doesn’t seem to have any real place in.
RLB: Yeah. So Channing is the token white guy on the team--
RSB: Essentially.
RLB: He plays Jason Lyle--
RSB: Who was a real person--
RLB: Who was a real person--
RSB: Is a real person, I assume.
RLB: I hope so!
RSB: I have not looked this up.
RLB: He’s a high school basketball player, obviously--he’s one of the few white guys on the team, although I was a little bit confused because occasionally a completely different batch of extras would show up in the back of team scenes and some of them were white sometimes, but sometimes they weren’t?
RSB: Yeah, it doesn’t seem like they had the same group of kids every day.
RLB: They definitely didn’t have the same group of kids every day, but you’d think they would’ve made an effort to make, like, them vaguely look like they could be the same group of kids, and they did not. Like there were at least two white guys I noticed who were completely different men. And they were not in every team scene. And that confused me because, like, why even have Channing Tatum in some of these scenes at that point? Like, he probably cost more!
RSB: We know that his dad is in prison.
RLB: We know that his dad is in prison. We know that he--he flirts with a girl once, in one of the few, like, attempts at humor in the movie, and I wanna put the emphasis on attempts, this movie does not have a sense of humor--
RSB: He has a sense of humor in it though, in general.
RLB: He has a sense of--
RSB: He seems really happy to be there.
RLB: Oh, totally! But that doesn’t mean the movie has a sense of humor.
RSB: No.
RLB: ‘Cause there’s a couple of times--there’s like a weird running--I don’t wanna call it a gag, cause it’s not, but a running thing where Samuel L. Jackson--Ken Carter, I should call him Carter, is talking to the team about his sisters?
RSB: Oh, we can get into that.
RLB: We will get into that. But there are moments throughout the movie where a character on the team will comment on something like that--it’s not just that, but it’s one of the better examples, and say things like--
RSB: What’s the deal with this guy?
RLB: Yeah, he’ll say something like “How many sisters does this guy have?” and I think that’s supposed to be a joke--
RSB: But what it actually is--
RLB: Like we’re all thinking the same question, so it’s just a legitimate question, and so it’s not funny, it’s just true.
RSB: But yeah, so Channing is one of the team members, and he’s one who--there are four, there are kinda four or five who are like the main team members--yeah, there’s five, and Channing’s kind of the only one of the five that doesn’t really have his own storyline. So there’s the one with the girlfriend, there’s the drug dealer one, there’s the coach’s son, there’s the one who can’t read, and then there’s Channing.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And his plot seems to be … he’s white.
RLB: He’s white, his dad is in prison--
RSB: And he has a coat.
RLB: He does have a coat. And that’s really all there is to say about Channing in terms of, you know, the basic pitch for his character, but some of the other notable cast members who I would say are more important and who at the time were more interesting performers since this is Channing’s debut--Ashanti--
RSB: Also her film debut--
RLB: Also her film debut but obviously she’s Ashanti, so--
RSB: It was a big deal--
RLB: It was a big deal. She’s great in this movie.
RSB: She’s really good in it.
RLB: She gives what I think is by far the most interesting and like unexpectedly nuanced performance--
RSB: I would agree--
RLB: As the pregnant girlfriend of one of the team members, Kenyon, who’s played by Rob Brown.
RSB: Rob Brown who we’ll see again in Channing’s other MTV film--this was an MTV Films production, and he and Rob Brown will reunite in Stop-Loss a few years later for MTV.
RLB: Octavia Spencer shows up, as the mother of another of the teammates, and she has a bunch of like very mediocre, terribly written scenes--
RSB: Terrible hair.
RLB: Yeah, I mean, the less said about whoever styled her the better. But she does manage to absolutely steal the scenes she’s in even though they’re not very good scenes.
RSB: I would agree. I do wanna talk a little bit about the director, Thomas Carter?
RLB: Sure!
RSB: Um, so Thomas Carter, he is a Black director, he started out as an actor and he actually started out on the television show The White Shadow, which has basically the same plot as Coach Carter. It’s not based on a true story but it is about a basketball team of inner-city roughnecks who get shaped up. So he was on that TV show and directed a few episodes of it and then kinda went on, and he then directed the film Swing Kids, which I’ve seen, and I think you’ve told me you haven’t seen?
RLB: I have not seen it.
RSB: So Swing Kids is a movie that takes place in Nazi Germany--
RLB: That was not what I was expecting. Oh, oh that’s where we’re going. All right.
RSB: Okay, so Swing Kids--
RLB: Buckling in.
RSB: Swing Kids takes place in prewar Nazi Germany. It’s about these teenagers who are obsessed with swing--with American swing music, and have kind of a secret swing dance club, because they’re not supposed to listen to Black or Jewish music, which most of the swing music was at the time, so they have to go into like the secret listening booth at the record store and get the records, and they have these dance parties, but their parents are pressuring them to become Nazis basically. And I watched it in history class in high school, and it’s not a terrible movie, but definitely when I realized that he had directed it, it slotted a lot home for me about Coach Carter, and kind of where he’s coming from with this idea of young people, and he also after that directed the Julia Stiles movie Save the Last Dance, which also has a lot of similar themes to Coach Carter.
RLB: That does contextualize it a little bit more for me.
RSB: Yeah. He kind of got Coach Carter off of the buzz of Save the Last Dance.
RLB: That makes a lot of sense actually.
RSB: Yeah. What he has done since--he hasn’t really directed a big feature since, he’s mostly become a television director, and he did direct a TV movie, which was Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Which again, I feel is interesting given the themes of Coach Carter.
RLB: I don’t even have any comment on that. It’s right there, we don’t need to--
RSB: It’s right there, it’s very surface-level, but--this movie came out pre-presidential run--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: What I’ll say is that it’s very clear why the same person would be interested in doing both Coach Carter and the Ben Carson story.
RLB: Yeah, and I think in terms of this movie’s politics and just overall attitude about--not even about any of the specific issues it tries to address but just about life.
RSB: About how one should live.
RLB: Yeah, how one should live, and just the general sort of inspirational narrative which we’ll talk more about when we talk about genre, it’s very--it’s right there. Obviously not everyone listening to the podcast, if anyone is, will have seen the film, but I think even from what we’ve said you can kind of gather the tone.The tone and the stance that it takes in favor of Coach Carter’s decisions and strategies and ideology, and I think that--
RSB: And one that that I think that we haven’t mentioned yet is that Ken Carter was very involved in the film, in the casting and then he was on set--I don’t know if it was literally every day but throughout the process, so this certainly was created under his auspices.
RLB: I think it’s notable that the subplot that’s sort of least relevant to the film is the subplot about Ashanti and the teenage pregnancy, but it’s also probably the most interesting part of the film, and it’s largely because it has nothing to do with Ken Carter--
RSB: With Ken, yeah. It could be its own film that has nothing to do with anything else going on. And probably should’ve been.
RLB: So what was your impression of this movie before watching it, because I don’t think either of us had watched it before this.
RSB: Neither of us had seen it, and I will, just for context for the audience, in January of 2005 Rachel and I were in fifth grade, so we would not have seen this in the theater I don’t think--I’m surprised that it was never shown to me, like, in middle school. Just having watched both Remember the Titans, The Blind Side, all that stuff--
RLB: I have not watched those films.
RSB: I envy you deeply.
RLB: I mean I’ve seen parts of Remember the Titans when it airs on Disney Channel.
RSB: I didn’t pay great attention to either of them, but both of those I was shown in class on a like, exams are over but we still have to have class kind of way. I’m kind of surprised this one never came up in that context. What I was expecting is something kind of in the vein of Remember the Titans and The Blind Side, which I think is pretty much what we get.
RLB: And that’s pretty much what I was expecting once I figured out what the movie was. Initially I was like--the title Coach Carter to me says, like, comedy about, like--
RSB: You were thinking of, like, Old School.
RLB: No, I was thinking of one of those things where someone isn’t good at their job…
RSB: Right, I get what you’re saying.
RLB: You know what I mean? So initially I didn’t know what genre to expect, but before I watched the film I had figured that out. But I knew nothing going in--I didn’t even know Samuel L. Jackson was in it until like right before I watched the movie. A lot of things made a lot more sense once I had some of that context, but like, yeah, my impression before watching was basically like, oh, that’s--that’s what this movie’s gonna be? But also I don’t love those, like, inspirational movies especially when they’re sports narratives--
RSB: No, neither do I--I generally don’t like to be forcibly inspired.
RLB: I like to be inspired by accident. That’s the only inspiration I will accept.
RSB: It’s like very CS Lewis of you, Surprised by Joy.
RLB: How dare you! I am nothing like CS Lewis.
RSB: Surprised By Joy is pretty good. For a Christian apologetic it's pretty good.
RLB: Anyway so back to Coach Carter was there anything that really interested or surprised you while you were watching the movie or after you watched the movie?
RSB: I think the biggest surprise is it's a movie that was released in 2005 for a general audience, it's super anodyne politically, and yet it has a whole plot about the ethics of abortion that doesn't come down with a solid opinion.
RLB: I was also really surprised by that, I was surprised that it even brought up that abortion happens--
RSB: It was very surprising especially because there's no reason for that to be in the movie. I don't know that it's super well tackled but it really does make a genuine effort at thinking about the perspectives of everyone involved when someone's considering abortion and that's rare even today--
RLB: In a feature film especially one that has a bunch of teenage characters in it--
RSB: Right.
RLB: I have not seen many films tackle it with that kind of--I don't necessarily wanna say open-mindedness, but willingness to acknowledge nuance.
RSB: Yeah, and it is open-mindedness in the sense that it doesn't treat whatever will happen as a preordained conclusion.
RLB: That's true--I did feel like there was a little bit of a judgmental tone, not about the abortion itself but about--
RSB: Getting pregnant
RLB: About getting pregnant in the first place.
RSB: I would agree.
RLB: And I think in some ways it's hard to separate--
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: That sentiment from attitudes about abortion. I also--I do think that like the teen romance was treated really sweetly--
RSB: Really sweetly and really seriously.
RLB: Yeah, really really, uh, I don't wanna say respectfully, cause that has like a weird connotation, but it took seriously that these are real people with real feelings even though they're still kids.
RSB: They're people who are almost adults. You know i almost do want to watch the movie that Ashanti and Rob Brown are in that's almost completely separate from this one and I do wanna note that that movie doesn't really exist.
[24:25]
RLB: The next thing that we wanna talk about is genre.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: So this movie obviously is an example of a mixture of genres, but also like a really well-defined sort of combined genre. But if you had to sum it up what single one-word genre would you put this movie in if you could only pick one, i believe you phrased it before as like the big blockbuster in the sky, you know what shelf is it on?
RSB: Yeah I'm gonna say inspirational.
