SIO362: The Whale and Fatphobia

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:15 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 362. I'm Thomas Smith and a quick little bit of housekeeping before I get going. For one, how about that episode with Cecil last week? That was so much fun and I wanted to add that I was prepping for that show and I was looking through Cecil's YouTube channel, I grilled cheese and tomato soup video, and I thought, "Ooh," I stashed it in my mind.

I was like, "Oh, that's going to be perfect because, uh, one, Lydia Smith, my beautiful, amazing wife, love something like that." And so cooked it for Mother's Day and it was amazing. It was fucking delicious. So just wanted to share that. It was really cool. Lydia loved it. It was way too much work because I, like I said to Cecil, I stress too much when I cook, I get so stressed. But it's, but it was ultimately very rewarding and it was so tasty. So just wanted to share that because it was, uh, it was nice. Right. Uh, one other thing I know I had said previously that I wanted to do Sunday night, Wednesday night for releases. I'm realizing now in the age of now three children that I really cannot get anything done on the weekends. It's man. I used to be able to, but Oh boy, the weekends I had, I'm inverse of everybody else.

Weekends are hell. Um, I not that I don't love my children, of course, but like in terms of getting anything done, it's there, it's no way there's just, it's, it's nonstop yelling from everybody, everybody I'm yelling, they're yelling, Lydia's yelling, the cats are yelling, just everybody, it's all yelling. So, um, I think I'm going to have to do this, this Monday late night release.

0:01:55 Thomas: Um, it puts the, the releases a little closer together, you know, Monday night, Wednesday night, but I think that's fine. Whatever. I just, it's really, boy, it's different world I inhabit now than back when I used to do this in the, uh, in the old atheistically speaking days. So I think that's going to be what I do most likely Monday night Wednesday night. And now at last this episode. Okay. Um I've given it enough time. Hopefully that if you've wanted to see the movie The Whale with Brendan Fraser. You probably have, hopefully, and if not, you're maybe not going to or don't really care that much. Today... So today I'm joined by Charone Frankel, someone who, as we'll discuss, it's been way too long since she's been on the show. And we talk about the movie The Whale, the Brendan Fraser film for which he won Best Actor. And while I, for one, love Brendan Fraser as person and was definitely cheering him on in that moment.

0:02:46 Thomas: The movie is real. Oh, the movie. Uh, how about we talk about it? I'll just, Charone and I discuss it. Uh, and this conversation goes everywhere. There's so much to it, and uh, toward the end, Charone brought some clips from some people, uh, she wanted to share as well, so stay tuned for that. They're very good. She got permission. Um, and so please enjoy this, this discussion about The Whale. And I don't know if spoiler alert matters. Maybe it does. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But yeah, okay, spoiler alert probably for the movie The Whale, but just doesn' , It's not going to matter that much. And right, and with that much of a teaser about how I felt about this movie, let' get on over to our discussion about The Whule with Charone Frankel.

0:03:55 Thomas: I am joined by Charone Frankel, it has been way too long, I'm sad to say, I look back and I couldn't even believe it, like it's been since late 2017, almost 2018, since you've been on SIO, and Charone, I am sorry for that long absence, but I am so glad to have you back today, how are you doing?, yeah.

0:03:54 Charone: Oh, hey, Thomas. You know, It's okay, I am not that interesting. It really is. There's way better people to have on this show.

0:04:21 Thomas: I Oh, have always said I stand by it. You have one of the nicest podcast voices I've ever heard. So I'm happy to have it back On. And but no, we're here today to talk about The Whale. I had seen you post about this, and I was gonna watch it anyway. Um, and I, you know, I had no idea what to think going into it, but I thought the whole, I thought that whole situation was interesting because obviously there's a lot of, you issues, social issues around it. It, there's also the, the story that I think is interesting of this redemption story of just Brendan Fraser, like everybody loving his kind of comeback. And I thought the tension of him getting rewarded in this way and doing this comeback that so many people love, but also simultaneously it being this probably really problematic role. I thought that was an interesting thing to talk about. And that was all before I had watched the movie. Now I've watched the move. Oh, I have a lot to say, but I think I should give you the floor.

0:04:25 Charone: Thank you so much.

0:05:09 Charone: Can't wait to hear what you think.

0:05:10 Thomas: What do you think? No, I want to know what you thought.

