Rachel & Rachel discuss confusing casting, mid-aughts memoirs, and Channing's "breakout performance"--or is it?--in A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (2006).
Rachel & Rachel discuss confusing casting, mid-aughts memoir, and Channing's "breakout performance"--or is it?--in A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (2006). Tragically, we did not learn to recognize our saints.
CONTENT WARNINGS: The film discussed in this episode depicts abuse, violence, and racism and stars Shia LaBeouf.
Our next episode on SHE'S THE MAN (2006) is coming your way June 15th!
Email us at channingsalon@gmail.com and follow us on:
RLB: I know you love movies with no plot more than I do and that's ... that's because you're smarter than me.
Flori: Dito, it's your mother. Your father's sick. Your friend said he'd pick you up if you came.
RSB: 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 S. Bernstein--
RLB: And I'm Rachel Lee Berger--
RSB: And this week we're talking about the 2006 film A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS, directed by Dito Montiel. Before we get started, we should mention that we are discussing a film with some scenes of parental abuse, violence, and racism. This film also stars Shia LaBeouf, and while our episode does not discuss the details of FKA Twigs' recent allegations of abuse during their relationship we do want to acknowledge that we believe and respect her account and that some listeners may want to avoid discussion of his career given this context. As we typically do, I'm going to start with the IMDB summary: the movie is a coming-of-age drama about a boy growing up in Astoria, New York during the 1980s. As his friends end up dead, on drugs, or in prison, he comes to believe he has been saved from their fates by various so-called saints. So the first part's pretty accurate but the last one is a fucking lie. They do not explain the saints thing ever, they never use the word saints in the movie, and I'm still mad about it. But my grudges aside, to go into more detail on the plot, most of the movie takes place in 1980s Queens, and centers around this boy Dito, sometimes pronounced Ditto, played by Shia LaBeouf. We also see Dito's return to Queens in 2005, where he has turned into Robert Downey Jr.
RLB: He sure has.
RSB: Magically, like a caterpillar.
RLB: Like a caterpillar?
RSB: Into a butterfly!
RLB: Yeah, I mean that's--that's less of a drastic transformation in my opinion, but--
RSB: Valid. In the eighties, Dito's best friend is a troublemaker named Antonio, played by Channing, but Antonio's best friend is Dito's dad, Monte, who is this loving old guy who never leaves his apartment and doesn't really think anyone else should either.
RLB: Which is really relatable.
RSB: They have some other friends they hang around with, including Dito's girlfriend Laurie, who's played by Melonie Diaz, but Dito makes a new friend named Mike from Scotland, who knows about music--
RLB: His name is not Mike from Scotland but--
RSB: It kind of is.
RLB: I love the idea that that's his last name.
RSB: It basically is. It's Mike O'Shea, because the real guy is Irish, but in the movie he's Scottish. Um, but Mike from Scotland knows about music and gay people, and Antonio doesn't like him because of this, so they grow apart. There's also this gang that keeps randomly threatening Dito, and Antonio goes to get revenge on them. Antonio ends up killing one of the gang members, he goes to prison, the gang comes back for their revenge, they kill Mike, and Dito leaves and doesn't come back for twenty years, which is the second storyline, which is basically just his reunions with his parents, Laurie, who's now Rosario Dawson, Antonio, and another friend, who is for some reason named Nerf.
RLB: His name really is Nerf. They open the movie with a phone call from Dito's mom--
RSB: Who's Dianne Wiest.
RLB: Dianne Wiest is like "Your old friend Nerf, he's such a good boy," and I'm like ... I can't focus on anything else for the rest of this movie because of that.
RSB: So anything else in there, the only other thing I kind of left off is that Antonio's brother does get hit by a train.
RLB: The brother's name is Giuseppe.
RSB: The brother's name is Giuseppe.
RLB: We should clarify it's a--a subway train.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Not underground at the moment, but--
RSB: Yeah, it's an elevated train. I don't even know how to describe the scene.
RLB: Yeah I mean he climbs onto the subway tracks and has an argument with Antonio--we may get into this more later, but it's sort of--the scene that you're imagining is exactly what it is. We should clarify that Giuseppe's sort of ambiguously mentally ill or possibly disabled.
RSB: Yeah, intellectually disabled, something.
RLB: It's very unclear, um, Channing Tatum's character Antonio uses a slur to refer to him occasionally.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: I don't think he's the only one who does but he's most emphatic about it. Other than that it's unclear what Giuseppe's deal is.
RSB: He doesn't go to school with them.
RLB: Yeah, unclear if he's younger or whatever--
RSB: Or older?
RLB: But we'll also get into the ages of the characters being wildly unclear.
RSB: So before we do get into discussing the film, is there any other context or anything I missed in the summary that you wanna go over?
RLB: There's sort of a very half-hearted framing device of this being a memoir written by the older Dito, because it is based on the real Dito's memoir that he published.
RSB: To be clear, Dito is the name of the main character, it's also the name of the writer-director, who also wrote a memoir that the movie is based on.
RLB: So the movie sort of opens--after Dianne Wiest talking about Nerf--opens with Robert Downey Jr. talking about this memoir that he published. I found it bizarre and charming that he gives Major Character Death warnings like he is a fanfiction writer.
RSB: Yeah, he's like not all these people are gonna make it out.
RLB: He doesn't even do that, he literally tells us--
RSB: Oh yeah.
RLB: "You're gonna meet a guy named Giuseppe who dies, and a guy named Mike who also dies."
RSB: I forgot about that.
RLB: "But a lot of stuff happens before that."
RSB: So the funniest thing about this is that Giuseppe and Mike are both alive in real life.
RLB: I need to hear more about this. So actually like, unless you think that this would be better saved for later--
RSB: No, we can talk about it now.
RLB: We should talk about it.
RSB: Uh, Laurie is dead in real life by the way.
RLB: Oh my God. Okay, please give more details.
RSB: Okay.
RLB: Rachel ... Bernstein, to be clear, is sort of our--our researcher on this team--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And she uncovers the best details about these movies, and in this case I do think they're relevant unlike some of the stuff that we've found out from the previous films.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Sorry about cutting some of the wild anecdotes from, you know, behind the scenes of these other films, but this one is worth discussing on the air.
RSB: Yeah, so basically what he said is that all of the characters are composites and he picked specific names, but the characters are most like the people that they're named after, so it's a little fuzzy, but Giuseppe became a career criminal and was deported to Italy, and has seen the movie and was like "Why did you kill me off?"
RLB: I would have the same question.
RSB: Super unclear whether the actual guy he knew that played on the subway cars died, but regardless that guy was not Giuseppe, Giuseppe lives in Italy. And Mike is alive and well and lives in Essex with his wife. And the real Laurie died of AIDS a couple years before 2005. So very sad.
RLB: That is really sad.
RSB: And he was like oh, I put her in because I wanted to have one last chance to like talk to her. But yeah, so they all have aspects of various characters but they do all have the names of real people. And I can get into what happened to Antonio a little later because it's more complicated.
RLB: I believe you also mentioned that Mike in real life is Irish and not Scottish?
RSB: Yeah, Mike is Irish in real life but they cast a Scottish actor so he became Scottish.
RLB: Which is really funny because in the movie they also refer to him as Irish a couple times. I was genuinely confused about whether he was Scottish and supposed to be playing Irish or not, so this explained a lot.
RSB: Yeah, and his name is still Mike O'Shea, which is an Irish name and not a Scottish name. They did shoot some of it on the actual street in the story where he grew up, which he claims is also the street where GOODFELLAS--part of it--was shot? So--
RLB: I wouldn't be surprised.
RSB: There's just a lot of story there.
RLB: I mean New York's not that big, a lot of streets have had multiple movies shot on them.
RSB: Yes, that is true. But it was apparently the actual street he grew up on, or so he claims. We should go into pre-movie state of mind. I hadn't seen the movie before, I don't think you'd seen the movie before?
RLB: I had not. I had heard of the movie before and was sort of aware of the cast, but that was it.
RSB: Yeah, I hadn't really--it does have a very distinctive title, so it rang a bell, but I couldn't have told you anything about it. I did, before watching, know, you know, because I kind of looked it up for the podcast, that it was nominated for three Indie Spirit awards. I don't think I expected it to have quite so much Indie Spirit?
RLB: Oof.
RSB: If you take my meaning?
RLB: That was actually exactly what I expected going in, was a whole lot of Indie Spirit. Indie Chutzpah, I'd go as far as to say.
RSB: Yeah, yeah, and some of it works.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And it is genuinely cool and admirable that they actually went out and filmed this on the streets and all that, but--
RLB: I wouldn't say any of the stuff that really works and is cool in that regard though was like especially groundbreaking--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Or even risky.
RSB: Yeah, I like that it did take some risks, I just think most of its risks didn't pay off.
RLB: Yeah, I also thought that a lot of the things that felt potentially edgy or risky actually read as like very cliche and melodramatic when they're actually onscreen, such as a kid climbs onto the subway tracks and gets hit by a train. You know? Like that felt like the kind of thing that on the page might've seemed like a big, like--
RSB: Yeah--
RLB: Wow, I can't believe you did that kind of thing, and onscreen it's a little like--you see the train coming well before Channing Tatum starts saying "There's a train coming," which he does several times.
RSB: Yeah, and it's like--this isn't the type of movie where someone narrowly escapes a train crash, so it must be the type of movie where someone dies in a train crash.
RLB: I mean honestly, it felt like from the first couple of scenes I could've predicted this is the kind of movie where a subway train hits someone. You know?
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Not--not because that's literally what I would've predicted but because it's in that playbook, you know, and it sets itself up very much as that kind of a film.
RSB: I do wanna say like the director kind of talked it up a bunch as being like a shoestring movie--the best number I could find is that it had a six million dollar budget, which is not really a shoestring but is still low.
RLB: Yeah, it's definitely not a big-budget film. It's also, I would say, significantly better at using its budget than the last film we watched?
RSB: Are you talking about HAVOC or SUPERCROSS?
RLB: HAVOC.
RSB: Cause HAVOC was two films ago.
RLB: Oh, HAVOC was two films ago, you're right. SUPERCROSS feels like a fever dream.
RSB: It does.
RLB: And not a movie that I watched.
RSB: I would agree with that.
RLB: Therefore, to me the concept of SUPERCROSS having a budget feels abstract in a way that with this movie I can kinda see where they were using their budget and I thought, like--it's a well-produced film, I thought, for the New York stoop vision they were going for they used their resources effectively.
RSB: For a little context, the movie premiered at 2006's Sundance and didn't go into wide release until late 2006, I think in September. Or, it was limited release, but didn't go into release. Which was actually after SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP had come out, so we're going by the official IMDB order, but technically most audiences saw this after SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP if they saw it at all.