RLB: All right.
RSB: I think that's more relevant to what it eventually does than any of the other terms I could use--sort of the secular equivalent of a faith-based movie.
RLB: Yeah, I think that's a really solid answer--um, I think I would go with sports.
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: Just because it definitely is a sports movie, although I do think that something I haven't said that was sort of my immediate response to the movie was, you know, given my inability to parse sports on screen I found it really damning that I understood almost everything that happened in this movie.
RSB: And I think just to elaborate why I didn't choose sports--I think at the end of the day this movie had more on a genre level in common with something like Freedom Writers or something like that than it does with a, with a school movie--than it does with a movie like The Sandlot, you know what I mean?
RLB: Yeah, and I think for me most of those inspirational teacher kind of movies end up falling under genre, like, generic drama--
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: If we're really boiling it down, and I think this is more of a sports movie than it is a drama--
RSB: I think that's valid.
RLB: Like it ends with a big sports game--
RSB: It does.
RLB: They lose, which is unusual, and that is also I think why I lean a little bit away from the inspirational thing just because what's weird is it's a biopic but it's not about a famous enough person for it to be a biopic--
RSB: And I think there's a way to do this movie where it is really a straight biopic and where it's about what brought Ken Carter to this moment and how the major decision he makes affects his life, and for whatever reason they don't use any of that material--
RLB: No interest in that whatsoever. And I do wonder if the real Ken Carter, like, didn't want them to address his personal life or his past or I don't know, um, cause it's--
RSB: It's very hard to tell.
RLB: It's a very strange absence in the movie, I think. As you said even his girlfriend is barely in it.
RSB: And I almost wonder even if there was material, like, because he's a businessman, he owns a sports store, and I know that the real Ken Carter was pretty proud of being a businessperson, he owned multiple businesses at one point, he's a former military person and I kind of wonder if there was more stuff about business and the military in there that test audiences thought was too Republican? I'm not joking.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Like i do wonder if that was in there as being like what brought him here and test audiences were like, “oh, so this is a Republican movie.”
RLB: I mean it already feels like a Republican movie.
RSB: But I do think, I do wonder if there was like some pushback from test audiences to some of those sort of bootstrappy elements or the military element.
RLB: So we've got these broad categories, what super-specific subgenre would you put this in if you got to sort of invent a genre?
RSB: Oh, I have my answer.
RLB: Combining these things and what other movies might fit in there with it--
RSB: I mean I have to put this in the genre of movies that do not do right by Octavia Spencer.
RLB: Correct.
RSB: And I think we all know how many movies are in that genre.
RLB: We know so many titles and it's so sad.
RSB: I'm being a little silly but I do think that movies that don't do right by Octavia Spencer weirdly have a lot in common and I think this has a lot in common with them.
RLB: I also think that many of them do fit into that inspirational movie category, um, and also the like problematic racial politics--um, it's also worth saying that she was--how many years?--eight years older--
RSB: Eight years older than her son--
RLB: Yeah, eight years older than they guy playing her son.
RSB: Both because she's young and he's old.
RLB: Yeah, um, I mean like the teenagers in this are played by--
RSB: Full adults--
RLB: Mid-to-late twentysomethings--
RSB: Full adults.
RLB: Like, they're played by people who are our age, basically. But it is telling that it is one of those movies where she's playing the mom of someone who is not even a decade younger than her.
RSB: Right.
RLB: The super-specific subgenre that I would put it in is actually movies about adults interacting with teens that can't decide if they're a movie for teens or adults.
RSB: That is super super valid.
RLB: I think that's an ongoing problem that Hollywood hasn't figured out how to solve yet, because Hollywood really loves a teacher--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: But they do not always love dealing with the fact that there's an entire classroom of students, and they don't love dealing with the fact that like once you've put more than one teen in a movie you do have to maybe think about teens as an audience--
RSB: And as people.
RLB: And as people, um, but then on the other hand you have movies like this where you know it's MTV Films producing it--
RSB: Exactly.
RLB: And they start to almost approach it from that teen audience perspective but then get so caught up in Ken Carter that--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: That the teen audience is clearly no longer even a factor in... in terms of sports films and high school films did you have any thoughts on how this adheres to or subverts those genre norms?
RSB: So I think the big thing that I just kept thinking throughout this movie is wow, white kids get Dead Poets Society and black kids get this.
RLB: That's fair.
RSB: Like, just because a lot of the critics did compare this to Dead Poets Society. They both have that aspect of “a teacher who doesn't play by the rules comes to a school and teaches the kids something totally different than the principal wants them to learn.”
RLB: One day I would love to watch a movie about a teacher who plays by the rules.
RSB: That is valid. And I'll confess that I also hate the movie Dead Poets Society. But Robin Williams in that movie comes in and the big thing that he's teaching the kids that the school doesn't want them to learn is to be an iconoclast and think for themselves, and this movie the big thing that Ken Carter is teaching that the school doesn't want them to learn is to, like, be super conventional and follow the rules.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And like I just felt like the racial dynamic there is very notable.
RLB: It is very notable, and I think even in the sort of well-known subgenre of white teachers with predominantly nonwhite classrooms there is even there a tendency to romanticize this idea of “thinking for oneself,” but when the students are white that means they get to be rebellious and when the students are not white suddenly that means them adopting whatever ideology is put in front of them by that teacher. And I obviously find that really troubling and sad but it's also just--it's weird that it hasn't been better subverted by now considering that there are several notable examples like this one of, you know, the inspiring teacher who isn't a white savior.
RSB: Sure.
RLB: While we're still on the topic of genre, do you think that the fact that we--aside from us disagreeing with the politics of the movie or with the character's strategies with his students--do you think that the inspirational narrative plays significantly worse than other similar movies like you know Dead Poets Society or Remember the Titans or things like that for an audience that's more receptive to inspirational narratives? Because we're really not the target audience in many ways for this--
RSB: It's true.
RLB: And we know that.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Like are there storytelling weaknesses that make it less effective, you know, from your perspective, even compared to those movies? Or do you think that an audience that likes those movies would still find something similar in it to enjoy?
RSB: I mean I will say I do think the fact that this isn't a savior narrative is a positive in this film instance.
RLB: Are you sure it's not though?
RSB: Well not a literal white savior narrative.
RLB: It's not a white savior narrative but it is a savior narrative.
RSB: that's what i meant to say. But on the other hand, this movie's plotting is fucking awful.
RLB: This movie's plotting and more importantly its structure and pacing.
RSB: Right, right, that's what I mean to say.
RLB: Cause I do think they're slightly separate issues--I think the conflict in this movie is not well articulated because it's a lot of people saying really valid things that go against whatever Ken Carter wants and then him saying, well, I'm Coach Carter so that's not how I'm doing it. Which is--it's strange as a screenwriting choice but it's not the same thing as the frankly even more, like, insurmountable structural issues where like the plot of this movie does not start for two hours. It is a two hour and sixteen minute movie and I did have the thought pretty early in the movie, like, this would be a much more fun like short film--
RSB: Right.
RLB: Then it is a, you know, over two hour movie.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And I do think that it should have been two hours shorter.
RSB: But we also get--we get about an hour and a half of a sort of conventional sports movie before we get into the whole inspirational teacher shutting down the gym narrative.
RLB: Yeah, and what's strange is before that it is this inspirational teacher thing but it's just about him getting the team in shape and them coming to respect him--
RSB: And become good at basketball--
RLB: And I don't think that it's necessarily totally unsuccessful at that, it's just that it doesn't have enough conflict or tension, or, you know, it doesn't give us enough real--
RSB: One thing that's kind of funny about this movie is that the old coach is a character in the movie and kind of is friends with Ken Carter and they really throw that guy under the bus.
RLB: They do.
RSB: Like both in terms of, like, this guy didn't have what it takes to like fix the kids but also just in terms of--Coach Carter arrives on the scene, exact same group of kids, exact same group of players, I think their best scorer even leaves, and they immediately become undefeated, and it's like, how fucking shitty was this previous coach?
RLB: It's really strange. There's just a lot there's a lot there that's very odd. But I did think like--I was like, wow, he had a weirdly easy time getting these kids in shape, and then I remembered that we were only like a half hour into the movie and the movie's about something completely different--
RSB: Right, yeah.
RLB: And then I was like, “Wait, are we still in the first act?”
RSB: We're still in the preamble!
RLB: Well, like, I continue to be in the “wait, are we still in the first act?’ phase of my questions for like, another hour. Nothing happens in this movie.
RSB: Nothing happens.
RLB: Which is wild, because they do manage to fill the screentime with stuff to watch, but nothing happens.
RSB: Absolutely nothing.
RLB: There's just no narrative tension. There's no--there's definitely no suspense, there's definitely no ambiguity about where it's going--
RSB: There's no internal change. All of the change that happens for the characters that do change--which Carter is not one of them--is external. It's all about them getting to behave and none of it--there's no implication even that they truly changed as people, more than that they learned how to behave.
RLB: Yeah, and I think the really strange thing about Ken Carter as a protagonist is just--not just the lack of change, but it's not clear what his motivation is. It's not clear who he is.
RSB: He explicitly says that, like, it's a bad decision for him to take this job because it pays very little and has a huge time commitment, and his girlfriend's like “You're gonna take it, aren't you?” and he's like “I am, guess that's me,” and there's never any explanation of, like, who he is that makes that the case.
RLB: No, and there is like a sort of--this trite speech at the end about how rewarding he's found the experience, which like is all well and good, but we don't see that happening as it's happening really.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And I do think that--
RSB: They do make much of the fact that he got $1500--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Which is kind of ridiculous, he should've gotten more.
RLB: No, he definitely should've. But it's a really--it's just a strange series of choices in terms of pacing and in terms of plotting, and the movie--the movie's just not interested in him being a character who has to reckon with anything internally. It's a movie where he comes in and says “I'm right.”
RSB: Mm-hmm.
RLB: And the movie then goes out of its way to illustrate times when that could not have been true and then immediately shoot them down as “no, actually he's right.”
RSB: Yup, he never even changes his mind on anything.
RLB: Nope, not a single thing, like he does not change his mind on even one thing.
RSB: And even when he learns new information--which happens pretty frequently in the movie--like at one point for instance the principal's like “You don't know about how resources are allocated to schools, do you?” And he's like “No, I don't know that,” and she teaches him and he's like “Wow, I didn't know any of that and I'm really glad I learned it,” but it doesn't change any of his actual opinions or beliefs--
RLB: Yeah, he then is like “So how are we gonna do this?”
RSB: Right, exactly, he's like, “Wow, that really changed my perspective, but my perspective is that we should do the exact same thing.”
RLB: Which, like, on some level I gotta respect.