0:05:10 Charone: No, the movie, I mean, you know, disclaimers, no shade to Brandon Fraser. I mean maybe, maybe he should have not taken the role, I don't know, but I don't hate him and I feel bad for him. Like, I know that there was some discussion before about like the oscar winners for this year all the people who won best actor and best supporting and they've all been kind of shut out and I don't know if that's true for all of them I don'T KNOW IF THAT'S EXACTLY TRUE FOR JAMIE LEE CURTIS I MEAN SURE SHE'S OVERCOME THINGS AND BRENDAN FRASER'S OVERCOMED THINGS BUT I DON'T THINK IT'S SHUT OUT LIKE IF YOU'RE A BIG STAR AND YOU'VE GOT A PUBLIC WHO LIKES YOU I DON't THINK THERE'S ANY SUCH THING AS SHUTOUT LIKE ESPECIALLY NOW WHEN PEOPLE CAN JUST MAKE THEIR OWN PROJECTS AND IT'S NEVER BEEN EASIER YOU KNOW If Brendan Fraser wanted to be in the movies, he could make his own movies. People do it all the time.

0:05:58 Thomas: Yeah. Well, wasn't there? Okay. I'm not a Brendan Fraser expert, but I thought the whole thing was that he wasn't, I thought he was the victim of some abuse or something. And then that caused a lot of his depression and kind of,

0:06:07 Charone: Yeah, he did speak up about that. Did. I And mean, he didn't get blackballed from Hollywood for anything. He didn't work for about six months. And didn't get invited to the Golden Globes. And according to him, doesn't get, like, the Prime projects anymore. So, you know, I'm not saying there's nothing to that. But I wouldn't call it, like... Worst things that happened to the poor guy. I heard that he almost died multiple times when he was making The Mummy.

0:06:21 Thomas: Oh, really? I didn't know that.

0:06:32 Charone: Yeah. Like, they had horrible... Talk about set safety. Like, the issues that we have these days.

0:06:37 Thomas: Was it one of those scarabs that almost got him? Oh no, I was, nevermind. That's not real. I was a kid back then. So, oh

0:06:39 Charone: All that. Well, no, but a snake almost got him. Because, like. Scare him. Yeah. Yeah, scarabs for real don't kill you, but, well,

0:06:44 Thomas: God, I Okay, I would be Indiana Jones, but, in real life, I'd be like, I'm not working with snake, do a shitty CGI of a snake, I'm not working with a snake. Sorry, there's not going to be any

0:06:56 Charone: It wasn't on the set, it was, he, because they made this in the desert, and they were like, they passed around pictures of these, this particular snake, it's like a yellow snake with dots, they're like, do not, if you see this snake, you better run, because, yeah,

0:06:59 Thomas: Shit, oh, sorry, Charlotte, I'm imagining, like, not a, not a species of snake, but like a specific snake. It was like this fucking guy, he robbed a 7-Eleven, this snake, have you seen this snake, if you see him, he's armed and dangerous, do not.

0:07:15 Charone: Doug, we hate that, fuck it, That's Doug the snake, we hide him, no, but he said he was peeing at a rock or something, and he saw that snake, and you know they had said that at best, if the snake bites you, at best you lose your leg, and uh, yeah, and he just saw it and he just bolted, he like, didn't even have, it was like a fight or flight, and he went flight, like,

0:07:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:34 Thomas: Jesus. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's like peeing along the way. Yeah I would. I wouldn't even. I don't even I wouldn' have even zipped up. I just yeah, that's horrible. Well, okay, so I didn't I didn' yeah, again, I'm not an expert on Brandon Frazier, but I just have known that like, he talked about abuse and he talked some for some reason, not getting roles. And I thought it was more direct than that, let's, let'S be real. I love, he seems like a great guy, but he wasn't like an amazing actor in the two thousands. I mean, he was, he Was, um, you know, he's like, uh, yeah, he's, he'S fine.

0:07:48 Charone: Yeah, I George of the Jungle, he had uh, yeah,

0:08:09 Thomas: He's a good looking guy back then who got roles, you know, for, for his looks, and he's okay, so yeah, that is a little interesting to be like, you know, I've been totally locked out of everything, it's like, well, you know, it's hard to be an actor, there's a lot of competition to being an actor, so, but all that aside, I just found that dynamic interesting, because I was personally just rooting for him as a guy, like, I thought, you know, hey, I'm very sympathetic with him, he's been like open about, you know, some issues and stuff, and he's, I think he's battled weight as well, you you know? And okay, this is actually Sharon and Thomas dish on the the month, mummy 1998, the mommy, here you go. Mummy fact. Number two, Sharon, go ahead.