RLB: Yeah. Which I think is really relevant to our later discussion that we'll have about Channing's career and this role's place in it and the popular narrative surrounding it. But it also, it does occur to me actually that I think one of the reasons that I remembered this film is not just that, like, a bunch of Robert Downey Jr. stans post about his filmography on the Internet, it's that, um, I think this was probably around the time that I kinda started reading movie reviews in the newspaper and stuff, and particularly got kinda fascinated by reviews of indie movies that didn't go into the theaters near me, and especially R-rated movies that I wasn't allowed to see yet, and so I don't recall if I specifically read a review of this film, but I suspect that I probably read a reference to this film and remembered the title. I really distinctly remember, like one of the first kinda buzzy indie awards darlings that I saw being LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, which I think was one of the first R-rated movies I was allowed to watch, and that came out pretty soon after this, I believe.
RSB: I did see LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE at my friend Laurena's house at a sleepover, but that was obviously after it was out on DVD.
RLB: Yeah, I didn't see it in theaters, yeah, this was kind of around the time that I got interested in what movies were coming out that weren't, you know, for children.
RSB: It definitely took me a lot longer to get interested in, like, new movies and ... I watched a lot of old movies growing up. But that's the basic story--this was very much a festival movie, it played a bunch of the festivals and eventually got a limited release and, you know, DVD release and all that, so. This movie has big dollar DVD rack energy. Do you wanna hear anything from the reviews at the time before we dive into genre?
RLB: Is there anything you think is relevant to the kind of contemporary reception besides it being kind of a festival movie?
RSB: Not really, I mean it was pretty well-regarded. Most critics praised the acting and were lukewarm on everything else. It is worth noting like I said, it got three Indie Spirit nominations including one for Channing! He got a Best Supporting Male Indie Spirit nomination, which he lost to Alan Arkin in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. It also got a Best First Screenplay nomination, which I think it also lost to LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, and Melonie Diaz got Best Supporting Female nomination, which I wanna say she lost to Frances McDormand in FRIENDS WITH MONEY, which, like, is a very respectable loss.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: You could do worse than to lose to Frances McDormand.
RLB: You could always do worse than that.
RSB: Exactly. So yeah, that's kind of one thing to mention, and we'll get into Channing's nomination more I think when we hit our Channing discussion.
RLB: Yeah, and I think we'll discuss a little bit more of the performances in general, since as Rachel said that's kind of what this movie was most recognized for and I do think is the most notable thing about the film.
RSB: Yeah, and I also think when we dive into genre we can talk a little bit about this being quote unquote an Indie Spirit movie and what that is.
RLB: For sure, for sure.
RSB: So Rachel, you have to put this movie in a one-word genre category. What would you pick?
RLB: Drama! It is the most sort of textbook, like, generic, like, this is an indie drama. This is what this is.
RSB: Yup.
RLB: If you know what an indie drama is, if you have a picture in your mind of what an indie drama is theoretically supposed to be, like the prototypical indie drama, that's what this is.
RSB: And it's fun seeing the status of that in 2006.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Where it's kind of pre-A24 era but post-the late nineties. It is worth noting that, like, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE obviously went from the Indie Spirits to being a huge Oscar movie and FRIENDS WITH MONEY and GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS did not. I think these days the Indie Spirit conversation and the Oscar conversation is a lot closer, and in some ways that's great for indie film and in some ways that's terrible for indie film.
RLB: Yeah, I mean I think there are definitely still movies like this that come out every year--
RSB: Yes. I also think that movies like this are much less likely to have a $6 million budget and much more likely to have a $2 million budget.
RLB: Exactly, that's what I was gonna say, like the movies that come out like this now are kinda not at this level of prestige I would say.
RSB: There's not a ton of room for this slot anymore.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: A streamer would not have produced this for instance.
RLB: Um, a streamer would not have produced it but would definitely distribute it. I could easily see something like this as a Hulu or Amazon release.
RSB: That's true.
RLB: It just would not have been made by them.
RSB: Yeah. And it would not be a Netflix movie.
RLB: It would absolutely not be a Netflix movie.
RSB: I would say, just to be contrary, because drama is definitely the right answer, but if we have to pick a different one-word genre, I think coming-of-age is also...
RLB: You're definitely right, like this is a coming-of-age movie and that is a broad category that it fits into, but I do think that, like, coming-of-age movies tend to fall under another big genre heading most of the time.
RSB: Yes, usually.
RLB: And in this case I would definitely be saying drama.
RSB: That's obviously the correct answer I just wanted to have a different answer than you.
RLB: Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that, variety is important.
RSB: I still haven't come up with my answer to the second question, so--
RLB: Well, I'm ready.
RSB: You get to go first. What super-specific subgenre is this movie in, and what other movie fits in there with it?
RLB: Uh, so I've got two answers. The first one is this movie is in the super-specific subgenre of movies that want to be DO THE RIGHT THING.
RSB: See, that's what I wanted to say.
RLB: It is down to the fact that like the characters break the fourth wall frequently, for kinda unclear reasons, it's summer in an outer borough in New York--
RSB: There's a little attempt at creating this world of the block that doesn't really go anywhere.
RLB: There's definitely an attempt to tackle some questions about tensions between different ethnic groups in the same neighborhood, I would say this is not a successful way--
RSB: No, it is--
RLB: To approach that?
RSB: I mean, it's much more WEST SIDE STORY than DO THE RIGHT THING.
RLB: It's much more WEST SIDE STORY than DO THE RIGHT THING but it's also just extremely white. There are other movies that try to--I don't know whether I want to call it copying or paying tribute or what--
RSB: It walks the line.
RLB: It's very clearly inspired by Spike Lee, and also by the tradition of kind of New York indie filmmaking in general.
RSB: Sure, he's influenced by Scorsese.
RLB: Yeah, I certainly don't think that the influences are limited to Spike Lee.
RSB: And he was pretty open about it in interviews, he was like I tried to do what Spike Lee and Scorsese do. The other thing about it is given that Dito Montiel in fact was a musician for his first career and he's trying to do DO THE RIGHT THING this movie does not use music well at all.
RLB: The music in this movie is kind of a disaster and I could not believe they paid for the rights to some of these songs.
RSB: I know. It's not well-done, it's just not well-integrated, there's very little in-universe music--I don't know why I think the term "in-universe" is less pretentious than "diegetic"--
RLB: Just say diegetic, Rachel.
RSB: I know.
RLB: But I mean, there also is a bunch of diegetic music.
RSB: Yeah, I guess so, but I guess like--it doesn't drive the movie.
RLB: It doesn't drive the movie at all but it is prominently used recognizable stuff.
RSB: Yeah, it is, and it makes some attempts at montages--it's just, it's very dull choices and it doesn't--like I said, it doesn't drive the movie at all. There's no sense of this being a music film, in a way that's kind of surprising given that it's a movie made by a musician and about an eventual musician.
RLB: And that wants to be DO THE RIGHT THING.
RSB: Yes, exactly. Which is a great music movie obviously.
RLB: It's a great film.
RSB: Right.
RLB: It's just a great film.
RSB: Sure. And to be clear, this movie's copying DO THE RIGHT THING in style--it does make some gestures at like, ethnic tensions, but they're part of the plot, not the themes. It does stick pretty firmly to this coming-of-age, white boy becoming a man storyline as the main theme of it.
RLB: And I do also think like, New York indie filmmaking is not just--
RSB: For sure.
RLB: Spike Lee and, and early Scorsese and whatever, and I do think that this movie and, and Dito Montiel's approach to it reflects some broader knowledge of--
RSB: Oh, for sure.
RLB: That history of cinema, and I don't wanna dismiss the other influences on it, but I do think that like, the early--an early scene where Channing Tatum's trying to have sex with a girl and keeps talking about how the building has the radiators on in the summer in New York I was just like buddy, we get that it's hot out.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: We've been here before.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Can you just move on?
RSB: Yes. It is what it is. I mean, there definitely are other influences, I think given that he was kind of in the New York punk scene there is something of a DIY music video influence to it, there's definitely other things at play, but it is remarkable how much it's just blatantly learning from, for better or for worse, one specific movie.
RLB: I do have a second answer about super-specific subgenres.
RSB: Please, please.
RLB: I mean this obviously is in the super-specific subgenre of coming-of-age movies where you flash back into a period piece with younger cast members and then do a present-day they're adults now thing. And normally I'm a fucking sucker for this. This is a thing, this is a thing that I enjoy.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Normally I'm like all in on this shit. Like, not even like, it's a particular like always gonna be a selling point for me kind of thing, it's just that like, when it happens I'm like, I love this. Every time. And I'm always surprised that I do. But I do not love it here at all. And I don't know if this is the place for it, but I do wanna talk a little bit about the casting of the younger and older cast members, and also the approach to the ages of the characters and the period piece element--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Um, because like, okay. So the flashbacks in this take place in 1986, and then the present day is 2005. There are a lot of movies that cut between the eighties and the 21st century.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: I find 13 GOING ON 30 much more convincing than I do this.
RSB: Yes. There's almost no attempt at making the eighties feel like a different time?
RLB: There really isn't. Every woman in the flashbacks is dressed like it's 2005.
RSB: Yeah, it's like--it feels--I hate that this is the only reference I have for it, but it feels exactly like when on RIVERDALE they said it was 2021 and then they did a seven-year time jump and then they said it was 2021.
RLB: All of the careful construction of the nostalgic vision of the eighties that goes into STRANGER THINGS or IT is completely absent from this, and while I understand that those things are ten years later than this, and also like--
RSB: They're all rural rather than urban.
RLB: They're rural rather than urban, and they're also, like, obviously working in genre in a way that like--
RSB: And with a lot more money--
RLB: Isn't--definitely a lot more money, and also like, they are definitely aiming for an eighties nostalgia that this ... isn't? But I also--
RSB: It's unclear why it's not, though.
RLB: The thing is, this movie stylistically isn't going for that, but emotionally it absolutely is, and that's what I found most confusing about it, it's like in a weird way it almost felt like just as uncritical of the, like, nostalgia, and I think part of that is that it's memoir--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: There is a, a lack of distance from the material.
RSB: Yeah. And I wanna get into this idea of memoir, but did you wanna talk about casting first?
RLB: Yeah, I do, so you have like--you have a bunch of people playing 15-year-olds--I looked it up, they're--Dito is supposed to be fifteen.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Shia LaBeouf doesn't look fifteen, for one thing.
RSB: He's twenty at the time.
RLB: He's twenty at the time, doesn't look fifteen. Like, we know what he looked like at fifteen.