RSB: It's just funny cause he does continually learn things and none of them change his mind. The one time I think that he actually shows a little bit of shame is when he asks the kids “What does your dad do, is that the life you want?” and Channing's like, “My dad's in prison.” He's like “I'm actually sorry that I brought that up,” which is kinda funny because when he started that I actually thought he was getting at “Are your dads in prison?”
RLB: Yeah, I do--I do have questions about like. what was he expecting?
RSB: Right.
RLB: Cause like he seems very convinced all of their dads--
RSB: Have shitty lives--
RLB: Are or should be in prison--
RSB: He's like, “You definitely don't wanna be like your dads but I'm sorry I brought up that yours is in prison.” Very weird.
RLB: Very weird. Very weird dynamic all around.
RSB: And also, like, the fact that he's like, “The one thing you don't wanna do is keep living in Richmond. Also I will live in Richmond forever, Richmond for life!”
RLB: It's weird. Before we move on I do wanna talk briefly about music in the film--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And the fact that this is an MTV Film--
RSB: An MTV Film--
RLB: What was your impression of the use of music in the film and, like, how that drove, for lack of a better way to put it, the like--the impetus for the film from MTV Films’ perspective--but also what the film decided to do outside of that core Coach Carter narrative--
RSB: Right.
RLB: To fill in things like that Ashanti storyline, and, you know, try to flesh out to varying degrees of success the world of these high schoolers--
RSB: I mean one thing is, it's a very odd marriage, because I feel like probably there is no MTV exec who could have a ten-minute conversation about music with Ken Carter without them, like, going to each other's throats.
RLB: I strongly agree. And I think, you know, the big thing that stood out to me with the movie is that there are a lot of moments that sort of showcase popular music from 2005 or, you know, the preceding years, and make a big deal out of it. and obviously with Ashanti in the movie there's an inherent, you know--music and dance have to play a role in the movie to at least a small extent. There is a scene where she has like this weird battle danceoff with this other girl who's trying to like grind on her boyfriend and it's--and it's set to the clean version of “Get Low”--
RSB: Yes, which I cannot believe.
RLB: But to me what really stood out was the juxtaposition of these very MTV in 2005, with all of the identity crisis that that entails--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Moment, with this bizarrely conventional to the point of almost parody score.
RSB: Yes
RLB: The like, soaring, you know, instrumental music whenever you're supposed to have a feeling was so funny to me.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I really did just think the score was, like, jarringly cliche. And also just intrusive, but it was also just--it was standard movie score.
RSB: Right.
RLB: Like it's almost like you could google stock music.
RSB: It's off the rack.
RLB: Yeah, I just found it strange. Not even negative, just strange.
RSB: That's totally real, but I just feel like there's a certain extent to which music is used--and I think we can talk a little bit about the fact that MTV doesn't exclusively play hiphop or even primarily play hiphop--or didn't, I should say--
RLB: Although in 2005 there was a lot of it--
RSB: There was a lot of it, but the film uses hiphop as sort of a proxy for showing anything about these kids' ... culture, I wanna say. Not culture in the sense of, you know, broader culture, but in the sense of what these kids are actually doing with their time when they're not on the basketball court. And like it--
RLB: It's shorthand.
RSB: It's shorthand, and like the problem is that's never tied into like the fact that Coach Carter wants them to live differently, because the music has to always be presented as a positive because this is an MTV Film--
RLB: Yeah and also the music--
RSB: Also the music rules. Like it's good.
RLB: The music is good.
RSB: It's very good.
RLB: I wish that it wasn't the clean version of “Get Low.”
RSB: Right but like--
RLB: But like--
RSB: That aside, like, I could listen to the soundtrack to this movie.
RLB: Yeah, I mean like it's fun music, and also it did like throw me back to 2005--
RSB: I know, it truly felt like I was at a summer camp dance.
RLB: Yeah, like, and like, the nostalgia of that is hard to separate from whether I actually like the music, um--it's not music that I typically would listen to but like, I, you know--
RSB: But it is definitely music that I--
RLB: I was a white kid listening to musical theatre in 2005.
RSB: It is definitely music that I had some fun middle school dance experiences to is what I will say.
RLB: Yeah, despite my relative lack of even exposure to most of this music at the time there's nostalgia there for me that I feel very fondly towards the soundtrack to this.
RSB: Definitely.
RLB: And I did find the--not just with the score, but even the visuals, like, stylistically there were things that felt very outdated even in comparison to that and also just cliche and weird and awkward.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Like the weird slow motion shots that occasionally peppered the movie.
RSB: Especially in basketball.
RLB: Yeah, and not for any real reason, because they're not especially important moments, they just--I guess someone thought they looked cool. And it feels like there are a lot of choices like that, and I think the music to some extent is one of them. But to another extent, like, I do actually think that the MTV involvement--
RSB: Was one of the most positive things--
RLB: Was one of the most positive things, because it meant that at least when they were shoehorning popular music into the movie they chose the right things.
RSB: It does, I mean, it actually does inject the sense of joy and exuberance that these kids' lives are missing--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And that certainly Ken Carter has no interest in having that be a part of their lives in any way. Ken Carter does not think that basketball is fun.
RLB: Yeah, the prominence of the soundtrack just was really striking to me, and especially knowing that it was an MTV Film because it just doesn't feel like a movie that has room for that kind of fun and joy--
RSB: Exactly.
RLB: Of like, you know, kids dancing and listening to fun music--
RSB: Like living their lives--
RLB: At a party, and the moments we got that, there is life to those scenes that is lacking elsewhere in the movie.
RSB: There's a sense that there is actually fun out there for these kids and not just choice between death or work.
RLB: Yeah, and I think like a strange thing that that brings to the movie is this sort of ability to look from the outside at what Ken Carter is doing and be like, why is he quite this hung up on his specific idea of what these kids' lives are like? Because like he also he could ask them ever--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: he asks Channing Tatum one time, like about his dad, and he gets the answer that he's in prison and then he never talks to Channing Tatum again.
RSB: He really doesn't actually! He's like, whoops, not going there.
RLB: Which is also kind of wild. I have what might be a stupid question.
RSB: Sure.
RLB: How did they lose?
RSB: How did they lose? They didn't score as many points as the other team.
RLB: I know, but weren't they undefeated for most of the movie?
RSB: Yeah, although a lot of their games are very close, including the game they lose.
RLB: Okay.
RSB: And it's also like, they go up against super basketball man.
RLB: Right, yeah, I mean the end of the movie was the first time where I was like oh, I'm lost because it's a sports film.
RSB: And so like--I will say possibly, probably my favorite sports movie is The Bad News Bears--the original, obviously--and that famously ends with the Bad News Bears losing their final game, and so it's very much an ending that I have a lot of affection and respect for when a sports movie chooses to end with a loss. And it's something that I'd like to see encouraged more often. I don't think this movie pulls it off.
RLB: No. And I also think it--even though I think it would've been weird for them to change the ending from what really happened, it feels very wrong for the script.
RSB: Right, because the thing is like--Bad News Bears is a super smart movie that's saying something really interesting about loss and this movie is just like, ehh, they're gonna lose now.
[45:36]
RLB: Um, so, gender in the movie, I wanna start off with kind of a, you know, classic question for us, which is: Who or what--it doesn't have to be a person, it can be any element of the movie--is doing The Most in regards to gender in this movie?
RSB: Yeah, so there are many potential answers here, um, and I almost went with that red thong--
RLB: It's up there.
RSB: Which we will need to talk about, but I think I'm gonna actually say Rob Brown, who I think is giving as Kenyon Stone just a really nuanced performance in regards to masculinity and impending fatherhood, um, much more nuanced than the film deserves.
RLB: Yeah, and I do wanna say, um, on that note that Ashanti's performance is really exceptional. Rob Brown's performance is I think less obvious, but--
RSB: Yeah, I mean, he's playing support to her, but he does it with a lot of heart.
RLB: A lot of heart and a lot of subtlety that I really appreciated.
RSB: But I'm thinking about this scene where the two of them babysit her niece or nephew and kind of go back and forth about how she feels that he doesn't have the experience in actually caring for a baby that he needs to have and he feels that she doesn't have the experience in, like, running a household that she needs to have, and one of the things that's kind of notable about that is like, you sort of wonder if his parents have trained him to run a household and not care for a baby and her parents have trained her to care for a baby but not run a household, but for the two of them those are duties they wanna share, and they're kind of bringing forward this new generation.
RLB: I thought their relationship was really notably a partnership.
RSB: Very egalitarian, yeah.
RLB: For a high school couple, there was a sense that they were making decisions together, they were envisioning a future together where they both had, you know, jobs to do in terms of their relationship and their family.
RSB: Yeah, I mean, it's notable that in that conversation there's never a point where they're like well, it's fine because Ashanti will just take care of the baby and Rob Brown will just get a job, it's always “we both need to get jobs and we both need to know how to care for a baby.”
RLB: Yeah, and it's always a--there's this push-pull of “I'm not ready for this thing” versus “You're not ready for this thing” where they're both recognizing both of those things--
RSB: And they both seem to genuinely wanna see each other grow for each other's sake and not just because it would make life easier for them--
RLB: Yeah, I just thought it was a really loving, sweet relationship that had conflict for real reasons and not just because oh, teenagers and their drama, which is sort of the cheap way--
RSB: Definitely.
RLB: That a similar relationship is treated in most movies.
RSB: And despite the fact that this movie does kind of in a very 2005 way treat having a pregnancy as a teenager as desperately immature, their actual relationship is deeply mature.
RLB: Yeah, in a way that I almost think the filmmakers didn't think about.
RSB: I agree.
RLB: There's a--
RSB: I think that they thought that we would be judging them for being pregnant as much as they were and so it didn't matter what the rest of their personalities were.
RLB: Yeah, and so it almost felt like an accident.
RSB: And I don't think the movie intended for it to have such a nuanced view of teenage pregnancy--
RLB: I don't think the movie intended to have such a nuanced view of teenage pregnancy, but I also don't think the movie intended to have such a nuanced view of their relationship--
RSB: I agree.
RLB: And I think that that was something that, you know, as you said, I think that the filmmakers thought we would bring a level of judgment to the table already that they didn't need to hammer it home. Which is weird, because they felt the need to hit us over the head with a sledgehammer with everything else in the movie.
RSB: And again, this is part of how that almost feels like a second movie that's grafted onto this one.
RLB: It does, and it also again is important that it doesn't concern Ken Carter--
RSB: Right.
RLB: Which allows for a different strategy.
RSB: I mean for all we know this is a second movie that one of the screenwriters had worked on, like had--
RLB: It's possible
RSB: Had already had this in their pocket or something, Anyway is that your same answer or do you have a different answer for who's doing the most genderwise?