0:08:39 Charone: Which might also come from injuries he got on The Mummy, because, like, did You know, like, and uh, like, I, I wasn't there, so, but this is what I read, is that, you know, the scene where he's getting hanged at the beginning, in the first act, they really were doing that, and he, like, really almost died, I know, have a stunt person, like CGI, that, or yeah, really, yeah, the whale, we're on The Whale, now, it was, right, well, so, despite all my biases going in, like, I hated it before I saw it, I will fully own that, but, um, you know, Aronofsky is a, uh, very good director, and there were very good technical people working on this, very good actors, so, like, technical wise, I thought it was good, you know, I'm, I'm easy to manipulate emotionally, you just play some sad music, you know, um, I'll probably start to cry, or a little tear up a little bit, and, uh, you know, so, I, I definitely felt something when I watched it, I thought that the visuals were, I generally the visuals, I not the fat suit particularly, that was gross, but the, uh, visuals of it were good, like, it was just, it was, I thought it was a well-done movie, but I was, I found it upsetting,

0:09:00 Thomas: Oh God. Jesus. Maybe don't maybe that and that and guns on set. Maybe just don't like let's, let's, let's, not, with, with that, but what did you think of the movie, yeah, let's talk about, yeah, no, The Mummy, like, it was pretty sweet, right? No, not The Mummy! What did you think movie-wise? Let's just talk for fun, just movie- wise. Forget the social issues for now. Movie-wise, what did you thing of this movie?

0:10:17 Charone: A lot of people, like, know my, you, my partner Greg was like, no, I didn't like that, it was too like on the nose, and, and other people are like, yeah, like, they just were less taken in by the, by the art of it than I was, like, I'm just kind of easy like that.

0:10:29 Thomas: Yeah, count me as someone less taken in. I'll tell you my preconception. Here's what I thought I was going to see. I thought I was going to see what was probably a pretty good movie. But Um, would be painfully unaware of like how shitty it was on, you know, fatness and stuff. Like I thought it was going to see like, Oh, I bet it's good movie, but like, it'll be like seeing a good move. From the nineties today where you're like, Ooh, God, that was good. But I can't really watch it anymore. It just doesn't didn't age. Well, I thought he would be that, um, apologies. I know I have strong opinions. This movie fucking sucked.

0:11:01 Thomas: I've got to say like, I, I will, I I will also cop to, look, it sucked. I did cry at the end, Charone. I did try it. It's because he has a daughter and with Phoebe, I, you know, like I just, I get emotional very easily, but I was mad about it. I was telling Lydia, like, she was like, oh, how's the movie? I was like well, it fucking sucked. Yeah. I still cried at the End. Okay. But it's because there was a daughter, and there was, you know, a relationship there that, you know, but that doesn't count. I cried begrudgingly. I madly cried at, angrily cried. How dare you, movie? No, I thought this thing you said on the nose.

I think that is the understatement of a lifetime. This thing again, I promise I thought it was going to be like, oh, it'll be good. But like, I'll have a bunch of critiques of the politics of it or something. But no, like it was beating you over the head with it. It was like I can't even it read to me like an SNL parody. It really did. It was like, if SNL was like Oh, what if there's a fat guy and he's so Fat he can't do anything And it's like, pathetic It's so bad, it read like Fat bastard from Austin Powers It did, he had a bucket of chicken At a certain, like If

0:11:00 Charone: Yeah, right, looked

0:12:11 Thomas: You haven't seen this movie, and there's not really I mean, I guess there could be spoilers, I should have issued That warning

0:12:11 Charone: Like it too, the spoilers, the guy is fat, that, yeah, yeah,

0:12:20 Thomas: Spoilers The mummy, first He kills The mummy in the end, sorry about that if you haven't seen The Mummy, stop now, but don't worry, The Mummy Returns actually, later in the franchise, so, no, but, like, there's not, I mean, there's kind of some, like, attempts at dramatic tension, reveal stuff that is potentially spoilable, but, like, I wouldn't worry, honestly, this movie fucking sucks, like, if you want to watch it, watch it, this won't, I don't think, spoil the movie, in my opinion, but I should have issued that at the beginning, so that aside, side, was, it was so fucking on the nose, Charone, it was so on the knows, it was like the whole, I agree that a lot of the craft of it was, was good, like, I agree with, like, the, the lighting, they made the choice to have it be just his dimly, dimly lit apartment, now that might have also been, you know, just in service of having the fat suit look better, like, low light

0:12:32 Charone: It does return, oh, gosh,

0:13:13 Thomas: Is better for the same reason any of those old monster movies is, like, yeah, it's got to be at night, you can only see, like, like, you know, 10% of them, otherwise it's just that fucking Star Trek of the guy, the lizard in the desert, uh, that, that screenshot, so I think, you know, that was interesting, I found that direction interesting, I found Brendan Fraser's performance, I found pretty good, like, I didn't think it was bad by any means, but I, I think he was limited with the material, it was mostly, hey, can you look pathetic? Hey, can you look as pathetic as humanly possible? You're a pathetic fat piece of shit. I don't know if you know this. Can you look as pathetic? Like it was offensive, like it was, it was so bad in that respect, like it just couldn't have been worse in that specific respect. It was like, hey, try to look as shitty and as pathetic as you can, because that's your character. Leave that aside. Movie and wise, a couple, couple

0:13:13 Charone: Right, yeah, just oh,

0:14:00 Thomas: Things I have to point out. Um, again, beat you over the head with it. Super beat you ever the head of it. I found most of it just so implausible. Like it was, it was just dumb. Like, it like, okay, the plot of the movie, I guess we can kind of go through it. 98% of the plot is Brendan Fraser is disgustingly fat. Flat So that's, that solves that. Like, I don't, we don't need to say much more. We, we should talk about the mummy. There's more plot.