RSB: That is true. I thought he did a fairly good job of playing younger, but--
RLB: He did a much better job than some of the cast members, but I don't think he was a convincing fifteen-year-old, and Channing Tatum certainly wasn't.
RSB: No. Channing Tatum was 26 at the time--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And looks it.
RLB: None of the cast looks fifteen when they're playing fifteen.
RSB: No.
RLB: And I can excuse that in some things, but it's really hard when there is this dual timeline thing going on, and you have actors who are supposed to be playing them twenty years later, and you're kinda like--you really--you really could've just picked 25-year-olds who could've played both timelines.
RSB: Yeah, Rosario Dawson is five years older than Melonie Diaz.
RLB: Rosario Dawson is one year older than Channing Tatum.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And she's playing Robert Downey Jr.'s age.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: While Channing Tatum is playing Shia LaBeouf's age.
RSB: Mm-hmm.
RLB: But beyond the ages of the actors and the total, like, lack of, like, meaningful production and costume design to convey a specific era in the flashbacks--or in the present, really--I also just found the casting for the two different generations utterly unconvincing. Like, I'm sorry, Shia LaBeouf and Robert Downey Jr. look and act the most alike of the younger and older counterparts in this film, and that's like--that's a problem. Because they don't--they don't resemble each other.
RSB: They don't resemble each other. It almost feels like they should've just cast people who were nothing like them and just made it a style choice.
RLB: Yeah, which it almost was? But it's not.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: There's plenty of examples of really incredible, like, multi-generational casting for the same roles, like the girl who plays the younger Judy Greer in 13 GOING ON 30, all-time great older/younger casting choice. And then there are bad ones, and then there's a million in-between choices. And these choices are none of them. This is like--in SHAZAM when Zachary Levi is supposed to be an older, superheroic version of that kid--
RSB: Right.
RLB: But no one would recognize him.
RSB: Cause he's a mental projection of what he looks like, not--
RLB: Exactly, he's a magic version of the kid. He's not--it's like that, but it's supposed to just be normal.
RSB: Yeah it's--it's not good.
RLB: Although now I'm imagining how funny it would be if everyone in SHAZAM just did recognize him as the kid. I love Shazam, by the way, I can't wait for that sequel.
RSB: Helen Mirren!
RLB: Helen Mirren is gonna be in it.
RSB: Helen Mirren playing a sister of unknown intent.
RLB: But yeah, like, if you wanna, if you wanna go watch a movie with some very good younger and older casting choices but not super intuitive ones, that's a great one! Totally different from this movie, but it is a coming-of-age movie.
RSB: It is.
RLB: Also about, like, slightly criminal teens.
RSB: Yeah, teens with bad parents.
RLB: I mean, like, Billy definitely does some crimes. They're very small crimes, but he definitely does a little bit of them. Which is why like two scenes into the movie I was like I would die for this child.
RSB: I think you're going a little afield, Rachel.
RLB: I am. But I loved that movie.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And I recommend it.
RSB: Yeah. So what I can tell you about the casting for this movie--Dito Montiel really wanted to cast random kids off the street--
RLB: And didn't.
RSB: He wanted it--cause he wanted it to be like CITY OF GOD, in his words.
RLB: That's another kinda influence that I'm like totally unsurprised by.
RSB: Yeah. He had basically--he was making this movie with Robert Downey Jr. and a producer that Robert Downey Jr. knew, and they kind of convinced him you have to cast actors because we can't make the movie in the time we have with non-actors. Initially the white girl who plays Laurie's friend was gonna play Laurie, cause Laurie's white in real life, and then Rosario Dawson somehow got ahold of the script and was like I wanna play adult Laurie! So they cast Melonie Diaz so that she would look like Rosario Dawson.
RLB: Which is a mess. Especially cause like, there's some--there's some later stuff in the movie where like Antonio says some ... some incredibly racist shit.
RSB: It's also super unclear to me why Rosario Dawson saw this movie and was like I wanna play this 45-year-old white woman.
RLB: She's not supposed to be 45 she's supposed to be 35.
RSB: Oh, 35, excuse me.
RLB: But also Rosario Dawson was, what, 26?
RSB: 27, yeah.
RLB: 27.
RSB: So.
RLB: I mean I do wanna point out this was the same year that Rosario Dawson was playing a noted nineteen-year-old in RENT.
RSB: Yes, yes. Which is Melonie Diaz's actual age. The connections just keep coming.
RLB: Wait I thought you said she's only five years older than Melonie Diaz.
RSB: Yeah, I did the math wrong and I wasn't gonna address it 'cause I thought no one would notice.
RLB: So how much older is she than Melonie Diaz?
RSB: Eight years older.
RLB: Okay.
RSB: Which is still fewer than twenty.
RLB: No, yeah, I mean this came out the same year as RENT, in which again, Rosario Dawson's playing Mimi who explicitly states her age as nineteen. But old for her age! Let's not talk about RENT.
RSB: Such a good policy for the podcast.
RLB: I mean I'm not gonna say that it's totally irrelevant.
RSB: What actually happened to Dito Montiel is he was in the late eighties early nineties lower Manhattan arts scene so like yes, it is relevant.
RLB: Right, it is relevant, like this, this movie actually is...
RSB: A RENT prequel? Do we wanna talk about memoir?
RLB: I do think we should talk about memoir.
RSB: So I think memoir is a really weird genre to talk about in film, just because if memoir is a self-authored biography authorship is a lot more complex in film than in books.
RLB: I mean it is more complicated but it's not complicated in a case like this where it's written and directed by one guy.
RSB: No, for sure, but I just mean--
RLB: Who also based it on a book that he wrote.
RSB: For sure, I just mean the question of whether memoir is a film genre and whether a fictional film can be a memoir is--
RLB: I mean I would argue that, like, autobiographical filmmaking is a style and/or genre of film that as much as autobiographical fiction is a ... is a genre or style of writing, ah, I wouldn't necessarily say that memoir is the term I'd use?
RSB: Mm-hmm.
RLB: But I also think like, an autobiographical coming-of-age story in film that's based on a memoir that was published is, y'know, using memoir the literary genre--
RSB: Sure--
RLB: To inform it regardless.
RSB: But I do think there is also a documentary film genre of memoir that I wanna kind of keep apart from this which is a fiction film adaptation of a memoir.
RLB: Yeah, I mean, I would say this is autobiographical fiction.
RSB: But I do think, like, it has interesting things in common with kind of the literary memoir trends of the early 2000s in the kind of way that it elides time and uses dreaminess--I have a hilarious example which is that someone asked him if everything was true and he said "no, this isn't a James Frey novel."
RLB: Oooh.
RSB: Yeah, so this is, but it is that A Million Little whatever--
RLB: Pieces?
RSB: Pieces I wanna say? It's A Million Little Pieces.
RLB: Yeah, Things is the TV show.
RSB: Things is the TV show, A Million Little Pieces is the lying book that was made into a movie by the Taylor-Johnsons--I cannot believe that the Taylor-Johnsons made a movie of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES after it had been exposed as completely made up.
RLB: It's really funny.
RSB: It's so funny. But like that kind of rock-bottomy very dreamy narrative time-eliding memoirs where the author is very much--you know, the present-day author is very much a character in the memoir, I think that was something that was very on-trend in the literary world of the time, and I think this film makes some interesting gestures at how that style could be adapted to film that I would guess Sam Taylor-Johnson didn't achieve.
RLB: God. I mean I do think that kind of related to that is the fourth-wall breaking kind of faux-documentary style, and the like, I think you called it lo-fi--
RSB: Yeah, I did.
RLB: Visual approach--
RSB: And audio approach. I couldn't hear anything in this movie.
RLB: I didn't have an issue with that.
RSB: Your hearing is better than mine.
RLB: Yeah, the kinda deliberately lo-fi style, which wasn't really--at first I was wondering if that was to help, uh, cue us, you know, which time period we were in. It wasn't, it was the same throughout.
RSB: No, they use it in both.
RLB: I mean the whole movie kinda looks like it has a bad instagram filter on it, it's not...
RSB: Yeah, it's not especially well-executed but I think the thing that it's trying to do, to kind of create a haze over this life, is an interesting idea.
RLB: I think it's an interesting idea but I also think that it's very--it's all very much part and parcel of this like show of authenticity I suppose is how I would put it.
RSB: This is a better movie than HAVOC--
RLB: By no stretch of the imagination is it even, like, a competition.
RSB: Absolutely. But I do think that some of the same, like, faux-documentary techniques that we talked about kind of come into play here as well.
RLB: And actually I do think they're more successful here but I do think that's largely because it's copying DO THE RIGHT THING rather than because the sort of fake documentary to convey that this is based on a true story kind of thing--
RSB: Right and I also think like Dito Montiel's artistic background being in a lot of things like photography, music video, where there's less of a strict border between narrative and documentary is also helpful in that regard.
RLB: It does have that little nod to a framing device where Robert Downey Jr. introduces his book--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But it does not have a documentary child.
RSB: It does not have anything like that. There's nothing that obvious in this movie.
RLB: I mean there is--
RSB: There are a lot of obvious things in this movie.
RLB: No but there is something that obvious in this movie in that there's a montage where every character like goes through and introduces--
RSB: Introduces themselves.
RLB: Introduces themselves to the camera as if to a specific like filmmaker/narrator.
RSB: And they're all sort of, like, "this is how people see me" kind of introductions. It just felt very, like, this is the only thing people see about me but there's more to me kind of.
RLB: I do wanna give it credit for not like trying to do a subplot where Dito tries to make a movie.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Cause like it--it could've been that kind of thing.
RSB: It could've, and it--it's good that it's not. I also wanna note that for all the strange ways this movie uses voiceover, none of them are Robert Downey Jr. y'know reflecting.
RLB: Yeah, it's kinda wild that that never happened.
RSB: There's a couple of phone calls that appear on a black screen, and fun fact, the call from Antonio in this movie is a recording of the real call from the real Antonio. Three people play Antonio in this movie.
RLB: I also did find it really baffling that one of the final scenes of the movie where Robert Downey Jr.'s character is driving to Riker's Island to visit Antonio, and Monte's dialogue from literally three scenes earlier--
RSB: Oh, yeah.
RLB: Is playing over it, and I'm like--we just saw this.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: It just happened.
RSB: Yeah, I mean--and this is one of the places where I'm like I like that you took a risk even though it didn't pay off. I think some of those choices are interesting things to try out--I didn't think they worked, but I kinda like that someone tried them?
RLB: I totally disagree. I did not think it was a risky choice I thought if anything--
RSB: Well, no.
RLB: I thought if anything it was not trusting that the audience would understand what was happening.