RLB: Ah, no, I--I agree with that but I did wanna say like it is mostly a product of the performances and not a product of the script that--
RSB: Yeah no I agree
RLB: It reads quite as you know notably interesting and complicated and it like in a positive way
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: The script I don't think is terrible or anything in those cases I just think that Ashanti and Rob Brown are both bringing a lot to the table there.
RSB: I agree.
RLB: And I do think that, like, the teen pregnancy storyline is the most certainly the most three-dimensional portrayal of a woman existing in the movie--
RSB: Certainly.
RLB: And I do also think that, like, the gender dynamics are interesting, and I think that--
RSB: And really positive--
RLB: They are! They are positive I think, like there's not a “I'm a high school athlete, I have to be this, you know, hyper-masculine guy who can't have any feelings,” like he's he's playing with these baby shoes that she brings him and saying how cute they are and, you know, she's like “yeah, I have good taste.” It's really cute.
RSB: They treat each other as equals. And then there's this scene where she's talking with her friends about what to name the baby and she's like “oh, I think I'm gonna name her Harmony,” and they're like, “oh, what does he think?” and she's like “oh, he wants a boy,” but it's like--it's fun that they've talked about it, you know what i mean?
RLB: Yeah, and I don't even know if I'd say, like, it's notable that they treat each other as equals, because I don't know that we even see enough of their relationship to know that--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: But they treat each other in a way that makes it clear they can be vulnerable with each other in a way that I think is unusual at that age--
RSB: I agree.
RLB: And especially in fiction.
RSB: And they do this incredible job of making that relationship feel lived-in, despite the fact that we get zero background for it other than “there's a baby.”
RLB: Yep, yep. No, I really--it's a remarkable subplot mostly because like--it's very rare that I'm like oh, yeah, this unrelated romantic subplot in a mediocre movie is my favorite thing.
RSB: Right.
RLB: That's usually the opposite of what I'm saying.
RSB: This thing that clearly should not have made it into the final film like--
RLB: Yeah, normally I'm like “get this gratuitous heterosexuality out of my movie!”
RSB: Right.
RLB: It's a little bit different in this context than it is in some things ... It's the most humanizing thing in the movie, I think, about--
RSB: Anyone.
RLB: The ensemble, not just about these characters.
RSB: Yeah, and it makes also the school feel lived in, like in the sense that--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Because we do see these characters who aren't on the basketball team, and they interact on campus like--it almost makes me feel like there is a world of the school in the way that schools are, you know, they are these little worlds. This movie completely fails to create that except in these very few scenes where we kind of see Ashanti and Rob Brown hang out on the quad.
RLB: Yeah, and it does make me feel that I can extrapolate from that and say yeah, there are other things going on in these students' lives. And I don't think the movie necessarily needs to go much further than that in terms of creating that--
RSB: But I do want to feel that Richmond High School is a high school and not the setting of a basketball conflict.
RLB: Yeah, and like the problem is like, every time that they almost get where they need to go in terms of that stuff with just this really well-rendered subplot they take two steps back with, like, Ken Carter doing something bizarre.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And then everyone else being like “we don't like this” and him being like “but I'm doing it anyway” and then them being like “fine.”
RSB: “We must follow everything you say.” It's almost like he just, like--nobody is willing to stand up to him because he's so confident even though they all disagree with him.
RLB: Yeah, and I do wanna talk about that in terms of gender.
RSB: Sure, sure.
RLB: Because I think that, um--
RSB: Sorry--
RLB: Something that I wanna bring up is that we've talked a little bit about how his girlfriend just appears a few times in the movie but like has zero personality or character development--we know nothing about their relationship--
RSB: They're intending to go to Mexico, Rachel.
RLB: Sure. Um, but what's strange is there's--
RSB: I think--I think it was Roger Ebert who was like “they clearly cut a scene where he doesn't go to Mexico with her so he can coach the team.”
RLB: Yeah, yeah, they definitely did. like 100%.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But they also--there's a weird feeling that the movie doesn't know what to do with the presence of a second woman in Coach Carter's life. Who is the principal--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: She's his boss--and she is his boss, right?
RSB: She is his employer. It's unclear if she's his boss.
RLB: Yeah, like it's unclear if she has any authority over him.
RSB: It's also unclear, like--in real life the school had an athletic director, who was his boss, and it's unclear if that's true in the movie. I also wanna just quickly bring up--unlike most of the team members, the principal's name was changed for the movie. And also in real life the principal was super supportive of him and was pretty much chill with it.
RLB: I mean in the movie the principal is super supportive of him and chill with it as soon as she's gotten her objections out of the way. Like she states her objections, which are very reasonable, such as “I don't want you assigning the teachers extra work”--
RSB: And “I'm focusing on the students who actually have a chance of going to college”--
RLB: Yeah, and “You don't know how resources are allocated to high schools,” and things like that, you know, really reasonable things--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And then as soon as he's like--
RSB: And i feel like she's actually--I do wanna say, is also one of those very lived-in performances where I can extrapolate kind of a history for her--
RLB: For sure.
RSB: That she is this hard-working principal.
RLB: No, she does a very nice job with very--out of very little. It's a testament in and of itself that, like, she holds her own in several scenes alone with Samuel L. Jackson, who like, we haven't talked about it so much, but he really is, like, a force of nature as an actor. Like, the guy--the fact that the guy can make me interested in watching his performance in this role of all roles is just like such a testament to how gifted he is and how charismatic he is, because this is a man who like--the only personality trait--the only personality trait we have to go off of is that he has zero personality.
RSB: Right. And I do--I do just wanna pop in and--the actor who plays the principal is named Denise Dowse.
RLB: I think that she--she occupies this very strange role in the movie where in a movie where they didn't feel weirdly beholden to Ken Carter having this girlfriend who is never an actual factor in anything that happens in the movie, like, they obviously would've made her a love interest--
RSB: Right.
RLB: Because they don't know what else to do with her and so it feels like every scene between them--they're like they're flailing around trying to find a way to write conflict that's not sexual tension.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And what they resort to is having her almost start a conflict with him and then backing away because she's like, “I can't be your love interest therefore we can’t have a real conversation about anything substantial.” It's weird.
RSB: And i think this movie also has a lot of disdain for the profession of school administration--
RLB: It does. Which I can see where they're coming from but I also--
RSB: It's not as if that's an unusual take--
RLB: No--
RSB: But--
RLB: But it's also--
RSB: It feels a little icky given that school administration is represented as a woman and every--you know, and coaching is represented as a man.
RLB: And also that school administration is represented by this principal who is, you know, is clearly committed to doing right by her students and is making points about what's in their best interest.
RSB: He's arguing with those points and he has some valid points--
RLB: Sure.
RSB: When she says, you know, for some of these kids high school basketball is going to be, you know, the high point of their lives basically and he says that that's the problem--
RLB: It shouldn't be.
RSB: That's the problem!
RLB: I agree with him!
RSB: I absolutely agree with him, I just think his strategy for dealing with that is bizarre.
RLB: It's very weird. And I, I'm not saying she has a better alternative, just that we don't actually know. Something that's important to point out I think as well is that the principal is a woman, the school board as portrayed in the movie is women--
RSB: There's one man on it but it's led by a woman.
RLB: Does he even vote on screen?
RSB: He does vote and he's referred to as the parent representative on the board.
RLB: All but I think two of the parents who we ever see in the movie--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And the vast majority of the lines of dialogue given to the parents is moms.
RSB: Yes, particularly two of them.
RLB: Particularly two of them--Octavia Spencer is one of them obviously.
RSB: Although I would note that the teachers are pretty largely male--
RLB: Yes.
RSB: Which is, I think another thing that we can talk about a little bit--
RLB: We can, but the teachers are never actually involved in criticizing Coach Carter.
RSB: Yeah, the teachers are largely chess pieces for Coach Carter and the principal.
RLB: Exactly. I just wanted to point out that with the exception of a couple of men in the community who physically attack Coach Carter over his decision to bench the team, everyone who criticizes his decision to shut down the gym and the basketball team's practices and everything is a woman.
RSB: But i do think there is a certain extent to which--I think that the, again, white screenwriters, who include verbatim statistics about the school-to-prison pipeline, I think read the statistics about negative outcomes for adult men in this community and decided that it would be unrealistic for there to be adult men in the community? Because there really aren't any.
RLB: Yeah, and I mean, I don't wanna read too much into how they interpreted that whole issue, but I found it really strange that every time someone has what to me sounded like a reasonable criticism of Ken Carter's strategies, or his ideas, or even just his attitude it's a woman who then has to kind of make nice with him and apologize to him, or at least--
RSB: And admit that.
RLB: Be proven wrong.
RSB: Or at least admit, like, “I still disagree with you, but of course you are a genius and god, like, and also. and of course this is your decision ultimately and you're the authority here.” It was just really striking too, especially considering that his son is on the team like clearly there are fathers involved--
RLB: It's also like, there are men, there are male teachers as you said and whatever--the people speaking in opposition to what he's doing who have any personal investment either professionally or familially are women and I, I just found it very obvious and very, like, it made me even more confused about not knowing where his girlfriend landed on all of this, we don't know anything about that--
RSB: It's also super unclear if the girlfriend even is the son's mom.
RLB: Very unclear.
RSB: Like at one point he does refer to the son as the girlfriend's second-favorite guy or something like that but that could be a stepson, you know what i mean, like there's no--
RLB: And I thought he said wife a couple times in the film but he did say girlfriend you're right--
RSB: He does say girlfriend, and, and I don't think they're ever in a scene together, the two of them.
RLB: Yeah, it's strange.
RSB: It's very weird. But like I also do wanna say, like, speaking of women and their opinions on him, it's unclear that Ashanti knows he exists.
RLB: Oh, she definitely doesn't know he exists, and thank God for that.
RSB: I mean, sure, but like and like again--I talked about this a little bit earlier, but the people I continually thought of throughout this movie are the girls' basketball team, and just like, how they're reacting to this. And I actually, when I was looking at the real incident, did find a quote from a member of the girls' basketball team who had a 3.7 and was in favor of the lockout, because she thought it wasn't fair that the boys weren't held to the same standard that the girls were. Which is an interesting perspective to put in here! Note that in the real world he did not literally padlock the gym and the girls were allowed to practice, which is not necessarily the case here. It's unclear the school has a girls basketball team in the movie.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: It's unclear where they practice or when they practice, it's unclear if they're successful and you'd think--and something that I kind of would've liked to see is, like, a man on the street montage of how other members of the school community thought of this. And at no point do we hear, like, a perspective either from the girls basketball team being like, “Why did anyone care, we have a game this weekend,” or being like “Yes, this is great, I have a 3.7,” or anything like that, you know. And I think we can then segue into the fact that this movie has--what this movie's idea of women teaching someone to play basketball is--
RLB: Yeah, elaborate on that.