0:14:08 Charone: Yeah, yeah,

0:14:25 Thomas: And, and he has a daughter who also, he's Also gay, the character's gay. And he apparently had a daughter with a, with a woman obviously, but then left when he pursued his, you know, I, I dunno if he came came out or something, but he pursued his boyfriend and partner and kind of left. And so there's all the typical, like daughter is super pissed to a cartoon degree. Like, Again, just talking movie stuff, you got the premise of, okay, I get it. The dad left because he was gay and he left, you know, the the daughter.

And so she's going to be bitter about that, but it's, it's ratcheted up to a thousand, again it's it reads like SNL doing a parody of, hey, what about the, you know, the trope of the daughter that's mad at the dad for leaving, let's do that, but then it's also like fucking, I don't know, Home Alone levels of shitty to him, like he's, she's literally, like you wouldn't believe if you haven't seen this movie, I'm so sorry folks, if you hasn't seen this movie you would not believe what I'm about to tell you, she comes into his apartment and just, just calls him fat over and over, says he's disgusting. And then she's like, hey, get up and walk toward me. Get up and walk towards me. She like, and he goes to get his walker or whatever.

0:14:25 Charone: Yeah, that

0:15:33 Thomas: She's like no. And she like takes that away, walked to me without and makes him, it's like it's so fucking over the top. No one is that evil. It's the dumbest thing. Oh, every part of the movie was that. It was so fucking over the Top. I was in disbelief of what I was seeing and sorry, I get carried away because I just cannot believe how bad that part of it was. Should we do the rest of the plot as well? I should let you get a fucking word in edgewise here, Sharon.

0:15:57 Charone: That's alright, yeah, no, I was gonna say about the daughter, like, yes, everything was very like, it, it was, yeah, too over the top to be believed, so that makes it a little bit, I mean, I guess, unrelatable, like, yeah, you just, when you don't believe something, we do that all the time, I'm an improviser, you know, and you got to be believable to a degree, or else the audience just be like, I don't believe this, I don't care, there are no real stakes here, like, this is not real, yeah, so, and, was, and here's the thing, I think the writer was going for, I think he had to make her really bad, because from what I've read, uh, there, he did a piece, and I think it was Hollywood Reporter, Samuel D. Hunter, the writer, uh, he was talking, I think the one thing that he was trying to give some nuance and ambiguity to was whether the daughter, like, because the whole time, like, it's basically the father trying to redeem the daughter the whole time and make her believe that she's a good person, make her belief that life is worth living, and all this crap, even while he is demonstrating that it's not, and, uh, uh, he keeps saying, oh, you're amazing, you're great, even though she just does bad thing after bad thing,

0:16:09 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:57 Charone: And everybody hates her, even her mother hates her, but the, so Hunter, the writer, was put in that, um, I can't remember if was an interview or in that Hollywood Reporter piece, but he was like, so, is, uh, is the dad, and the dad's name is Charlie, is his hope about this daughter, and his optimism, is it diluted, or is it real, like, is she actually a good person?

0:16:59 Thomas: Yes. Oh, my God, we'll get to it.

0:17:18 Thomas: Okay. That is what he was going for.

0:17:20 Charone: He was kind of going for that, yeah, yeah.

0:17:22 Thomas: Oh, my God because I sort of, So I was just talking to Lydia about it, like I said, and I was, I said that I was like, I get, because my complaint was they made this daughter into Dexter. Like literally they go, literally, I'm not, this is not even a fucking exaggeration, they go to her social media, and it's picture of a dead animal, animal, she's just posting Pictures of dead animals, and I'm like, at that point in the movie, that was pretty early on, I was sitting there thinking, okay, is this gonna take a twist where she is actually a serial silly killer, like, I literally was Like, is That what we're going, is gonna be weird thing where, like, his optimism is so bad that, like, we actually find out she kills someone and that, like It was, it was signaling that hard that she's an evil piece of shit. I mean, imagine telling this, this person who's like clearly disabled and dying, you have to get up and walk to me, and laughing when he falls over. Like, that's, that's not like, oh, you know, teens. You're like,

0:17:34 Charone: Oh, that's right, oh, My Gosh. Yeah.