RSB: No, I wasn't thinking about that one specifically but some of the--randomly subtitling a scene or something like that--it's silly, and it doesn't really work, but I kinda found that fun. I liked that the movie kept trying to do something different every scene and most of them didn't really work. Do we have anything else we wanna hit on genre before we move on to gender?
RLB: I don't think so. I just remain baffled by this movie's attitude toward making a period piece and toward the idea of like a nostalgic coming-of-age story. Because I do think that also it's worth stating the coming-of-age narrative of this movie is largely about traumatic events.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: But I also--I could not help but feel that this was very much, like, a, like, look back at this time when I was--
RSB: Young and free.
RLB: Young and free, and my friends and I were so alive--
RSB: We were the gods of the street.
RLB: Right. It was--like it's definitely still glorifying whatever was going on.
RSB: Even though it clearly wasn't fun at the time. Like, Dito doesn't appear to ever be enjoying himself.
RLB: Yeah, and even the older characters seem pretty fucked up about it still.
RSB: Yeah, and very reluctant to revisit it.
RLB: Also like on the like weird casting for the different timelines note, like, Dito's parents are just in age makeup.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Which is another reason that I found, like, why is he Robert Downey Jr. to be a fascinating question, just on every level. But I really just like--I can't get over the guy who plays Antonio at the end--
RSB: Eric Roberts.
RLB: Looks nothing like Channing Tatum.
RSB: He also looks way more than twenty years older. Which to be fair, he's been in prison, but like--
RLB: Yeah, he just--when you've got Rosario Dawson, Robert Downey Jr. and Eric Roberts playing the same age--
RSB: Right. That doesn't work.
RLB: It doesn't make any sense.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: It just doesn't. I'm sorry, like when Eric Roberts showed up I was like wait, is that Antonio? And then he starts talking to Robert Downey Jr. and I was like well, he must be, but nothing in the scene is actually telling me that.
RSB: Yeah, other than the fact that we know Antonio's in prison.
RLB: This movie just did not answer a lot of questions that I had about what happened to Antonio.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Like this movie wasn't even totally clear on whether Antonio killed a guy.
RSB: Yes, I agree.
RLB: Like I did not get that that had been a murder.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Until several scenes later.
RSB: Yeah, I--
RLB: I thought that he'd attacked him but it was not--
RSB: Yeah, we already know at that point that Antonio is going to go to prison. But it also wasn't clear from the scene where Dianne Wiest says "when Antonio went to prison" that Antonio is still in prison?
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And what happened to the real Antonio--he did in fact go to prison--I think for something less than killing someone but I don't remember for sure and then escaped prison, and then according to Dito Montiel got sent back to prison for doing some stuff that's so bad that if I put it in a movie you couldn't accept the character.
RLB: The movie's dedicated to Antonio by the way.
RSB: Yeah. Um, so...
RLB: Also, Antonio is pretty bad in the movie already, I mean obviously we'll talk more about Antonio when we get to Channing Tatum, but no one in the movie uses as many racial slurs as Antonio does--
RSB: Racial slurs, homophobic slurs--
RLB: Well he does also use homophobic slurs and ableist slurs but, uh, no one uses the amount of racial slurs that he does.
RSB: Not even close.
RLB: Not even close. It's notable because other characters do use racial slurs in the movie, but no one comes near Antonio. The murder was partially racially motivated.
RSB: Yes. Um, I would say more than partially.
RLB: I mean I would say partially in the sense that the guy did literally threaten to kill Dito.
RSB: Yes, which is also insane, but...
RLB: It is insane, and I had no--
RSB: Why does--why does this gang hate a random teenager?
RLB: I did not understand the storyline at all, but I will say that explicitly in the movie--
RSB: No, that's fair, it is supposed to be a revenge thing. But I think we should maybe hop over to gender?
RLB: I agree.
40:51
RSB: All right. Rachel, who or what is doing The Most regarding gender in this movie?
RLB: I mean I think it's Channing Tatum.
RSB: It is Channing Tatum and his beautiful chest.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And his bloody face.
RLB: Yeah, his nose is constantly bleeding.
RSB: One of the reviews, and this is one that came out after SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP, referred to him as Channing Tatum "with his shirt off, as usual."
RLB: Shirt off and nose bleeding as usual.
RSB: Uh-huh.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: He doesn't have an open shirt in every scene but it's most of them.
RLB: Most of them.
RSB: And I think he does have some kind of facial injury in every scene.
RLB: Yeah, I mean it's worth nothing Antonio has an abusive father that's established pretty early on, and the implication in most scenes is that these injuries are from his father--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: But he is also shown getting into fights with other people.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Um, usually ones he starts. He shows up bruised or bleeding most of the time and almost never wearing an entire shirt. Sometimes half of one.
RSB: He has--the main thing he wears which he wears on the poster for the movie--and so I kinda thought oh they picked out that outfit for the poster but it actually is his main outfit in the movie is this like army shirt with the sleeves cut off and he only wears it open.
RLB: Yeah. I mean, look, it's a look.
RSB: Oh, yeah, he looks great.
RLB: But he does wear it most of the movie. He is actually fully shirtless a few times as well.
RSB: Yeah, in a few scenes. He wears a full shirt for the funeral--is there another scene where he wears a full shirt?
RLB: I don't think so.
RSB: Okay.
RLB: I could be misremembering but I don't--I don't recall another scene where he's truly fully dressed. Yeah, he's shirtless--
RSB: And this isn't like all their crew does that, it's just him.
RLB: It's just him. Yeah, he's shirtless and goes around basically just like yelling and threatening people and being incredibly devoted to Dito's dad in the movie. And so it is difficult for me to say that anyone but him in this movie is doing as much about masculinity.
RSB: Yeah. I do wanna give a little shoutout to Mike's gay poem at the beginning.
RLB: I do wanna talk a little bit about Mike and I do wanna talk about Mike and his--
RSB: Connections to...
RLB: How does he even know the dogwalker guy?
RSB: Highly unclear.
RLB: It's very unclear but Mike is, uh, I guess friends with and/or employed by this gay dogwalker.
RSB: Yes. Who ... unclear, he's kind of running a scam but he does actually walk the dogs?
RLB: Yeah, it's--it's confusing.
RSB: He walks the dogs but not as well as he's supposed to?
RLB: He's doing, like, a level of flamboyance that's inconsistent between scenes which I found confusing. I had questions. I also, like, that poem was gay.
RSB: Yeah, so Mike is introduced--there's only one scene in school, much like in HAVOC, and the teacher--
RLB: At least they enter the building more often in HAVOC.
RSB: To be fair--
RLB: It's summer.
RSB: Most of this movie is summer.
RLB: It's summer.
RSB: It's late in the school year at this point, which is also weird that there's a new student. But anyway, so the teacher is like there's this new student, he is from either Ireland or Scotland, and he wants to introduce himself by reading a poem to you.
RLB: And then he reads this poem about his friend.
RSB: And then the entire class doesn't like beat him up? Which is unrealistic.
RLB: I thought there was some stuff going on that later Antonio was gonna get more overt.
RSB: Right.
RLB: About the homophobia when he started using slurs to refer to the dogwalker guy who's Mike's pal or whatever.
RSB: Yeah, and Mike is very much like the guy with connections to the outside world but also the guy with connections to queerness.
RLB: Yeah, he's the guy who--
RSB: He knows a gay person.
RLB: He knows a gay person but also like he's the guy who knows stuff that's going on in Manhattan.
RSB: Right and he's been outside of New York which Dito never has. He obviously is from Scotland--
RLB: Or Ireland in real life.
RSB: Or Ireland in real life, he's been to other places, and he has this idea of going to California that he gives Dito for the first time, it's like the first time Dito ever thinks about leaving, so he represents the outside world, but he also very much represents queerness.
RLB: I wouldn't go so far as to say he represents queerness, I think that's overstating the--
RSB: Fair enough, but--
RLB: Issue--
RSB: The queerness in the movie comes through Mike.
RLB: I wouldn't say there's actually any queerness in the movie.
RSB: There's a gay character in the movie.
RLB: There just is a gay character in the movie.
RSB: Who Mike introduces--
RLB: Who Mike introduces. But like I wouldn't say there's actually any meaningful queer content in this movie. Like, it's--
RSB: That's fair. No, that is fair.
RLB: I know that we're known for arguing there's queer content in things where there isn't but like there isn't.
RSB: I think it's fair to say there's a certain extent to which Antonio suggests that there may be--
RLB: I mean I thought that it was going to go there. I think that if it was meant to be him suggesting it he would've said it.
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: Cause like he's already using slurs.
RSB: Yeah, extremely valid. But anyway, Mike's poem is gay.
RLB: Yeah. I was confused the poem never came up again.
RSB: Yeah, why was there a poem? Like, why was he allowed to introduce himself to the class by reading a poem he wrote.
RLB: Look, if I was a teacher and a teenager said I'd like to introduce myself with a poem--
RSB: I wouldn't let them do it for their own good.
RLB: I'd say "Are you sure?"
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And then I'd say can I read the poem.
RSB: Yes. I just--
RLB: Maybe I'd let them do it, but--
RSB: Yeah, I just feel like--reading a poem to introduce yourself to the class at all is such a bold move.
RLB: Yeah, it just opens you up to so much.
RSB: So much. So, it's a weird thing that happens. So I think my answer is gonna be Mike's weird poem.
RLB: Mike's weird poem is your example of gender...
RSB: It's not actually doing the most with gender but it's doing the weirdest with gender.
RLB: It's certainly doing the weirdest. Yeah, I would agree that Mike is doing the weirdest with gender. I think the movie was deliberately trying to say some things about masculinity with several characters. I don't think Mike was as thought through perhaps as some of them. But oh boy, this movie has some things about fathers and sons and aggression, and--
RSB: Surrogate fathers!
RLB: Yeah, just--
RSB: And the role of women in the lives of men.
RLB: Well, it--
RSB: Or lack thereof.
RLB: Well, it unfortunately doesn't have much to say about that, which is its own statement.
RSB: That's what I mean, yes. All the scenes where they're in the kitchen and there's a woman present she's very much ... present. There is literally a scene where they all repeatedly talk over Laurie and don't let her get a word in edgewise in the kitchen. It's really weird that the kitchen is the masculine space in this movie. It's kind of Monte's domain--Monte's the dad--
RLB: Look, I said Channing was doing the most in terms of gender in this movie, but I do wanna also give some credit to Monte--
RSB: Played by Chazz Palmentieri.
RLB: I think that Monte is an interesting father figure--he's not a consistently super-masculine one--
RSB: He's playing it, I think, very much this sort of specific type of old-school immigrant masculinity.