RSB: So there's an early scene in the movie when he's finally like okay, we're gonna play some basketball, you've run enough suicides--this will prove to be untrue, he will make them run many more suicides--and he starts his big speech where he's gonna actually teach them basketball by saying, “Everything I know about basketball I learned from women,” and there's kind of a nervous giggle, and I was like okay, he's throwing them off by saying that and now he's gonna like maybe make them play against the girls team because the girls team is good or something, or at least like talk about--and he says, “Yeah, I have this sister,” I'm like oh, his sister is like a WNBA player or something like that and he's gonna throw them off their game--
RLB: Spoilers: it's not that.
RSB: It's not that. So then the actual way that his sister is relevant is that she's really annoying. So when they need to guard on court they need to act like his annoying sister--
RLB: Then he later has an anecdote about a different sister--
RSB: Well, first he has an anecdote about an ex who is really evil so when they need to like, kinda like do a dirty move on court he's gonna call out his ex's name. And like all of their plays are named after, like, women's annoying behaviors--
RLB: It's--yeah, and that's when we get, like, one of the kids saying “How many sisters does he have?” Cause it really seems like he has an infinite number of sisters.
RSB: It does. But like the funny thing is, is that the way that women are relevant, the way that women can teach a man to play basketball is not because many women are good at basketball, it's because women are annoying as fuck and sometimes as a basketball player you have to act annoying.
RLB: To be fair he's probably not wrong but--
RSB: It's a weird thing to do.
RLB: It's really weird.
RSB: It's the weirdest thing.
RLB: And to be clear I'm--I mean I don't--I mean he's not wrong in the sense that, like, I think that women are annoying and men are annoying. Everyone's annoying.
RSB: But like, the craziest thing about all this is that, like, the Annoying Women method of basketball coaching, like it's an overnight--turns a loser team into an undefeated team. Like the big secret that gets the boys good at basketball, as opposed to like, good at school is not the academic contracts, it's annoying women.
RLB: Yeah, it's anecdotes about annoying women.
RSB: Like, this is the secret to basketball is to hate women. Like that's literally how the film presents it. Which is just fascinating.
RLB: Yeah it is, and like, I don't even--I don't even have much more to say than it's fascinating.
RSB: It's super fascinating, and like--Lisa Leslie attended the premiere of this movie. And I really wonder how she felt about that scene, and if I were her I would've walked out.
RLB: That's valid.
RSB: Like if I were Lisa Leslie and I was invited to a basketball movie premiere and they were like, “Women taught me everything about basketball by being annoying,” I would've left. Like I just would've been like, “I'm Lisa fucking Leslie, guys.” So the women athletes that are in this movie are cheerleaders.
RLB: Yes, and I think that we should--
RSB: Many, many cheerleaders.
RLB: Talk about the cheerleaders and also by extension about women's bodies in this movie--
RSB: Yeah, absolutely, and I will note--talking about cheerleaders in the abstract does not have to segue to talking about sexualized women's bodies, but in this movie it sure does.
RLB: Yeah, I don't think it always does, but I do think that in movie's it's generally the case.
RSB: Well, especially because none of the cheerleaders are characters. Like it's not even like Ashanti's a cheerleader, which they easily could've done, because it's not like Ashanti can't dance.
RLB: Or they could've at least made like--
BOTH: Adrienne Baillon!
RSB: Who is a great dancer! Like, she could've been a cheerleader. No, the cheerleaders are completely unnamed characters.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: There are three teams worth of cheerleaders in this movie and none of them have names or any lines and their midriffs get zoomed in on a lot.
[1:05:20]
RLB: A lot.
RSB: A lot.
RLB: A lot.
RSB: There's also like--I was very uncomfortable in the one scene where they're, like, playing the white school, and the black cheerleaders are wearing these, like, shorts and mini tops, and the white cheerleaders are wearing like traditional cheerleader dresses.
RLB: Yeah, I noticed that too.
RSB: It's weird.
RLB: It was very weird.
RSB: Generally this movie loves a cheerleader midriff.
RLB: It does, yeah. And I--you know, to be fair, most movies and pop culture in general in 2005 loved a midriff--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: But it's like, very different from the way that anyone else in this movie is filmed.
RSB: Absolutely. And there are choices, you know, like Samuel L. Jackson could've been the sexual icon in this movie--
RLB: I mean could he?
RSB: Well, he's not unattractive, is what i'm saying. But also like, the boys aren't eye candy at all, and it's interesting because--
RLB: Mmm--
RSB: Well, deliberately--
RLB: I would argue that with Channing it's deliberate, but we'll get into that, so--
RSB: We'll get into that.
RLB: The, the boys are mostly not eye candy, but there are a couple of locker room scenes that I do think slightly lean towards--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: Like, someone on set was like, “Let's throw a bone to the girls watching the movie,” kind of thing.
RSB: Right but like none--
RLB: In a weird way.
RSB: In a weird way. But like, none of the adult women in the movie are sexualized either--
RLB: No.
RSB: But all the teen girls are sexy times.
RLB: It's--
RSB: And I say quote unquote “teens,” because they are adults--
RLB: Not as old as the boys playing the basketball team, certainly, but still--
RSB: But it's still--
RLB: Glee cast age.
RSB: And as, as we can discuss that it's unclear if this is a movie for adults or children--to the extent this is a movie for adults it's very weird how interested it is in the bodies of teenage girls.
RLB: I mean is it?
RSB: Well--
RLB: That--
RSB: Okay, weird is a polite way of putting it, let me put it that way.
RLB: I mean, yeah, I'm not gonna disagree that it's distasteful. But it's not at all out of the ordinary for the, you know, time and type of movie that it was.
RSB: Sure.
RLB: Again, like, it's a few years after American Beauty, like it's definitely in the tail end of a stretch of movie years where it was basically considered fine to photograph teenage girls like that.
RSB: “Underage women are objectively what you're here to see!”
RLB: I mean granted, people still act like that, but at least they've gotten a little bit subtler.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Well, not always, but like a lot of the time usually at least there's a cursory effort to like contextualize it.
RSB: Right, and I think like, here it's straight up because these cheerleaders have no role in this story whatsoever. Like not even in the basketball scenes--there's no like--the cheerleading, the cheerleading moments, the cheerleading shots don't really correspond--and maybe you didn't notice this--they don't really correspond to the arcs of the games at all.
RLB: I did actually notice that.
RSB: Yeah, that's arguably the role of cheerleaders in actual sports games--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Is to kind of make the game narrative clear to the audience, and they're not used for that purpose here at all. We only see them like in halftime or before games. They're solely used to put something pretty on the screen.
RLB: I would agree with that.
RSB: It's like a Laura Mulvey field day, not to like be a pretentious bitch--
RLB: Laura Mulvey Field Day is my new band name.
RSB: That's a great band name.
RLB: Right, like we should start that band.
RSB: I'm very in. And then of course later on we get the most egregious example of this at the hot teen party where two girls strip off to get in the pool and the camera fully zooms right in on their crotches--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Like I genuinely exclaimed.
RLB: I was just like, “Oh, we really have to do this right now?” Like this is not relevant to anything.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Not that most of the movie was relevant to, you know, the plot of the movie, cause there barely is one.
RSB: So there aren't comparable scenes of men because I think, going off Laura Mulvey field day thread, I don't think it would necessarily be possible for there to be comparable scenes of men. But there aren't eye candy scenes of men in general and the one man the film pretty interestingly--because he's not famous at the time for this--who does have a kind of eye candy role is Channing. So we can bring it back to Channing.
RLB: I do, before we move on totally to the Channing of it all, kind of wanna talk just in terms of gender a little bit more about the father/son relationship with Ken Carter and Damien--is that his name?
RSB: Damien Carter played by Robert Ri'chard.
RLB: Who gives a very odd performance, but one I found very strangely compelling. Like, I always wanted to see what he was doing, like in the group shots, like what was up with him, because like--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I could not figure out his deal.
RSB: It's also, like, super unclear if he gets along with the other players or not.
RLB: It's very unclear, it--nothing about him is clear.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But I just think that there's something very odd to me, just when thinking about masculinity in the film, um, which like, it's a sports movie, so that's a big thing in a genre that has so much tied up in masculinity and in father-figure relationships, whether or not they're literal father/son relationships--
RSB: And just in general in the movement from boy to man, which is namedropped explicitly in the movie.
RLB: I think there's something very odd about this strange spin on the, like, “that's not my dream dad it's yours” trope, which in this movie takes the form of, like, probably ten minutes into the movie the kid drops out of the Catholic school--
RSB: Without telling his dad.
RLB: Without telling his dad and signs his dad's contract to play at Richmond--
RSB: With like extra shit in--
RLB: With like extra strict requirements for himself--
RSB: And I also wanna note, again, like it's so weird that we don't know whether Ken Carter is a single father. Especially because, like, him being a single father would be a really interesting dimension in the character, and they're so allergic to giving the character any interesting dimensions.
RLB: Yeah, it's strange that once that happens there's very little interaction directly between Ken Carter--
RSB: Right--
RLB: And Damien. And it's most notable because he does start to form these, y'know, stern father figure mentor relationships with some of the other boys. And it's especially obvious when, y'know, he does have this scene where he opens the door late at night to one of them crying on his doorstep begging him to put him back on the team, and Damien is watching this happen and doesn't say anything and it's never commented on again.
RSB: It sort of feels like they're roommates.
RLB: Yeah. And it--also it's very strange to me that there's never--I almost wonder if there was a cut subplot where Damien was like, “You treat these kids like they're your kids and not me,” but it doesn't even feel like that. It feels like he simultaneously resents his dad for making choices for him, like putting him at the Catholic school in the first place, while also doing absolutely everything in his power to impress his dad and live by his rules and emulate him, very literally you know, following in his footsteps, to become this like record-breaking player at the same high school where Ken Carter once played.
RSB: Right.
RLB: It's so strange. I could not tell--I could not tell where they landed on.
RSB: But then also speaking of, like, what's missing with him, like--so y'know, one of the bigger scenes with Damien is he shows up to school in a suit on his first day. For unclear reasons, cause it's not even the first day of school, so it's like--it's not even like “oh, i believe in being formal for important days,” he just is wearing a suit, and the rest of the team spots him and like razzes him about it. And it kind of seems like his throughline is gonna be “oh, I'm like kind of the nerdy almost effeminate guy and the rest of the team is making fun of me for that and I have to--they have to learn to accept me but I have to learn to be more like them.” But none of that ever happens.
RLB: Nope.