0:18:16 Thomas: What? No, I don't know teens. That's, That's evil. That'S like literally evil. It's so fucking weird.

0:18:21 Charone: I Mean There's Plenty Of kids whose parents have split up, uh, in even Worse Circumstances, that's, it doesn't really explain, like, she has to have some kind of psychopathy or something to explain this extraordinary result.

0:18:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And That was my issue is I, it's so implausible that I have a hard time. Okay. What do you want me to believe movie? Do you want Me to believe that she's literally a psychopath? Path because that's what I would have to believe to buy into anything happening right now. But then if she's literally a psychopath, you're trying to do this thing at the end that's like this redemption thing where she's crying. I'm like, I don't. So if I'm going to go for that narrative, then I have to believe she wasn't a psychopath and was just so mad that she became fucking evil, like to a degree that's disturbing. I'm I can't Go with you. I'm sorry. Neither of those options is, anything is so weird. And then, so in terms of, I guess, covering the plot, um, so he has this friend the whole time, and her name is Liz in the movie, it's played by Hong Chow, and what was your view of that character, was

0:19:04 Charone: Adult So So this is weird, because okay, so the characters, is she just so happens to be a nurse, and so, and she knows him because she is the sister of, um, Charlie, the main character's, uh, love of his life, who is now dead, because that, so that, so apparently that guy, and this is loosely based on Samuel Hunter's life. Samuel Hunter grew up in Iowa, Moscow, I, no, sorry, Idaho, Iowa. I always confuse them. I'm so sorry, Idaho, people. You shouldn't have two states that sound so similar.

0:19:47 Thomas: Yeah. I don't apologize to Idaho whatsoever. I'm, I'm sort of open on Iowa. I know I'm undecided on Iowa, though. I may also not care about offending Iowa. So I'm undecidered.

0:20:03 Charone: Moscow, Idaho. Which is apparently like a very Mormon-y area. I don't think Hunter is himself himself Mormon, but or former, but he his family was kind of fundy. And he did go to a fundy Christian school. And you know, he was gay in that school, and it was very hard for him. And he coped and I think his parents were hard on him and he copes by overeating, although then we're talking about Hunter, the writer, I don't think he ever became like real fat. But he definitely I think has like a complex with food and stuff. So but in the movie, there's the dead boyfriend. Uh, so here's the thing, that the movie is based on a play from 2012, um, which was an award-winning play, won a Glad award and all this stuff. In the play, they, uh, the boyfriend's family was, uh, specifically LDS, um, and they changed it for the movie from

0:20:08 Thomas: Okay.

0:20:19 Thomas: Gotcha. Yeah, I

0:20:52 Charone: LDS to a fictional church because probably out of sensitivity and fear of reprisals for the the Mormons, because God forbid you get the representation wrong of the Mormonts. I mean, come on, those are real people who shouldn't be reduced to some one-dimensional caricature on screen. Mormont's, like, yeah,

0:20:52 Thomas: That Oh Right Right It Yeah Yeah Yeah yeah, nice. I, what's funny is it would be, you know, yeah, I'm LDS, I'm whatever, or even if it was like Jehovah's Witnesses that would work or whatever. But like, because they didn't want to do that, they just say, oh, I'm from New Life, the church, but then like everybody just knows this one church or something, like it it reads like, oh yeah, I was, I had a friend in New Life, oh, I mean, like everybody ends up even though they're from different parts, parts of the country, all being part of this church called New Life. And I just thought it read kind of funny. Like if it was Mormon, like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm LDS, you're LDS, whatever, but it's like, Oh yeah. New Life is like, wow. What a, what a broad reach that church has.

0:21:19 Charone: Yeah Yeah And that's the thing, it just so happens that this guy's from the same church that the ex-boyfriend grew up in and suffered religious trauma from, like his family, and apparently the the dead boyfriend had stopped eating and gone into this depression, even though he was with Brendan Frazier, you know, they were in a loving, loving relationship, but he just couldn't, I guess the boyfriend couldn't get over his religious trauma and all this depression and lack of acceptance from his father. So he just wasted away. Yeah.

0:22:05 Thomas: Sure. I mean, that's real. Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:09 Charone: He was depressed, wasted away. Like I, I think in the movie they, they were, they allude to him like jumping off a bridge at some point. And, um, I don't know exactly in the the play but

0:22:16 Thomas: Okay. Now I'm even more mad about this movie because have the fucking guts to just be named Mormonism. You did it in the play. And and like it's not, you're not saying anything untrue, I'll know, like, this is an autobiographical thing. You could find a hundred examples of gay people being made to feel really shitty by Mormons, like that's not hard, what, what are you afraid of here? You're not afraid of all the bullshit you're saying about fatness, like that, that doesn't scare you at all, but you do you change the name of the Mormon Church, it, to a degree that makes, makes it confusing, like that, that is so cowardly to me, like fuck this movie, god.