RLB: Yeah--
RSB: And I think he and Channing do a really interesting double act in that Channing seems really ready to step into that role even though it's already dated by 1986. And I think that the way that the two of them portray this strange intergenerational friendship where not only are they different generations they also kind of interact in the way of an even older generation than them is really interestingly developed and it's not something that gets commented on too explicitly in the movie and I think that's one of the reasons it worked so well.
RLB: I agree. I found the relationship between Monte and his wife confusing, and I did think that in many ways that was because her role was so small that Monte in a lot of scenes takes on a role of both parents.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: In the family in relation to Dito and Antonio.
RSB: Right.
RLB: We do get like one meaningful scene between Dianne Wiest and Robert Downey Jr. but not a lot.
RSB: It's also interesting--in that scene she mentions them being unusually old to be his parents and because of the insane ages of the characters that's never really explored at any other time--
RLB: It wasn't even obvious at the time.
RSB: No, it wasn't at all obvious, I never would've thought it.
RLB: There's constantly these references to boxing, which no one ever actually does in the movie. There's this implication that like Monte used to box. He keeps talking about how Antonio should go train at this gym, he should just get his boxing wisdom from him.
RSB: It's also like neither of the parents seems to work?
RLB: It's worth also noting that Monte has seizures.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: That's what ultimately draws the Robert Downey Jr. version of Dito back to New York.
RSB: It does kind of fizzle out. It's all like "Your dad's super super sick, you have to come back," and then he comes back and his dad's basically fine?
RLB: Yeah, it doesn't seem like he's actually any different but the idea is that his dad's health is in decline so he has to come back and care for him. And I do think the way that Dito kind of runs away when his dad has that seizure in the flashback and Antonio stays--
RSB: Antonio keeps coming to the house and hanging out with Monte even when he and Dito aren't really hanging out--it kind of seems like Antonio's ready to turn into Monte.
RLB: It does, but there's interesting ideas I think about parent and child responsibility you know on both sides. There is an interesting aspect of this movie in terms of, like, the idea of emotional caretaking, and specifically how men care for and mentor each other in both the context of this parental relationship and surrogate parental relationship and within these groups--this group of teenagers.
RSB: Yeah, um, and there's kind of this question of what does it mean when men love each other.
RLB: There's one notable scene where Dito and Antonio really seem to, like, connect emotionally, it's like, Dito, like, falls or something and gets hurt, and Antonio is like, comforting him, and it's one of the few moments that we see Antonio express, like, really any emotion besides, like, sort of anger and disinterest to someone other than Monte, who he's very affectionate towards.
RSB: Yes, very loving relationship.
RLB: He's also very defensive of his own father.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Which is also interesting in contrast to the way he treats Monte which is less deferential but much more loving.
RSB: I think there's also this kind of question of protective male love versus propulsive male love, if that makes sense, so Monte--his way of caring for his son and his surrogate son is to--I mean, he literally gives this monologue about, like, if you want China go to Chinatown multiple times about never leaving the city. He constantly tells them to never leave--don't leave the house, don't leave the neighborhood, don't leave the city.
RLB: I hadn't thought of this comparison but the specific masculine archetype that Monte embodies is less this gritty New York scene and more like he's the dad in Emma. Like in a weird way that's who this guy is.
RSB: Yeah I just think like the way he shows love is like keeping people protected and he thinks of protection as only being within his eyesight. And I think Antonio does that to a certain extent too, where it makes him anxious that Dito is going off to Manhattan, whereas, like, Mike is like "I've grown attached to you my new friend Dito and I wanna take you to Manhattan with me and introduce you to people and talk about moving to California with you." And Laurie kind of gets caught in between Dito's decision between these types of love in that he acts both ways towards her.
RLB: And I think we'll talk more about Laurie in a minute. But I do think Monte--he has this very strange attitude toward protecting these kids but without, like, meaningfully protecting them from anything that they're actually dealing with.
RSB: I mean it's clearly genuine that he does care a lot about both Dito and Antonio and also in a general way about all the kids who come through the home, but he also feels that he can only keep them safe within the walls.
RLB: Well, I don't know that that's necessarily true, I just think it's--the pivotal confrontation scene between Dito and Monte is this scene late in the movie where Monte's trying to tell him that, like, everything's gonna be okay with Antonio after Antonio killed this guy and whatever, like everything's gonna be fine, and it's right after Mike got shot and killed and Dito hasn't--Dito can't get a word in edgewise to tell him that that's what happened.
RSB: Yeah and Dito also--Dito and Mike were basically on the way to leave town when this happens, and there's that tension in the scene as well.
RLB: Dito says "You're not listening to me, you don't understand, you're not listening to me," and obviously to Monte this sounds like a generic teenager complaint, you know, you don't understand me and you don't know me kind of thing, but no, he's literally just trying to explain to him but can't get the words out that Mike just died.
RSB: The other thing is that Dito is very distraught in the scene and Monte keeps trying to hug him and comfort him and Dito keeps saying "don't touch me" and push--and eventually pushes him away and when he pushes him away Monte says "don't put your hands on your father." So it's an interesting contrast between--what does "put your hands on" someone mean. Is it giving them a hug, is it pushing them away, which ones are appropriate, in which direction can they go?
RLB: I feel like we're talking a lot about stuff that's in the movie without really coming to any conclusions about it, but I think it's because I don't really get where this movie lands on any of this.
RSB: I think the movie is unsettled on it because I think Dito the writer/director is unsettled on it.
RLB: Yeah, I can't tell how much of that is ambiguity, like for a purpose, versus a total lack of awareness of it.
RSB: I think I would come down somewhere in between, and I do think a lot of it is put into the movie by the actors, who we've discussed Channing as someone who we think tends to gravitate towards playing interesting forms of masculinity but I think Robert Downey Jr. definitely also is talented at portraying complex masculinity as well.
RLB: I do also think, like, it's probably worth talking a little bit about the brotherly relationship between Antonio and Giuseppe versus Antonio--
RSB: Pseudo-brotherly.
RLB: Versus the pseudo-brotherly relationship between, uh, Antonio and Dito, but also between Dito and Mike.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I think the way that Antonio treats Giuseppe as this annoying guy who's always around because he's his brother, um, versus--I think there's an extent to which Dito kind of treats Antonio as this annoying guy who's always around because he's his surrogate brother.
RSB: Yeah, and I think they have similar levels of respect for each other.
RLB: Yeah. Antonio's behavior in both Giuseppe's death scene and the funeral scene--I mean the funeral scene he really lashes out at Dito--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Which is interesting--
RSB: And fairly, in my opinion.
RLB: I think it's fair, but it's also interesting that it happens then and that Monte intervenes, and not really so much to defend Dito as to comfort Antonio.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: The movie never really resolves this idea of, like, Dito and Antonio competing for Monte's love.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Because in some ways they aren't in competition, but they also obviously both feel they are.
RSB: Yeah. But also I think Dito is ambivalent as to whether he wants Monte's love.
RLB: Yeah, I mean there's the scene where Robert Downey Jr. is like screaming at him like Daddy, did you even love me. But I do think that there's some like pretty deliberate restraint in terms of them directly addressing this question of whether Antonio is trying to replace Dito as, as Monte's son. It's just strange to me not that it doesn't come up directly between Antonio and Dito but that it doesn't directly come up between Dito and Monte.
RSB: So I think we should move on and talk a little about the women and girls in the movie.
RLB: So as much as we've kind of rambled about the movie's treatment of masculinity and whether or not it's actually aware of some of the themes that it's bringing up, it's definitely not aware of it with the women.
RSB: Yeah, not at all.
RLB: I don't think this movie has any idea what to do with the existence of women.
RSB: Not really.
RLB: It's not even a movie that treats women primarily as sex objects or as, you know, wives and moms kind of thing, although they are both of those things in this movie, it's a movie that seems absolutely baffled by the idea of women's interiority--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: But aware that it should explore it. There are moments the movie makes a pretty deliberate, like, on-the-nose effort to convey the female characters' perspectives and y'know emotional journeys and things. And to put them in conflict with the male characters over their treatment at you know male characters' hands. But in basically being reverse of the way that I am kind of willing to give the movie some credit for, like, some subtle and nuanced handling of the father/son and surrogate son I kinda wanna call it a love triangle--
RSB: I understand what you mean.
RLB: It has no idea how to approach women being people in any way but women insisting verbally, essentially, to men that they are people.
RSB: Yes. I guess when I say it's confused by women's minds I think it's very confused by women's motivations. I do think Melonie Diaz's performance is excellent.
RLB: I just don't think it's notable.
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: There's nothing for her to do.
RSB: That's how I feel about poor Dianne Wiest.
RLB: I also agree with that about Dianne Wiest, there's nothing for her to do either.
RSB: At all.
RLB: I just don't think there's anything for any of them to do. Melonie Diaz is fine, but she's not given any interesting material.
RSB: Not really.
RLB: She has one scene that I think kind of approaches that, which is when she kind of confronts Dito at Giuseppe's funeral--
RSB: Right.
RLB: But the scene gets very quickly derailed by Antonio, and it also is a scene about Dito having this sort of ambivalent relationship with her and with the idea of her joining him when he leaves the city, which we haven't actually seen. We've seen him ask her to leave with him--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: And we haven't seen the, like, the scenes where he's pushing her away which is what she says he is doing.
RSB: Yeah, it seems like at the funeral almost as if, like, Giuseppe's death puts him off her.
RLB: I think it's totally valid that Giuseppe's death changes most of the characters' perspectives on, like--
RSB: Yeah, of course.
RLB: What is going on and what their plans are and everything--like, that's fine.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But it also, like, we really need more from Dito to know where he lands on any of this, cause he's also not even in Giuseppe's death scene. The issue of not really getting a lot from Dito on this front and also the issue of Laurie and like not really understanding her journey through her perspective which is largely in the context of her relationship with Dito. It plays into what I was gonna maybe save for a later part of this discussion but, like, I think it's a big enough problem that it's worth bringing up earlier--Dito's not the protagonist of the movie.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: He's the point-of-view character but he's not.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: The protagonist. Except when the movie remembers that he's supposed to be, which it occasionally does, and then he'll get some good material, but like, for the vast majority of the movie Antonio is treated as the de facto protagonist just because he's the most active and interesting character.
RSB: Yeah. Including Dito who has some major differences, Antonio's the character who's the closest to the real-life counterpart, and I think that Dito Montiel seems to have this fascination with the real Antonio in a way that he doesn't even have with himself.
RLB: The movie's dedicated to Antonio, like the movie's about Antonio. The movie states pretty explicitly that it's about Antonio in many ways, but even before I realized that it was really clear just from the way that Antonio is just the active character in every scene Antonio is the one making choices for the whole group but also just the only one who's getting scenes that he is meaningfully driving the plot in any way. But also so much of the movie, even though it's from Dito's perspective, is so focused on Antonio, and then so much of the movie is from Antonio's perspective because Dito's not even in half of the scenes.