RSB: And it's never really revisited at all.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Like the only thing that--the only time that it is revisited is that it's mentioned that he does have the grades to stay on the team, and he's one of the handful of students who are being collectively punished even though they do go to class, and he helps the other students learn, but he's only one of a group of those kids. It's not even like he's the one weird kid who goes to class
RLB: It's just a really strange thing and i don't think we're gonna reach any like, y'know, conclusions, beyond just observing the strangeness of it, but when you compare it even to something as silly as like the arc in High School Musical where his dad is the basketball coach--
RSB: And there's even--there's no resentment of the fact that he's a freshman who gets a ton of playing time and his dad is the coach. Like there's barely even acknowledgment of it. But let's talk about Channing.
[1:14:28]
RLB: In terms of Coach Carter what do we think is going on with Channing? Specifically in terms of gender and genre but also just in his performance.
RSB: So generally the question “What's Channing doing?” is not the kind of question that has a one-sentence answer, it's the kind of question that we then--that launches a discussion. But in this instance I do think there's a very quick answer--What's Channing doing? He's having a fuckton of fun.
RLB: He is.
RSB: He's having much fun and more fun than arguably anyone else.
RLB: Yeah, he seems to really enjoy himself in this.
RSB: He's having the time of his life.
RLB: Yeah, like he's having a good time with his costars, and he's having a good time I think, playing a character who--it doesn't require much from him but the moments he gets to do something fun emotionally--
RSB: It's definitely possible that he thought this was his one and only chance to be in a movie, we don't know--you know, i haven't seen anything about that--and he seems to be making the most of it.
RLB: He really--he does just seem to be having a good time and he seems to really get along with his costars which--
RSB: He does.
RLB: May be fake--
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: Because he is a very good actor.
RSB: But he absolutely does seem to be playing this role of like the heart and soul of the guys.
RLB: Yeah, he's playing this role as just this dude who has a bunch of friends he likes playing basketball with and I find it really charming.
RSB: Yeah, guy who's always up to hang out with his basketball buddies.
RLB: Yeah and where there's--
RSB: Sometimes wearing an enormous coat.
RLB: Yeah, let's talk about the coat.
RSB: Let's talk about the coat, because I've been waiting for hours to talk about the coat.
RLB: Yeah, I mean--
RSB: So Channing basically has three costumes in this movie. One of them is his basketball uniform, one of them is a towel, which we'll also be talking about, and one of them is like this enormous wool coat with a huge collar that swallows him up and clearly looks like it should be worn in like 1990s Boston not 2000s Richmond, California.
RLB: I believe earlier I referred to it as something you'd put on Javert in a community theater production of Les Mis.
RSB: Right and I think I referred to it--
RLB: Like it's not a good costume for that, but it's what you would use.
RSB: Right.
RLB: Because it's there.
RSB: Right, like you got it at Goodwill but it'll pass. And I think I referred to it as just like--he's clearly, there's maybe two days a year in Richmond that you could wear that coat, but he's wearing it in every scene and it's fascinating to me.
RLB: I love that coat and I love that in a movie with a known coat-wearing guy--
RSB: Right.
RLB: Which is how I would describe Samuel L. Jackson's career.
RSB: I would agree.
RLB: Like look, I also do think that while we're talking about Channing in circa this section of the podcast we should also talk about, like, the biggest star in this movie--
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: Who is Samuel L Jackson, who later works with him two more times--hopefully more than that honestly--
RSB: I would love Samuel--they didn't really work together in Kingsman.
RLB: No.
RSB: Samuel L. Jackson is in one scene of Golden Circle and it's a flashback.
RLB: He should be in other movies with him.
RSB: I would agree with that, but ones that are not directed by Quentin Tarantino preferably.
RLB: Yeah. But I think we should talk a little bit about Samuel L. Jackson just as it comes up. And I think one of the things is that man wears the hell out of a costume, and Channing Tatum is also someone who I think in some ways has made a name for himself of, like, being able to just like, wear the hell out of clothes--
RSB: He has--
RLB: Or non-clothes.
RSB: That's what i was gonna say, is that Channing is one of the better nude actors of our--of our time.
RLB: He is.
RSB: Or not even nude. He's one of the better partially nude actors of our time.
RLB: He really is.
RSB: Like he's really good at it in a way that is very much a skill. Channing is really really good at deshabille.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And at knowing how to do that and in a way that I think some of the great costume-wearers, like Samuel L. Jackson couldn't handle--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And I think Channing--while he does have some great fully clothed moments, like this coat, like his sailor suit in Hail, Caesar!
RLB: Like his hat in Kingsman--
RSB: Absolutely … he's not i think one of the great costume-wearers.
RLB: That's true.
RSB: He's good but he's not one of the great costume-wearers. But he's one of the absolutely great partially dressed actors.
RLB: He's so good at it.
RSB: He's a trained stripper.
RLB: Oh yeah, for sure, and that's a relevant factor, but like i do think it's notable that he can put on costumes that seem insane and make it work. Like he will be able to wear Gambit's little headband and make it look normal.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: Like i'm sorry if you can dress like Caine Wise you can wear anything in a movie and I'm not gonna like, be like “What are you doing?”
RSB: Well, sure.
RLB: I wanna get back to the coat a little--
RSB: Sure, sure, sure.
RLB: Because we didn't really talk about it.
RSB: Sure, sure, sure.
RLB: So like, he's wearing this enormous coat in like, almost every scene where he's not in his basketball uniform--
RSB: Right.
RLB: And it's this bizarre choice but it--
RSB: Where did they find that thing, do you think?
RLB: I don't--I don't know.
RSB: I'm gonna look up who the costume designer was.
RLB: But there's this sense that he almost is supposed to have an arc that they just forgot to put in the movie.
RSB: It does feel a bit like that.
RLB: They have a couple of moments where he almost has a personality--like I said, there's that moment where he flirts with that girl and he, like, forgets her name and it's supposed to be, you know. funny. But even then it's like, because Channing Tatum is just there having a good time it's like, charming instead of gross, because he's just being silly.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: He's just like--
RSB: He's having a good time!
RLB: And it's like--it's fully at his expense, and he plays right into that in a way that's like--he's very game for, like, not being taken very seriously in these early roles I think, and I love that about him. I love that he just, like, he's fun to watch because he's having fun and he does not seem to be taking himself that seriously. And I don't know, did you have anything else to say about the coat besides, like, it's enormous?
RSB: It's enormous, it's black wool, it doesn't fit the genre at all.
RLB: No.
RSB: I'm looking up the costume designer now. Her name is Debrae Little, and she seems to now be an interior designer. I think this is the same woman--oh, she does Game of Thrones-inspired residential design.
RLB: I love her.
RSB: She designed the costumes for Smart House. I don't know where she got that coat. I don't know why she put it on Channing. But it truly was inspired.
RLB: Yeah, there's just these little touches--there's almost characters, you know? And channing's performance is, I think, just a series of moments with, like, almost a character.
RSB: Right.
RLB: And I do think that some of the other guys on the team get to be characters a little bit more.
RSB: Yes definitely.
RLB: Channing is basically like a coat and a torso.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But he smiles and he's real cute!
RSB: Oh yeah, you can see why this wasn't his only chance to be in a movie.
RLB: You can see how this, like, I don't think that I would call it a big break--
RSB: Except in the sense that it was first role--
RLB: Sure.
RSB: Which, like, is always kind of a big break. But can we briefly talk about the fact that this movie was cast by Sarah Halley Finn?
RLB: Yeah, elaborate on that, but give some context for people who don't know.
RSB: Right, so Sarah Halley Finn is a casting director who went on to do a lot of the casting for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she cast The Mandalorian, she does a lot of big projects like that that are kind of famous for their fun casting, and so it was really fun for me to see that she was--she was the co-casting director on this one, and it was earlier in her career so it doesn't surprise me, but it was really fun for me to see that she was somehow involved in Channing getting his first movie role.
RLB: Yeah, and it really makes sense.
RSB: It makes a lot of sense if you look at the actors who she's kind of championed, if you look at the actors that she kind of has taken a chance on, when maybe another casting director wouldn't have, it's not surprising to me that Channing Tatum would be among that group.
RLB: So we've touched on it but where does this fit into Channing's career and his offscreen image? We've touched on kind of the idea that Channing Tatum has a lot of contradictions within his offscreen image and even within his career and his choices of films, and we can talk about the idea of typecasting in a little bit and the archetypes that he was playing early on, but I do think that there's something interesting about the fact that he started off in this film where he's basically a non-entity and a couple films later almost immediately becomes--
RSB: The star.
RLB: The lead almost to the point where by the time he gets to stop being a lead in everything it's surprising.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Like by the time that he's in Lego Batman you're like, “That's Channing Tatum?”
RSB: “He did such a small role? Oh my goodness!”
RLB: Which is also, like, we can talk at some point about like, Channing Tatum as Superman but only in the Legoverse is just inspired on so many levels.
RSB: It's perfect.
RLB: And we will get to that, and I do think that we'll get to it before we watch The Lego Movie, but when we do talk about, you know, Gambit and things like that, it's like, Channing Tatum literally has played Superman! But he's played Lego Superman and that's so specific.
RSB: In three films!
RLB: Yeah it's just--it's incredible.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: The thesis statement of this podcast is that we love that Channing Tatum has played Superman but only in the Lego movies.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: We love that about him so much.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And I think it describes everything that we wanna talk about--we could leave it there, but we're not gonna.
RSB: Okay, but I do wanna say, first of all, just in a literal contemporary sense: absolutely does not fit into his offscreen image, he didn't have one. And like--
RLB: Yes.
RSB: And like, I kind of was wondering if he'd broken through at all--the answer is not at all. He's only even mentioned in two of the reviews I found, and one of them's a photo caption.
RLB: Wow.
RSB: Like he's referred to among other members of the cast as "exuberant" in one review from the Washington Post.
RLB: That is a good description of his performance in this movie.
RSB: Yeah, so they're listing the entire teen cast--quote unquote “teen cast”--and refers to them as exuberant, but other than that, like, he's in a photo caption. This was not a performance that got him noticed at all. He did not have any celeb coverage at the time--
RLB: I'm kind of relieved by that.
RSB: Same.
RLB: Just because, like, it didn't demand attention, and I also think that, like, it's not one of the interesting things in the movie--
RSB: And I will say I stopped my search a couple months after the movie came out in order to avoid running into his next film, so i don't know when he started to be noticed yet, but we'll learn.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: But in terms of retrospectively, I think he's pretty magnetic. You can see where it is.
RLB: Do you feel like Channing was typecast early in his career? Either, you know, because of this role or including this role? And if so what archetypes does he fit into, because he--to me his early career is really marked by him playing athletes and disadvantaged teens.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And I always thought of them as kind of strange--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Area for him to be.