0:22:18 Charone: Right Sure. Yeah. That's fine Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:54 Thomas: I'm even more mad at this goddamn movie, but the friend, so I asked you about the friend. Sorry, we got spun off a little bit.

0:22:57 Charone: So The friend is the sister of the dead boyfriend, and they were also, new life, or whatever, she hates the church now. So as soon as Thomas the missionary comes around, she hates him. And, and, and so the weird thing is, she's a nurse, and she's, you know, she's doing what a friend does when, like, to a degree, she is a little believable in that. Like, people are always like, well, why does she go out and get him food? It's like, well, because he's got to eat and he's your friend.

0:23:00 Thomas: Good, yes. Yeah.

0:23:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:23:23 Charone: And, you know, it's like if your friend smokes, what are you going to do? Like, can't be their mom. But at the same time, it is like, my question was, like the one thing that can actually help this guy is therapy. Have they not had a therapy conversation?

0:23:38 Thomas: Or, so what I thought they might be going for, and again, I always try to write when I watch stuff, I don't know if everybody's probably this way, I don't know, but like, I'm always trying to write the movie, I'm trying to figure out what's happening. I'm like, okay, with the psychopath person, where are you going with this?

And it's funny, you know, I'm not just trying to guess for the sake of guessing, it's also because I'm try to understand the choices being made dramatically and, you know, textually and all that stuff. I want to understand it. And so I'm forming this, like, mental kind of picture. And so it's like, that's why it's so unpleasant, because in my mental picture, the daughter is a fucking psychopath killer. But I already covered that. So that's like, – that's that is why I don't like things.

So I'm like, that doesn't, you just did these tropes, but you took them so far, it makes it fucking weird. And when it comes to this friend, so the movie I was writing in my mind, Sharon, would have been interesting, which is one of those, this, but this could have been very interesting. It could have been a character that's like, ostensibly on the surface, she is accepting of her friend and his fatness and his condition, whatever, all that stuff. But you could come to find out that, like, actually her motives aren't that great, because she kind of, because in the movie she's pretty mean to him.

And so this is why I thought this is where they were going. She's, she's pretty mean. I thought they were gonna go with, like, oh sure, you say you accept him, but really what you're doing is you recognize that, like, he's so dependent on you, he can't really go anywhere. And so it might be this, like, manipulative relationship where, you know, she's using kind of his disadvantage to her advantage a little bit in getting the attention she wants or whatever she wants out of the relationship.

0:24:18 Charone: Right.

0:25:06 Thomas: I don't know. Like, that's where I thought it was going because she's, she insults him, she, there's a, she cares for him, sure. But that's another part of that interesting relationship I was talking about, where it's like, yeah, you're caring for him, but then you come to find out that it's like more self-serving. Like you, you sure, you think you're telling yourself you're doing a good thing, but really, really, you've been mean to this guy, you've been not helping him, you've being part of this problem rather than helping him, I thought they were going with that. But instead, what I saw just with regard to this friend is a friend being really fucking shitty to him for most of the movie, also kind of helping him, and then no resolution. It's like, is that it? Did I miss something? What did I miss? Was there any satisfying character arc there? Or was it just like, yeah, that's it.

0:25:49 Charone: Yeah, Well, she didn't really have a character arc. She was just, I think she was just supposed to be basically a victim of all of this. She had to deal with her brother's death. And then now she's got to deal avec it all over, you know, and so we're supposed to feel bad for her. And then she's also apparently kind of a victim of, because we find out later that Charlie has been saving up a bunch of money to give his daughter, um, but he could have been helping her, like, she's been doing a lot of things for him and thinking that he's broke. So Yeah, it's, I, I don't know what, like, consciously, I don't know what Hunter was trying to say, subconsciously I don't know, like, definitely the way that everyone derides him and he derides himself, like the daughter, that not the missionary guy but everyone else, the daughter, the ex-wife, the, um, friend, uh, you know, they're all like, you're disgusting, he's like, yeah, I'm disgusting, and apparently in the, um, play, uh, the daughter also calls him retarded a lot, and they change that.

0:26:18 Thomas: Right, yeah, there was that, I suppose, yeah. Oh.

0:26:46 Charone: They only use that particular sort of, like, once I think, in the movie, but, so, I, it's, I don't know.