RSB: Right.
RLB: Dito's only the protagonist in the 2005 sections and not the 1986 sections.
RSB: The book actually doesn't just cover his teenage years in Astoria. It also totally covers his whole time in the Lower Manhattan scene, and he's an underwear model, and he's a punk rock artist, and he meets Liza Minnelli, this is all in the book, and what Montiel said is, "I took all that out 'cause it wasn't interesting," which I think is the funniest thing to say. But I think it does kind of belie him not having much interest in himself, which is unusual for a memoirist and being fascinated by this person he knew as a young man. But we did kind of go afield and I think you had more to say about the women before we go full Channing.
RLB: I think that with Laurie there's a lot of attempts at, like, some depth and sort of layers to her character that just don't feel real. Part of me does wonder how much of that is also this idealized vision of her, uh, that you know I now realize is because she died before the film was made. There is this, like, this very uncritical, like, romanticized way that the movie approaches the scenes where she and Dito are, you know, bantering or flirting or just sort of being sweet to each other, although there's also sort of an edge to it, like there is a sense that this isn't gonna work out.
RSB: They're also always talking about having sex but never really...
RLB: Well, that's something that I was gonna say is that, like, there's a strange approach I think to sexuality in the movie as well in that like Laurie is--she's not portrayed as like, this, you know, virginal angel or whatever, but she's clothed more than the other women onscreen--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: Her two friends who show up are definitely wearing skimpier outfits--one of them is shirtless in a couple scenes. I'm pretty sure one of them introduces herself in that little montage of documentary-style intros by saying "I like to fuck."
RSB: Yes. And she has a Bomb Pop.
RLB: And I think between that and the, like, early-on, y'know Channing Tatum sex scene with--I think that's her, or is it the other one?
RSB: I think it's her, but it's--
RLB: I think it's her.
RSB: Really hard to remember.
RLB: Which is playful but aggressive, I would say. I mean it reads as consensual to me but it's not without some power dynamics.
RSB: Consensual but not respectful, I would say.
RLB: Yeah. That's pretty much how I would characterize it. Whereas we immediately cut from that basically to the scene of, y'know, Dito and Laurie talking quietly to each other about how he wants to fuck her in his words--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: But they don't.
RSB: But like they do have these conversations about how they're going to have sex and there's very little actually of them even like, you know, necking or whatever.
RLB: But there is also this notable scene where, like, after that argument they had which I believe was at the funeral, there's a bruise on her arm and is like "did I do that," and she downplays it--
RSB: She's like, "yeah, but I bruise easily."
RLB: And the scene gets derailed by other things, but since so much of their interaction has been this, like, markedly gentler dynamic than the other, you know, teenage sexual relationships are portrayed and also, you know, than Dito's friends and--and--and Dito himself interacts with--with other people--it's a strange scene not to follow up on meaningfully.
RSB: I think it's also notable that in the scene where Dito discovers a bruise on Laurie--the men in this movie are constantly bruised and battered, and this is the one moment where that happens to a woman in the movie.
RLB: It is interesting that we see Dito and Laurie's injuries happen on screen when they happen.
RSB: Right, and I think in that moment when he injures her he in some ways relates to her as he would a man.
RLB: In some ways I think he's just kind of behaving like the other guys. There's a scene where Laurie gets really mad as do the other girls because Giuseppe's been threatening them with knives that he's, like--
RSB: He's throwing knives at them.
RLB: Yeah, he's throwing knives at them.
RSB: And the attitude of the guys towards this is kind of "Well, Giuseppe's Giuseppe, there's only so much you can do."
RLB: Right.
RSB: And the girls are kinda like, "okay, but he's throwing a knife at me, you could step in."
RLB: I think that that's a scene where Dito is taking his behavior in that scene to its logical conclusion, which is that he's not paying attention to whether the girls are getting hurt.
RSB: That is super fair, but I think that this sort of opens a part of the movie where things are breaking down and all these previously affectionate forms of touch become violent and painful, including, you know, the scene where they go to visit their dogwalking boss and it almost turns into a violent confrontation, where previously he's had this very sort of older-brotherly attitude towards them, and now suddenly they're threatening each other with guns, and Mike is then shot, and then he comes home and then there's this scene where--
RLB: Dito comes home.
RSB: Dito comes home, excuse me.
RLB: Mike doesn't.
RSB: Yeah, RIP. Dito comes home, and there's the scene where, again, touch has completely broken down, affection has completely broken down into violence, and I think that that is a theme of that entire section of the movie.
RLB: It's just a lot of interactions that characters in this movie traditionally had relatively affectionately or at least without conflict escalating to violence or the threat of violence, I think. But I do think that, like, the sort of casual disregard for the women in the movie is--it's so strange to me that, like, it's textual, like, that the women point out that the boys don't seem to care, like, someone throwing knives at them, and it doesn't even faze the guys, and the movie does go out of its way to show this different dynamic between Dito and Laurie than the other women have when they're, you know, sleeping with these--these guys, but it's not--it's just not aware enough to avoid the movie doing the same thing.
RSB: I also think, like, you said there's this different relation between Dito and Laurie, but the one time that Laurie comes into Monte's apartment, not just Monte and Antonio but Dito completely talk over her, literally, and disregard her, and she very obviously is trying to speak and can't because they prevent her, and the one notable scene with Flori, the mom, also takes place outside the apartment. First Dito comes into the apartment, he confronts his dad, he leaves, and his mom follows after him and they're able to have this meaningful conversation outside the apartment, but within the apartment she doesn't say much. And even when she calls him at the beginning she's sitting on the stoop.
RLB: Yeah. The movie can't consistently keep up caring about the women in it even though I--I do think that the movie is aware that that's a problem.
RSB: Yeah, and I think the movie is maybe trying to criticize younger Dito, but Dito hasn't actually changed enough to critique his younger self yet.
RLB: Well, Dito... we don't know if Dito's changed. We just--we don't know, meaningfully, what Dito's gone through, but we also--we can't know how the stuff with Laurie is different, because like, again, I do think what we see of her as an adult just doesn't work because for one thing she's played by so much younger an actress that like her presence alone feels sexist to me. In that little they-introduce-themselves-to-the-camera kind of thing, Laurie says, "I'm Laurie, and everyone's gonna leave me."
RSB: This isn't a theme that's addressed.
RLB: This isn't a theme that's really addressed other than the fact that, like, she's still there and the others aren't, and she does have this little confrontation with Dito about him leaving his dad, and how it killed his dad. And his mom, she says. And I--there's just something missing. There's something missing from, like, where is Laurie in this? Why is Laurie's role to explain to Dito what he's doing wrong without, like--it's true to some extent of her teenage self, too, even though I think there's more layers to her teenage self, like--she's there to teach Dito a lesson. But there is this acknowledgement that she's--she's got her own fears and--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Insecurities, and ideas, and wants! I mean, she--she seems, for a moment there, to really want to go to California, uh, like, like Dito says that he and Mike are gonna do. And just can't do it. It just can't quite commit enough to making her a really three-dimensional character, and I do actually think that part of the problem is also that her two kinda sidekick girls are so flat, like they're almost--you get the sense that they were told to act bored on purpose. They all just kinda come across as a joke.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I think we've probably covered as much as we can about the female characters, I just--i found them so frustrating, but not in the sort of--not in the sort of standard sense where so many movies I'm just like wow, they're only there because gotta establish that a character has a girlfriend, or gotta have a mom for someone to hate or something.
RSB: Yeah, no, it didn't feel like that.
RLB: It didn't feel like that. It felt like there was thought put into it, but not enough. It just wasn't enough. I mean for me the most disappointing thing is always when a movie almost succeeds at something.
RSB: So real.
RLB: There's so many movies that I, like, I just, I can't like, get past my issues with them not because they're so--not because they're the worst movies I've seen, and not because I like the movie so much, but because they're almost there.
RSB: Yep.
RLB: And this isn't overall one of those movies, but I--I really do think that its portrayal of women, even without them being the focus of the movie--it's close enough to having something to say about the gender dynamics there that I'm frustrated that it doesn't, because it does feel in some ways like maybe if the Laurie character hadn't shown up as an adult there would've been an opportunity to say something more...
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Complicated there.
RSB: Yeah, I think so.
RLB: I do think that if they'd cast an actual 35-year-old or older, um--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Then it also would play a little bit differently in those scenes, even though I think that they were maybe underwritten and maybe not nuanced enough to really go anywhere particularly, like, thematically interesting, I still think it would play really differently.
RSB: I agree. But I think that we're ready to steer into the Channing of it all.
RLB: I agree.
RSB: All right. So our just kind of general question: what's Channing doing in the movie, and how does it fit into genre and gender?
RLB: I think we--we've canvassed this a little bit already...
RSB: Little bit.
RLB: I mean, he's, he's definitely playing an archetype that I recognize.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Um, I think he does it with a lot of finesse.
RSB: I agree. I think it's--we can talk about whether it's a good performance, I think it largely is.
RLB: I generally agree. I think there are some ways that the character is underwritten, but I do think that the performance is actually pretty exceptional, especially for an actor as early in his career as Channing is.
RSB: I think you can definitely tell that Channing's early in his career, is what I would say, he plays things a little broader than they need to be.
RLB: I kinda though that might be a directorial choice rather than an acting choice.
RSB: That's definitely possible.
RLB: Yeah, just because I thought Robert Downey Jr. had the same problem.
RSB: Ah, yeah, yeah.
RLB: It's not that I didn't think that there were--were good moments and good choices in there, actually I thought Dito Montiel clearly showed that he works with actors incredibly well--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I thought that was a strength of the movie, but like, I think--I think your take is totally valid, but I just--I was not convinced that he was, he was driving that--
RSB: No, that's completely--
RLB: That train.
RSB: That's completely fair, but I do think like, we'll get into the concept of a standout performance or breakout role later but I do think it's an excellent performance from someone so early in their career. I was really pleased by it.
RLB: I found a lot of it a little bit underwhelming but like in a different way than I think you did just because I kept wanting the movie to take him somewhere new, it just felt like a lot of repetition. But he played it with, I thought, an incredible amount of specificity and nuance that I--I don't think was all scripted. I mean, I--I do think that the movie's, like, obsession with Antonio is very much from Dito Montiel, but I do think that, like, the depth that Channing Tatum brought to the character is--is pretty apparent. I also--I really hated the character.
RSB: Yeah, I mean he's a terrible person.