RSB: One thing that i wanna bring up is that Channing is a Southerner--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And I think that's sort of relevant in that he has sort of made a career of playing Southerners in a way that I think's a little unusual.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Um and--
RLB: Where's he from again?
RSB: He was born in Alabama, um, he spent his childhood in the Mississippi bayou, and then he went to high school in Tampa. So all kind of an unusual area for an American star. And especially unusual that he then continued to play those roles and really embody the South, and you know, I think looking at a comparison would be Jennifer Lawrence, who started her career in a similar way and then has completely abandoned that aspect of her career. But I think what's interesting is that--and he does come from, kind of, not necessarily a poor background but a working-class--
RLB: He does not come from like some kind of entertainment dynasty or--
RSB: Correct.
RLB: Or even like a hugely privileged background.
RSB: No, his parents were a construction worker and an airline worker. So that's--that's kind of his background. And i think that it's possible that directors and casting directors, in a world where, you know. I don't wanna be like, “the South is marginalized!” But I do think that it's less represented sometimes in film, and I think that that may have been read as ... the equivalent that they were able to come up with was this sort of token white inner-city kid, even though it's completely the opposite of his actual background. I think that his background as a white Southerner was kind of translated into that. And I think that in She's the Man is his first role where he does play a Southerner and that was able to become a thread of his career moving forward. And She's the Man, again, a little bit unusual in that it is set in this very Southern world--because that movie was so successful and he's so successful in it, it does make that able to become a part of his career going forward, that he often plays these Southern roles.
RLB: I do think it's interesting that even in She's the Man and as his career goes on after this there are threads that start here. I think that he maintains--he is still playing a student athlete in She's the Man, so I think it's interesting that he does continue to play, for example, athletes, and he does continue to play these, you know, underprivileged inner-city kids.
RSB: Right.
RLB: For a while, um, but that he does have this trajectory where he slowly moves kind of step by step into the roles that he's most interested in--
RSB: It's also interesting because he's 25 at this point. This is his first movie, he's 25, and he still has this long period of playing teenagers.
RLB: Yeah, I do find that fascinating.
RSB: There's no reason he should've ever played teenagers.
RLB: Yeah, it's--there are plenty of people who in their mid-twenties get their big break playing teenagers, but it is kind of fascinating that he did it for so long.
RSB: Yeah, I also think it must've been weird for him as someone who was essentially a college dropout and had been in the working world for, like, seven years at that point, like, to go back to high school, you know? It's not as if he was a child actor who's been doing this for a decade, you know what i mean?
RLB: Sure, but I do think there's actually a lot of notable examples of that.
RSB: Sure.
RLB: This thing where people in their mid-to-late twenties play teenagers for years at a time is a really common phenomenon--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But it's weird every time. And I don't know why we haven't, like, stopped doing it, because every year or so someone is like, “What is up with these fake teens?”
RSB: And the basic reason is because it's really convenient for productions to not have to deal with having minors on set.
RLB: Oh, absolutely, but the fact that there's always one person who's 18--
RSB: Who's like, yeah--
RLB: Is weird.
RSB: Yeah, it's super weird. Like if you look at the Pretty Little Liars cast, where three of them were like 19 and one of them was 30, and like--
RLB: Yeah, and like even, like, going back to like Buffy where like, you know, Sarah Michelle Gellar was like 20 when Buffy started so she's like four years older than the character--
RSB: Right.
RLB: And Charisma Carpenter is like ten years older than the character, and meanwhile all of the men are older than that--
RSB: Yeah, or I always think the ones especially--like Raven-Symone on That's So Raven or Jason earles on Hannah Montana especially, who was--who had children of his own when he was playing Jackson--
RLB: God.
RSB: But like in particular the ones where it's on a show for children are especially wacky for me.
RLB: Yeah, and at least Channing Tatum was always pretty solidly in--you know, he was in movies that were marketed to teens, but they were definitely adult movies. Like they weren't--they weren't the kind of movies that adults weren't seeing.
RSB: Right, this wasn't--this wasn't Riverdale.
RLB: Yeah, although I wish that Channing Tatum would go on Riverdale.
RSB: Oh my God, Channing Tatum, please go on Riverdale.
RLB: It's actually kind of wild that, like, Chad Michael Murray has had a career trajectory where he ended up like--
RSB: On Riverdale?
RLB: On Riverdale in a sustained guest arc, and Channing Tatum is doing all of what Channing Tatum is doing.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Cause like, I think of them as very much products of the same era--
RSB: Very much so.
RLB: Of teen movies, yeah. I do think--
RSB: We should talk about nudity.
RLB: This is the time where we talk about Channing Tatum as a sex symbol and the fact that like, he's probably the one man in this movie who’s photographed with anything approaching the gaze that the women in the movie are.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Um, there're a couple of locker room scenes where a few characters are, like, partially dressed or they're wearing towels or whatever--Channing is like in the center of the screen with his entire torso just out there.
RSB: And including a portion below the torso.
RLB: Yeah, I mean he is wearing that towel precariously low.
RSB: It's slung.
[1:31:15]
RLB: It's just, I--
RSB: Slung about the hips.
RLB: I, like, saw the first, like, shot of him as, like--
RSB: “Hi, Channing!”
RLB: Here's the Channing Tatum!
RSB: It really is and it's delightful.
RLB: And it's not even slightly, like, acknowledged textually. Whereas i think in every subsequent appearance that i've seen his, like, sexiness or at least his unbelievable physique are acknowledged--
RSB: There--there is--
RLB: In the movie.
RSB: There is a moment very much like the Crazy. Stupid. Love. “You're photoshopped!” moment--
RLB: Almost always.
RSB: In almost all of his films.
RLB: Yeah, and in this one it just goes unremarked upon.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: But the camera does something.
RSB: It lingers.
RLB: It doesn't do what it does when, like, there's a woman in a short skirt, but it does something.
RSB: It's--it's hard to not look.
RLB: Yeah you can't avoid that it's just there.
RSB: I think you and I kind of discussed whether he had perhaps been the one to make the decision to dress himself like that.
RLB: Yeah it's--it does feel--
RSB: Because it is so--and he's not the only man in the cast with a good physique--
RLB: No, not at all.
RSB: Even leaving Samuel L. Jackson aside and I think just talking about the men who are playing teenagers, there are several of them that I think could pull off that look.
RLB: Yeah, and I mean, Samuel L. Jackson's wearing so many clothes at all times in this movie, I have no idea what his physique was like at that point.
RSB: No, but he was in the middle of playing Mace Windu--who also wears a lot of clothes--
RLB: Mace Windu wears more clothes than Coach Carter, Rachel.
RSB: I'm just saying he probably--
RLB: Mace Windu wears more clothes than Nick Fury.
RSB: I'm just saying, I think he was pretty fit at the time. But what I'm saying is plenty of these young men probably could pull off a low-slung towel--
RLB: Oh, for sure.
RSB: None of them are.
RLB: These are--these are cute guys.
RSB: They're cute guys, and most of them have much more prominent roles than Channing, and most of them have more, like--one of them has a sexy role where multiple girls are trying to dance up on him and there's nothing resembling this. And so I do think there is a moment where I kinda wonder, did Channing just grab that towel?
RLB: I really--I really did wonder, like was Channing like, “Can I be one of the people who is partially nude in this scene?” Like--
RSB: Or even if they were like, “Channing, you'll be mid-getting dressed,” and Channing was like, “Okay, cool, let me just tie my towel in the most erotic way I can think of.”
RLB: Yeah, and like the thing is, with most actors I wouldn't think, like, “Oh, that's, y'know, that's classic Daniel Radcliffe behavior” or something--
RSB: Right, and to be clear we're not trying to, like, slut-shame Channing--
RLB: Oh, of course not, quite the opposite, um--
RSB: But like, we are talking about this as a genuine acting choice and not some kind of, like, inherent sluttiness.
RLB: No, it's just like Channing is really comfortable--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Being partially clothed on screen, and I think we've touched on this but like--
RSB: And I think views it as a form of expression in a way beyond just being sexy.
RLB: I agree. And I do think that, like, it's not--it's not just a question of sexiness, although I do think that like, knowing what we know of his later career and also knowing what we know of, like, he's a trained stripper--
RSB: Right, and the fact that he started his performing career as a stripper--
RLB: Exactly, right, and he's really comfortable--
RSB: Which as far as I know he is unique among major Hollywood stars.
RLB: He's really comfortable with his body, and with using his body for his performance, especially when he's playing a character who is an athlete or--
RSB: In some other way physical.
RLB: Or is in some other way really physical. I think you know we'll see similar echoes of this with, like, Step Up, even though I don't recall him being, like, nude in Step Up.
RSB: Right.
RLB: Although it's been fairly--a very long time since I saw it, he could very well be shirtless in it, I'd be a little surprised if he wasn't at all. But the way that he acts with his body is really obvious even at this early point, and the way that he uses his physicality to embody characters--
RSB: And his facial physicality as well--
RLB: Absolutely. I ... those eyelashes, man.
RSB: Yeah, but also just that smile.
RLB: Oh yeah.
RSB: It's so there. It was already there.
RLB: He's just darling.
RSB: That's the thing, is that he has clearly grown as a performer, but the elements of what would be the Channing Tatum experience are very much there, and I think--I think that's delightful.
RLB: Yeah, and I do just think that, like, he plays an athlete in a way that--he's not always playing an athlete--the way he uses his body in this movie and the way that he physically interacts with other characters and the way he wears clothes--
RSB: It's always on his mind.
RLB: He is giving a performance that's pretty specific, even though there's not a whole lot for him to be doing.
RSB: Yeah, I would say his full body is always on his mind as a performer, and again I think that's that stripping background--
RLB: I totally agree. I also think like he's just--
RSB: I mean, it's also just inherent talent, but like--
RLB: Yeah, but like, he's a dancer.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: Regardless of what kind of dance, like--
RSB: Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
RLB: That man is a dancer.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: And it's really clear in his performance.
RSB: And it's fascinating, cause we actually don't see him play that much basketball in this movie, which you would expect to, given that he is really good at that kind of movement--
RLB: Well, his background is in football, not in basketball.
RSB: Football and baseball and a little martial arts. But regardless--and apparently he did have to learn basketball for this movie--
RLB: Yeah, so.
RSB: But regardless, like, the type of movement that he tends to gravitate towards fits into basketball very well.
RLB: For sure. I just--I found myself really watching him in the few scenes where he was, like, a notable presence. and seeing things that I'm like, oh yeah, that is Channing Tatum's--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Acting happening.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Like, he wasn't just there because he was pretty, and he also wasn't just there because--
RSB: I think that they--
RLB: They needed an up and coming, you know, random white boy. He fits really well into--
RSB: He does.