0:26:46 Thomas: Yeah, it's Um, so that character, okay, I don't think I missed anything there, yeah, all right. It was a little bit interesting the idea of, he is, his view is that he's done everything wrong in his life, but the one thing he's gonna do right is to save this money and give it to his daughter. That's like the one, the one thing, guess, you know, and that does create tension. But, you know, then he's like, well, if you ever really needed, I would have given it to you. And she's like, well, one time my car broke down.

0:27:06 Charone: Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:15 Thomas: He was like, Yeah, but you didn't ask me. She's like, yeah, because I thought you were broke. It's like, all right, that's the, that's the extent of this conflict here. Like, yeah, that that sucks, I'd be a little mad. But that just, nothing was anything, it was all this exaggerated, tropey, over-the-top crap. So now we got to talk about this church guy, um, just stops by, um, and this is the part that just, again, it just gets so unbelievable. It's like we're to believe that this is a door-to-door Mormon person or something, but not Mormon. Just random, random, unnamed, generic door to door church person. Okay. It's America. Fine, I'll kind of go with that. He does it solo, all right, that's kind of weird, whatever. He, the first scene is basically that guy walking in on Brendan Fraser masturbating himself to death to gay porn. Like, he's so fat, he can't even masturbate without dying. I'm

0:27:15 Charone: Right.

0:27:32 Charone: New life Yeah. Right.

0:28:08 Thomas: Not exaggerating, this is not a joke, I'm doing, like that's literally, like, what we see

0:28:10 Charone: It's He masturbates and then he has, like, some kind of, like, he's apparently, we learn it in a little bit, he has congestive heart failure, I don't know what the exact symptoms of that are, but we see him, like, the opening, the really introduction to the character is the guy's, uh, he's masturbating to gay porn. I don't, I wasn't looking at what's on the screen, but the guys on the NPR podcast I listened to, they described it as like the tamest gay porn ever. It's just like some guys hugging or something.

0:28:34 Thomas: Yeah. We could have at least gotten some spicier gay porn, come on, be bold, movie, this movie was cowardly, it thinks it was being all bold, but you didn't give me any dong, there's zero dong in the movie, which is, which is, it's easy to give, like, nudity for women, but it's not so easy apparently in Hollywood to give some male nudity, and I think that should change, just, just saying. And then also it's two men hugging, like, come on, you know, it's, and, and like, it thinks it's being this bold statement with this fat suit and all that. And Then It Won't Even Name the Mormon Church. Like it's just a cowardly movie. Fuck this fucking movie.

0:28:59 Charone: Yeah, it's bit cowardly. But it's, yeah, to show us this guy, isn't he disgusting? He's sitting here just giving into all his basest instincts, Eating everything, masturbating. And then he has like some kind of heart attack but he's like not heart attack like Because He survives it something

0:29:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Like a panic attack, heart attack. I don't know. We don't, never know.

0:29:27 Charone: Uh, We don't know I I Doubt that there was any true medical stuff in this so

0:29:33 Thomas: Yeah, and we won't bother talking to a medical expert on this one. It's not worth it. But, but yeah, he, it's weird because it reads like a heart attack. And, and again, one second into this movie and I apologize, I have ADHD. This is how I do a movie review. I've gone everywhere. I've gotten top to bottom around reverse. We've talked about the mummy. Like I get it. I'm sorry. Uh, but, but now we're back to the very first scene and the first scene is just look at this gross guy. He's fat and he has the fucking temerity to have sexual urges too. Too. It's like, God, it's so it's so cruel. Is OK.

So One of pieces I read about this was by Roxane Gay in the New York Times opinion. It was called "The Cruel Spectacle of the Whale." Is even just the title alone. Like I again, I saw the title of that article before I watched the movie. And I'm telling you, my expectation was, oh, this will be a good ish movie that probably got some stuff wrong. And and I was looking forward to doing a show kind of talking about here's maybe some things some problems you know socially with this movie that maybe you wouldn't think about and uh then it's just terrible like like literally the movie might as well itself be called The Cruel Spectacle of the Whale like it's it's so fucking cruel the whole thing

0:29:38 Charone: But Really That's All right, I'm kind of that way as Well Yeah With Yeah, it is and uh and and the reason, in case anyone doesn't know, like the the whale is not a literal reference to Brendan Fraser's character, it's because of there's... there's this running theme of Moby Dick. Moby Dick really inspired the whole piece for Hunter to write, and he's always liked Moby Dick, and the daughter, the evil daughter, had written an essay about Moby Dic that the father really likes because he thought there was an an honest piece of writing. And when we, when we see elder Thomas, or whatever is just Thomas, in this movie, he comes in and uh he sees Brendan Fraser having a heart attack hello

0:31:16 Thomas: Hello my name is elder Tom. It would be really funny if he did that, though. I see you're masturbating to gay porn, that's weird, I'm not really equipped for this. Oh yeah, just keep going. That would have been, it's a better movie, right?