RLB: But I do think actually it is worth explicitly saying I found the character very unlikable. Like, beyond like, he murders a guy and he's throwing around racial slurs, obviously I'm gonna have difficulty connecting with a character emotionally who's doing that, but obviously it is also possible to sympathize with characters who are bad people. I didn't really find him sympathetic to be honest. I found things that happened to him very sad. I felt kind of resistant to the movie's affection for Antonio and the movie's sort of insistence that, like, he was this interesting character.
RSB: Yeah, I mean, I think the reason Dito feels so fascinated by him is because he's the, you know, path not taken for him, but I think that what Dito misses is that that's not really the case, because neither of them could've taken each other's paths.
RLB: I think there's a little bit of an idol worship kind of thing with the younger Antonio that Dito doesn't wrestle with. Like, the character Dito doesn't really wrestle with. He does have some moments of either kind of loving or hating Antonio dramatically. He does have some moments of ambivalence too, but I think there's a leadership quality to Antonio within their group of friends that Dito envies, and I don't think the movie quite tackles that. And I think that it's pretty evident that that's true of the real Dito to an extent as well, that like, he doesn't quite figure out what to say about that or how to approach it.
RSB: He's asked at one point if Antonio had seen the movie and he was like "I don't think they'd show this movie in a prison," which is an interesting way to answer that question.
RLB: Yeah that's an interesting--interesting answer.
RSB: What you were saying about his leadership role, I mean, I think Antonio kind of physically dominates every scene that he's in--
RLB: He does.
RSB: And it's interesting because part of that is Channing and--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: His body.
RLB: He is the tallest and broadest guy in the group. I haven't checked all of the ages of the actors but it seems like he's probably the oldest.
RSB: I'm fairly certain he's the oldest of the group.
RLB: He's certainly older than Shia LaBeouf was.
RSB: And he's older than Melonie was.
RLB: He's physically imposing.
RSB: But even like when he's in the scenes with the parents, I mean, he just fills that tiny apartment.
RLB: Yeah. And he throws his weight around a lot. I mean, he threatens a kid in one scene. It's, like--
RSB: Very upsetting. I think, though, I wanna kinda go back to that Channing Tatum with his shirt off as usual business, and I think it's not? I mean, it is obviously Channing Tatum with his shirt off, but I think the reason that Antonio is showing off his musculature is very different from the reason that--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: Most Channing Tatum characters are necessarily.
RLB: The motivation both for the character and--and for the filmmaker is different, although I think that it's actually much more similar to the first couple of roles that we've seen Channing Tatum in. Less similar to SUPERCROSS because, um, I think there is sort of a similar, like, imposing type thing going on there but not as much as I think his physique is a stand-in for characterization in his first couple of small roles, and in this movie had the role not been fleshed out so much, it would've been a very similar situation.
RSB: So I have an amazing quote from Dito Montiel. So the interviewer asks "how did you come upon Channing Tatum for the role of Antonio?" and says "it seems like he's been hiding in teen movies until now," which I wanna come back to. But Dito Montiel says "he was someone I was really concerned about too. Antonio, the guy I wrote, he's five foot eight, pretty scraggly-looking, and every bit as tough as Channing, but definitely as good-looking. When Channing showed up I thought Oh my God, it's a Bruce Weber model. Blue eyes, blond hair, and he's from the South. There's something about Channing, he might look like a Bruce Weber model and come from the South but he knew this character inside and out and I can't believe how well he knew this person." So the best part of that quote is that Dito Montiel was a Bruce Weber model.
RLB: God.
RSB: But it's also interesting with how--similar to what you were saying about physique being characterization is that it does work that way but, again, as we've talked about before, that's something that Channing contributes to, it's not something that's done to him necessarily. I kinda wanna talk about Channing's acting style going forward from this movie, and I think first maybe we should have this conversation about the concept of a breakthrough role and whether this is Channing's breakthrough role, if it's one of them, if it's not at all. So I'm just gonna read a quick quote from the New York Times review, which refers to this as a breakout.
RLB: It's from AO Scott.
RSB: Yes. Um, "Mr. Tatum, who has the bullish physicality of a young Brando, is an electrifying actor, and I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of him after this breakout performance." This is where we get in my obligatory reference to Channing playing Sky Masterson.
RLB: Fair.
RSB: But no, I mean, it's quite the quote, first of all, like, clip that one for the scrapbook. But it's interesting because that did come out in September after SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP, and AO Scott still refers to this as a breakout performance, and the other interviewer we discussed says that he's been hiding in teen movies, which--I think it's true of the first few movies we watched, I don't think he's hiding at all in SHE'S THE MAN or STEP UP, he's just in teen movies.
RLB: And there was the review we discussed where someone says he has his shirt off as usual.
RSB: As usual so he did already have this image. We can have the next part of this discussion in our next episode when we watch SHE'S THE MAN, but this question of what counts as a breakout performance is an interesting one in general, both in terms of like the narrative but also what it means for an actor going forward, because I feel like often the breakout performance is of course the one that they're asked to do again and again, and it's something that determines the trajectory of their career, and I kind of wonder like, what if this movie had, for some reason, someone wanted to give it a big awards push and it had been--gone into wide release in December of 2005 and, you know, this was the movie everyone first saw Channing in. Like, what does it mean that this breakout performance actually doesn't break out until after he's started this career as Channing Tatum with his shirt off?
RLB: I think this kind of goes back to our discussion of Indie Spirit.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I do think that the, you know, the idea of a--a breakout role or breakthrough performance is an interesting one to think about in terms of, like, Channing Tatum, by the time this comes out in theaters, is a known quantity to the average moviegoer.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Who keeps up with big releases.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I mean, maybe not to everyone, you know, outside of the demographic that SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP were targeted at, but like, I would say a lot of people saw one or both of those movies compared to seeing this.
RSB: I found when I was doing research a post about the DVD release of this movie, so not until 2007, but on a Channing Tatum fansite.
RLB: Right.
RSB: So by a year from Sundance he had fansites.
RLB: I can't help but feel like this critical reception of this as Channing Tatum's breakout role is because I think especially in 2006 as compared to maybe 2016 let alone 2021, mainstream critics--
RSB: Oh, for sure.
RLB: Were not taking SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP seriously on any real level.
RSB: Absolutely. And I guess that's kind of what I wanted to bring up is this question of when you have a breakout performance, what do you break out of and what do you break into.
RLB: Right. Because in the case of this movie, what he broke into was the Indie Spirit awards.
RSB: Right.
RLB: But what he broke into with his other 2006 releases was the mainstream. He became an A-lister that year, essentially.
RSB: Right. And I think there is this concept of a breakout performance as the performance where a teen movie performer gives a serious art role, and that's one type of breakout performance.
RLB: But then you also have--you have other celebrities who have sort of the opposite trajectory, where their breakout performance is when they do a mainstream thing.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: For the first time, I mean I would say that, like, we've kind of seen recently, like, a lot of people had no idea that Elizabeth Olsen had WandaVision in her, when like, people who've been watching indie films that star Elizabeth Olsen for years--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Were like, very well aware of her range.
RSB: And then there's also the just kind of breaking out of the ensemble and into the main cast type of breakout.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And then there's also just doing the same kind of movie but it's an unusually good performance type of breakout.
RLB: Yeah, and there's also just doing the same kind of roles that you've been doing but at a bigger--on a bigger scale, either in a bigger budget--
RSB: There's also--the word "breakout" is more likely to be used when a performance is the best thing in a bad movie.
RLB: Sometimes true, but I think credit where it's due it's also often, I think, when an actor who until recently was relatively unknown against very much known quantities, and I think in this movie--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Channing Tatum is holding his own with well-established actors.
RSB: Yeah, just continuing to track Channing's career and going more into the fictional world, we've been kind of tracking these themes in the characters he plays, and I do kinda wanna tune in to how this one fits into our list.
RLB: Yeah I mean I think he's still playing this sort of vaguely disadvantaged teen--
RSB: Yeah--
RLB: With, y'know--
RSB: Urban kid.
RLB: Fraught relationship with parents and authority figures.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I would say this is more in HAVOC vein than the COACH CARTER vein, but I do think that like, these are threads that we need to continue following, but I also think that as with COACH CARTER and SUPERCROSS he's playing an athlete. He keeps talking about boxing--we never see him do it--
RSB: Right.
RLB: But he keeps talking about boxing being like a serious interest that he has and also like obviously if you look at him, like--
RSB: He's obviously a character whose physicality is important to him.
RLB: Well, sure, but also like--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: The kid works out.
RSB: Yes.
RLB: Y'know.
RSB: And is proud of it.
RLB: It's interesting that these are the threads that seem to have already emerged since his y'know, I mean, his big teen roles in the same years are very much on these, these tracks. In SHE'S THE MAN he's definitely playing against type in a certain way, he's playing a very overprivileged boarding school kid, but he's playing a soccer player--
RSB: Yes.
RLB: And that's like, his main personality trait. STEP UP he's playing an athlete of a different kind but also still playing this y'know
RSB: Quote-unquote disadvantaged teen.
RLB: And this urban, y'know, angsty kid kinda thing.
RSB: Not quite a street kid but the street looms large. Yeah, no, I think it's just interesting how those patterns are so established already at this time. It's also just so fascinating to me that, again, and I say this every episode, he's 26, and his career of playing a teenager shows no sign of stopping at this point. He's 26 and he's not a young 26.
RLB: He does start to move out of the teen movie space pretty--pretty soon after this, at least, at least to some degree.
RSB: And what's interesting is how, and I think we'll talk about this as we go forward, he continues to carry those same archetypes that he played as a teen into his adult roles.
RLB: I do think that it's really interesting that that's something that we can track through to some of his most recent roles.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Not all of them, I think there are more exceptions as time goes on.
RSB: And I don't say this to say he doesn't have range--
RLB: Oh, of course not. I think it speaks more to typecasting than it does to--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: His ability, but--
RSB: I agree but I think it's interesting the types that he gets cast as.
RLB: I totally agree and I think this movie is actually a pretty compelling illustration of why. This kind of showed me what casting directors and--and directors were seeing in Channing as an unknown actor before it became clear that he had comedy chops, that he could dance--
RSB: Right.
RLB: All of these things that we now consider sort of part and parcel of Channing Tatum's--
RSB: To the point that when he went back to doing these lo-fi dramas it was considered a departure from form.
RLB: Yeah. There's an edginess that--I actually think it's more interesting that he kind of was able to break out of that. I sort of assumed before we started this project that he kind of went in as this, like, clean-cut teen heartthrob type and it seems like his early career was actually pretty much the opposite in terms of like, I don't know if it's the roles that he was being pushed towards, or the roles that he was just getting traction on, but like, it's funny to see even though this movie was released after those couple of, you know, other what I would consider breakout roles, it's funny to see those comments about him being stuck in teen movies and stuff, especially because like you know that what they mean is also COACH CARTER.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: Not just SHE'S THE MAN and STEP UP.