RLB: The cast of this movie.
RSB: He does, And he brings them together to a certain extent, to where they might feel a little disjointed without him.
RLB: He does create this sense of camaraderie.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: I think that's something that's true in every Channing Tatum movie.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: To the point where, when he does a movie, like, for example Foxcatcher, where his performance is really not that at all, like, it's really--he's really playing against that and playing this kind of isolated figure with this fraught relationship with any of the people he's close to--
RSB: Right.
RLB: It feels a little odd, and it feels--I don't know that it's as successful as some of his other performances, although it was more critically recognized I think--
RSB: Well, we can talk about that when we get to that movie.
RLB: Oh, and we will, but although of course, like, that's also a very physical role--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: In general I do think that, like, he's very good at playing athletes, and he's very good at any role that is a team effort, for lack of better words. He's great in an ensemble and that comes through in this.
RSB: And I think Channing--one of the reasons that he does make such interesting choices of films, to the extent we want to do a podcast about them, is that he loves movies.
RLB: He does.
RSB: He does! He loves his job, he loves the concept, and that really shines through.
RLB: Yeah, it's just fun to watch him.
RSB: I mean, to be clear, like, this discussion of Channing is very much a rave, and I think as we get into the more complex films this is not just gonna be a podcast where we talk about how much we love Channing.
RLB: No. I think that there are also movies where I don't really like his performance.
RSB: That's totally legit. And it's also--there's times when we'll have more interesting things to say than whether we like it or not. But I think it's a good place to start the podcast, is just reminding ourselves that we do really love him--
RLB: Yeah, and that there was this spark there.
RSB: Absolutely.
RLB: When he was--
RSB: It's clear.
RLB: Doing this bit role before anyone cared about him.
RSB: I do think it's always hard to see these things in retrospect, because you don't know how much you're just seeing what you already know. But I do think there is a sense to which it's clear why one of these cast members became a big movie star.
RLB: I mean part of it is that he's white.
RSB: I--yeah, I was gonna say apart from the fact that he's white.
RLB: I mean, like, several of these cast members could've been--
RSB: Could've been, yeah.
RLB: Huge, if it weren't for the fact that Hollywood was like, “We'll take that one.”
RSB: Absolutely. But I do think--so let me put it this--I'm not trying to say “and why only one of them became--”
RLB: Of course.
RSB: But I do think what you can watch this and see, oh yeah, if I'm a casting director watching this, I can see, “I pick him,” you know what I mean?
RLB: Yeah, and it's like, it's so clear why he got more opportunities after this.
RSB: Right. And like I do wanna say, like, I think there are other people in this cast that deserved to also get those opportunities--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And it's sad that they didn't. Like, I would love to have seen Rob Brown become a movie star after this!
RLB: Where is Rob Brown?
RSB: He was on Blindspot.
RLB: Okay.
RSB: So he has a career, he's been in a couple shows, but I want him to have another movie!
RLB: I really want him to have another movie.
RSB: I like him so--and I had never seen him before this, at least not that I noticed.
RLB: Yeah, not that I noticed, and--
RSB: We'll see him two more times on the podcast--We'll see him in Stop-Loss and Don Jon which I think is a really interesting pair of returns--
RLB: Yeah, but I just really enjoyed watching him. And I really want Ashanti to do more movies--
RSB: Oh my God, I want Ashanti to do more movies after this, like--
RLB: Yeah, after seeing this I'm like--who was like, “No, we're not gonna--”
RSB: Keep doing this!
RLB: “Give Ashanti tons of movies,” like,
RSB: Like, yeah, like, where is that? Where is Ashanti's Hustlers?
RLB: Yeah. We'll come back to a lot of these questions about Channing in future episodes.
RSB: Absolutely, and I think--
RLB: And I think it'll be--
RSB: We'll reference this movie again.
RLB: Yeah, I think it'll be really fun to discuss some of the same things when we've gotten to some of the later movies.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: So to close out this episode, um, about Coach Carter, a movie that's not really a Channing Tatum movie, um: Did you like the movie, Rachel?
[1:41:07]
RSB: No. And like that's--that's overly harsh, because there were moments that this movie sparked for me. But overall, I would not watch it again and I would not recommend it.
RLB: I agree. Um, I think that it was fun to watch a Samuel L. Jackson performance from this particular point in his career.
RSB: I would agree.
RLB: Kind of between franchises, and kind of doing something really different than he usually is, and it reminded me of some of the things that I really enjoy about him as a performer.
RSB: Yeah, I agree.
RLB: And I also am really glad I saw the Ashanti performance.
RSB: Yes!
RLB: I think that was really fun.
RSB: Yes!
RLB: And Rob Brown also, like--
RSB: Yeah, I loved it.
RLB: Yeah, I wanna see--
RSB: We stan.
RLB: More Rob Brown performances--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: So I’m really excited to see him come up in more Channing Tatum movies.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: But I did not like the movie.
RSB: Like just overall.
RLB: That being said.
RSB: It's two hours and sixteen minutes, I liked about ten of those minutes.
RLB: Yeah. And I just--it's saccharine at times and it's also very didactic in a way that I don't really agree with--
RSB: Yeah, it's like--it's one thing that it's preachy, and then it's another thing that I don't agree with its preaching, and it's like, those are both separate problems and they're both there.
RLB: And I also think that it plagiarizing Marianne Williamson is weird.
RSB: It's weird!
RLB: So, uh, that's my thought on that.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: So, on the other hand--I think we've already basically answered this, but do you think it's a good movie?
RSB: I think largely no.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: I think in the end it's just too broken storytelling-wise to be a good movie.
RLB: I agree. I think that it has some good performances--
RSB: It has some good performances, it has some moments of good directing, but it's really broken.
RLB: So another fun question: If we were gonna do a spinoff podcast about another cast member of this movie--
RSB: Right--
RLB: Who would you pick?
RSB: Okay, so one of the problems is that we absolutely can't say Samuel L. Jackson, because that involves watching the entire MCU--
RLB: I mean, here's the thing, my answer is still gonna be Samuel L. Jackson, because frankly--
RSB: Oh, that's not my answer at all, but go ahead.
RLB: No, um, frankly, like, Ashanti doesn't have enough movies--
RSB: No, my answer is Octavia Spencer, though.
RLB: Yeah, but as we've discussed--
RSB: There is a lot to get through.
RLB: Octavia Spencer has been done wrong so many times.
RSB: It's true. But like, if you had the stamina to sit through the Octavia Spencer filmography, like, it would be fascinating to discuss--
RLB: I mean, it's not really a question of stamina. I like her work even in movies I don't like--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Most of the time. But she also does, like, a lot of roles that speak for themselves.
RSB: That's true.
RLB: And I think that Samuel L. Jackson, because of his repeated collaborations with the same filmmakers, and his repeated returns to the same franchises--
RSB: Right--
RLB: Is a much more interesting figure to discuss in the context of those movies. There's still not that much for me to say--
RSB: Right.
RLB: On, like, his performances in Tarantino movies. What can i say? I think he's good in them. I don't always like the movie. That's about it.
RSB: I do think this is one of the harder ones to answer this question, for--just cause the amount of the cast that, like, has a significant career is smaller.
RLB: Yeah. But basically, like, I would watch all of Octavia Spencer's filmography back to back just, like, to watch her--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: But I don't know that I would make a podcast about her.
RSB: That's totally fair.
RLB: Because like she's just--
RSB: Good.
RLB: Good. Like, across the board, like, no matter what she's in she's good.
RSB: She's great.
RLB: And it's a lot more fun, frankly, to talk about actors--
RSB: Who are a little more inconsistent.
RLB: Who are a little more inconsistent, or at least a little bit more able to take risks, because--
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: I don't think that she's given--or at least until recent years she wasn't given as many opportunities to take big risks with the movies she was picking... The thing about Samuel L. Jackson is, like, we've seen the Star Wars and Marvel movies that he's in, which is lots of them, many more times than anyone should, and so it wouldn't be that unusual for us to just watch them all again.
RSB: That is true.
RLB: And he's also barely in Endgame, which would be nice for us.
RSB: Yeah, that's fair.
RLB: But I’m glad that we're doing a Channing Tatum podcast instead of that.
RSB: Me too.
RLB: Because--
RSB: It's fun!
RLB: Yeah, and it's a little more variety.
RSB: Exactly, I like the variety.
RLB: Are you ready for the highlight of the podcast, which is when you share a Channing Datum?
RSB: Yes, I am ready, I have--
RLB: Which, to be clear, is a pun about fun facts about Channing Tatum.
RSB: Once this podcast is over we will have a collection of Channing Data.
RLB: Exactly. If you hate puns, I'm sorry--
RSB: You should not listen to a show called The Channing Salon. You walked into this one.
RLB: Yeah, actually, you did bring this on yourself, I'm not apologizing.
RSB: You really did. So I have a kind of two-part Channing Datum about--on the theme of names. Just kind of to ease us in, I do wanna note that Channing's middle name is Matthew, which is like such a normal name--
RLB: That's incredible.
RSB: To be in the middle of Channing and Tatum. Uh, and I also wanna note that when he was stripping he went under the name Chan Crawford.
RLB: Wow.
RSB: Right.
RLB: I mean it works for him.
RSB: It works! It's unclear where Crawford came from, it's not his mom's middle name--uh, his mom's maiden name, which is Faust--
RLB: His mom's maiden name is Faust?
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Holy shit.
RSB: She's, uh, Kay Tatum, formerly Faust.
RLB: You're telling me he didn't--like, he had the chance to go by Channing Faust?
RSB: He had the chance to go by Chance Faust.
RLB: Chance Faust, wow.
RSB: Chance Faust is, like, Channing Tatum's, like, wizardsona.
RLB: Yeah, Chance Faust is like--
RSB: That's like the, a bad urban fantasy series.
RLB: I was literally gonna say that's the paranormal romance avatar of Channing Tatum... All right! So that's it for The Channing Salon Episode One. Next time on The Channing Salon we're delving into--
RSB: 2005's Havoc.
[AUDIO CLIP]
Anne Hathaway (as Allison): None of it really matters. We're just teenagers and we're bored.
[thumping music plays]
AH: We are totally bored.
[END AUDIO CLIP]
RSB: Until then you can join us on Twitter @channingsalon, you can join us on Instagram @channingsalon, and you can join us on Letterboxd @channingsalon! Or you can shoot us an email: channingsalon@gmail.com.
RLB: Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts if you feel like it--
RSB: Yes! Uh, we will be delighted and, like, probably cry with happiness.
RLB: Thanks for listening!
RSB: Thank you!
RLB: We'll see you next time.
RSB: Indeed. Well, we won't. cause we can't see you through the mic.
RLB: It's a metaphor.