RSB: Right.
RLB: And to me those are--those are different enough in terms of type, but actually in hindsight like, yeah, I actually think to a 2006 critic they're the same.
RSB: Yeah, they're the same movie.
RLB: That may be like overstating "oh, we've come such a long way," but I actually do think like the critics that I read now are very different from the critics that--
RSB: That were available.
RLB: That were available--
RSB: One of the things that I think has been really interesting and will continue to be really interesting as we do this project is to track the change from individual city newspaper critics to film-specific website critics.
RLB: Yes.
RSB: And this film, y'know, there's a reporter from the Portland whatever, and the Seattle whatever, and the Denver whatever, and then there was also an AV Club review, and I was like "it's the portent."
RLB: Yeah. I mean, I also like--it's not like I'm not still reading AO Scott reviews.
RSB: Yeah, but I also think the New York Times was never the Denver Post or whatever.
RLB: Of course not, but I--but it is--it is interesting that like, the most prominent critics of this moment in movies are absolutely still around and worth reading.
RSB: I also think AO Scott himself got a lot better at watching movies like SHE'S THE MAN over the past--
RLB: I mean I totally agree, I actually think that like--
RSB: I like him a lot as a critic.
RLB: We're naming him specifically because we read that quote from him, but there are other examples of this, um, the, y'know, film criticism world has expanded as the internet and social media have in ways that are both good and bad, but I do think that the variety of voices out there and the--the breadth of focus that they have in terms of, y'know the types of films that they're talking about and the things that they are discussing about them, it is really interesting to think about how some of the same movies are received now overall as compared to how the overall consensus might've looked--
RSB: And also how the actual movies are remembered now by--by professional critics versus how they were appreciated or not by the professional critics of the day.
RLB: Yeah, and I also think it's worth thinking about, y'know, how they were received and how they're now remembered by mainstream audiences. I mean I think--
RSB: This is a movie that--I mean again, it was reviewed in like every major city paper, largely positively, and no one's fucking seen it.
RLB: I do think more people have seen it than you have, cause I'm aware of people discussing this movie.
RSB: Fair enough, but I don't think it's a--
RLB: But it's not a, it's not a huge one. The longevity of this movie, to the extent that it has any, is because of who's in it and not because the movie itself is that notable.
RSB: I will say, though, I am kind of interested knowing that we're gonna be seeing his next two films as well, to see how Dito Montiel develops as a director when it's not memoir.
RLB: I'm really interested to see that and particularly to see how he uses Channing.
RSB: I'm really interested to see how they collaborate, because I think that'll be really interesting to see how Channing approaches kind of an early recurring collaborator.
RLB: Yeah, and I mean, we're very interested in recurring collaborations between directors and actors and between actors and actors. Obviously, one of the fun things about Channing is that we get to discuss his work with Soderbergh and his movies that have sequels, and things like that. There's a lot of fun recurring things to talk about.
RSB: I will note Channing's Wikipedia says his breakthrough role was STEP UP. Like the second line of his Wikipedia page is "his breakthrough role was in STEP UP."
RLB: Did STEP UP come out before SHE'S THE MAN?
RSB: After.
RLB: I mean it may be that he wasn't a household name until STEP UP. Certainly he was known to, uh, me and and my fellow twelve-year-olds after SHE'S THE MAN, but it may have been mostly because we were seeing "oh, his next movie is coming out, and you know, he's gonna be a sexy dance guy." This is a really interesting movie in terms of Channing, and I don't know how much we've discussed all the ways it's interesting, but I think some of it is also in relation to other movies and things that'll come up over time.
RSB: Yeah, and I do think we've given a nice little dig into it.
RLB: It's a really interesting Channing performance that I think is good.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: I do find the, like, critical reception fascinating in the context of it not being as widely seen as his other films the same year, um, but I--I also think that like, the fact that those teen movies and this movie happened in that same year is--is really, I think kind of responsible for his career going in the directions that we are so glad that it did.
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: That's exciting to me, like, it's fun to be able to track that and to trace the things that I find really compelling about him as a performer back to these, y'know, earliest opportunities for him to showcase that, because you know, his first few roles were kind of bit roles, and this is a big role for him, and it's--it's been fun just to have him and his character come up so much during the whole recording.
RSB: Definitely. It's nice to not have him be in the background anymore. Let's go to our closing. Rachel, did you like the movie?
RLB: I have mixed feelings about it, there are things that I liked and respected about it, but overall it's just not a super memorable movie for me.
RSB: That's fair. I think I'm gonna say yes, because I had a positive experience watching it. I don't know that I would watch it again or recommend it necessarily, but I'm glad I watched it. Like I said, it was really nice to see more of that type of early 2000s indie filmmaking.
RLB: I mean I guess it's really mid.
RSB: Mid-2000s indie filmmaking, but like it was interesting to step into that place in the timeline. I liked watching it. But do you think this is a good movie?
RLB: I think yeah. More good than not, yes.
RSB: Yeah, I--I was actually gonna say no, so. I think it's really flawed. I--I like--like I said, I liked it, and I think there's a lot of good there, and I think we may just be coming down on a different side of what the percentage it has to be to be called a good movie, but it just doesn't quite work.
RLB: I mostly agree that it doesn't quite work but I think there's enough real artistic merit, particularly in terms of the performances, and I do think that, y'know, as much as we said that, like, and I said specifically that I kind of think that there were some directorial choices that maybe weakened some performances and things, I do think that like, especially as a debut feature I tend to be really harsh on autobiographical stuff--
RSB: As do I.
RLB: I'm fairly unforgiving when it comes to that, I tend to overuse phrases like "self-indulgent" and "gratuitous" and "lacking in self-awareness," things like that, but I--
RSB: "Much-needed distance."
RLB: Yeah, exactly. I thought overall, um, this was, this was handled pretty admirably.
RSB: That's fair.
RLB: I just think that there's not as much there as I would've liked there to be, but it's just not for me I think.
RSB: It's very much a first film, and it's a first film from someone who hadn't been in the film world at all.
RLB: That's what I was gonna say though, is that I'm shocked that he wasn't in the film world at all or planning to--
RSB: Yeah, apparently he had no film experience or ambitions before making this movie and he transitioned into basically entirely being a filmmaker after making it.
RLB: I'm actually kind of floored by that to be honest, because this is an incredibly competent film given that. This would be a promising first film from a director who had been in the film world a much longer time. There are first features that are masterpieces--
RSB: Sure.
RLB: But I don't think that it's fair to say that a first feature has to be on that level--
RSB: No.
RLB: For it to be, you know, worthy, and I think that this, like--
RSB: Yeah.
RLB: This showed a lot of skill and--
RSB: I definitely think--
RLB: And vision.
RSB: I definitely think it's a good first film. That doesn't necessarily mean I think it's a good film.
RLB: I would have trouble calling this a bad film.
RSB: I wouldn't call it bad either. I just don't think it's--I don't know that it quite passes the threshold into a good film for me. So we chose Channing Tatum for our podcast because he lets us say really interesting things about genre and gender both as an actor and through the films that happen to be in his filmography. If we were to choose someone from the cast of A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS that also exemplifies those things that we would do our spinoff podcast on, who would you choose?
RLB: I think that it has to be Robert Downey Jr. by default?
RSB: I mean I think that my answer's gonna have to be Dianne Wiest. It would be such an array. You would get such a nice tour.
RLB: Yeah, that's fair. I think Robert Downey Jr., there's fairly interesting, certainly interesting genre stuff there. I think his early romantic comedies up to his recent action movies, there's--
RSB: I mean as you know my college thesis involved discussing Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of masculinity in movies, so I just don't need to do it again.
RLB: Well, yes. Again, us having an MCU podcast--not a good idea. And that's what a Robert Downey Jr. one would functionally be.
RSB: He's been in a lot of them.
RLB: I think that there would be interesting things to talk about, and I also think that, like, there's a lot of similar recurring collaborations with different directors and co-stars and things that are interesting to discuss but, you know, I would be more interested in participating in a Dianne Wiest podcast, I think that you make a good point there, but I also--
RSB: Yeah, I think that we can call it "Eight Days a Wiest."
RLB: Good.
RSB: Um, but I do think, I do like the idea of doing an actor whose career spans so many different types of filmmaking.
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: And hers very much does, so I think--I don't know that we'd have as much to say about her in every one of the films--
RLB: Yeah.
RSB: But I think the list of films would be so fruitful.
RLB: Yeah. I do wanna say, like, it's really interesting to me that the, y'know, the three leads of this movie all went on to do big blockbuster stuff in--
RSB: All in different ways.
RLB: All in such different ways. I mean, TRANSFORMERS versus IRON MAN versus GI JOE are so different.
RSB: So different.
RLB: But they didn't seem different in 2006-10 is my feeling.
RSB: Yeah, I think--and that gets back into some of what we were saying about criticism.
RLB: Yes. I will say, I wasn't expecting this movie to have an after-credits scene--
RSB: Post-credits scene! It's, um, it's the real Monte.
RLB: It's the real Monte, but it's after all of the credits, like it's not even in like a mid-credits thing, it's genuinely after the credits like Nick Fury is showing up, and I was tickled by that.
RSB: It was sweet.
RLB: It was sweet. I enjoyed getting to see the real Monte but I also just found it very funny, like, even in 2006 you just couldn't leave a Robert Downey Jr. movie.
RSB: Yeah. Do you have any final thoughts?
RLB: Not really.
RSB: I guess probably the saints motif is in the book and they just wanted to keep the title?
RLB: I would love to know, but you know what? Sometimes things like that just happen.
RSB: Would you like a Channing Datum?
RLB: I would love for you to tell me a Channing Datum for this episode.
RSB: Okay. My Channing Datum is that in 2002 Channing had national TV ads for both Mountain Dew and Pepsi.
RLB: Two drinks.
RSB: Two drinks. Caffeine.
RLB: They sure do have that.
RSB: Next time on The Channing Salon we will be watching She's! The! Man! Directed by Andy Fickman, from 2006.
Trailer Narrator: Duke wants Olivia.
Duke: Do you, like cheese?
TN: Who wants Sebastian.
Olivia: Isn't he cute?
Viola: How you doin' babe?
TN: Who is really Viola...
RSB: Until then, please follow us on Twitter @channingsalon, follow us on Instagram @channingsalon. You can find us on Letterboxd @channingsalon, shoot us an email channingsalon@gmail.com. We love you, Tatum Tots. You said I could say it. I asked you permission and you said I could.
RLB: Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
RSB: And we love you.