0:31:22 Charone: Okay. Yeah, No, it's, yeah, he comes it and, you know, he's like, oh my gosh, I call the police, and brend and Charlie's like, no, don't call the police, just read, read me this essay. Read it to me

0:31:40 Thomas: That's okay that's why I got on the topic because we're red, like, it looks like he's dying of masturbating himself to death because he's fat and how dare he masturbate. And then when that guy comes in, he's like, just read me this thing, read me, I'm like, what, what are we going for here? Again, I'm always trying to write the movie, what are going for, and it's an essay and it's like not good, it's like some bulls, like facile bullshit about Moby Dick. But I'm okay, that helps him, and and then he comes down and I'm thinking, okay, so that was a panic attack, fine. But then like the next scene is the friend coming in and being like, your fucking heart's exploding.

0:31:41 Charone: Yeah,

0:32:11 Thomas: And so I'm like, what which, what are we panic attacking, are we having a heart attack? I'm getting mixed messages here. In the end, yes, his heart is just failing because he's too fat apparently, but like, why would then, why would reading the letter help calm your heart attack? I don't know, it's just fucking weird, man. I don't know

0:32:29 Charone: Well, He says that if he was gonna die, that's the last thing he I mean, he wanted that to be the last things he hears, but we don't know why he recovered

0:32:32 Thomas: Okay, but it calms him down but it instantly calms them down, yeah, yeah, it's very weird but

0:32:37 Charone: Yeah, He makes some miraculous recovery, it's all very weird, like, so what's going on medically, I don't, but

0:32:47 Thomas: One thing that was funny that Lydia saw was um does the reveal ends up being that, oh, that was what his daughter wrote, because as you said, he teaches a a class on this. And so at first you're kind of meant to think like, oh, maybe it was one of his students or maybe he wrote or something. And then the reveal is no, his daughter wrote that. And all right, this is where he fucking tugs at my heartstrings, cause God damn it, if Phoebe had something and that was the last thing I saw, I, that would be fine with me. I'd be cool with that. And that would probably calm me down. But one funny thing that Lydia saw was like, nobody assigns Moby Dick in middle school. It's like, it's the book is like astronomically long. Like you don't, you don't assign that to like a little kid and then make them write about it because it's it's terrible for that purpose. I thought that was funny, and it's just one little another example of like, it's a bunch of, I feel like it's fail a at trying to be pretentious, like it, somebody

0:32:48 Charone: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Uh

0:33:33 Thomas: Who's like, I'm so smart, look at these things I'm putting in there, but it, but they're not that good at that, so they're references and they're things they're trying to do to make the art the seem smarter than it is, to me just really fall flat, and so it makes me even even more mad at it.

0:33:34 Charone: Huh. Right. Yeah, he does think he's trying to be I think he's trying to be clever with the title. Hunter, the writer says all that in a lot of little pieces that he's written or interviews he's given, like, you know, I want to challenge people and, and I I want to, know, call them out on their own hypocrisy, like show them that this is a person. And it's like, but but you're doing all the things that you think that other society shouldn't do. You're doing them all in this film.

0:34:07 Thomas: But you didn't. Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the points in the Roxane Gay article, which I found, yeah, pretty stunning was Roxane Gay says, OK, says in the Q&A after the screening, Mr. Aronofsky said Charlie's story was told with empathy. He seemed to think he was being sincere, but I was bewildered because an empathetic portrayal isn't at all what was conveyed on screen. As I looked around the audience, I was struck by the fact that there are only four or so fat people in the audience and none on stage. Yeah, that's that's bad. When you when the director thinks like, yeah, we did. We sincere and empathetic. And then people who are the group that you're doing the thing about are like, what? That's not good.

0:34:54 Charone: Right. Yeah. And I am concerned because like, you know, has a daughter that's probably your daughter's age. And he's got a, I think she's five or so. And I get worried because I know what it was like to grow up with fat phobic parents, who kind of ironically turned me into exactly what they feared I would become because they taught me that being fat is awful, so if I ever gain any weight, you know, I would hate myself. I did hate myself. You know, I got teased about my body at home, which is, it's always the worst when it comes from your parents, you know. I get sent messages about becoming thin is the most important thing. I got encouraged to be guilty about what I eat and eat low fat this and non fat that, even though it turns out that all that shit is just full of sugar. It's not even good for you. You know, and just was encouraged to diet and and all that stuff.

And I get so, you, like, one thing that really sets me off is if I ever see, like, a parent or grandparent or something, saying something to a little kid that's going to give them a complex. Like my niece, you know, my niece is, is thin and everything. Is, she's a 12 now, you know, she's never had a weight problem, but I see my mom, like, talking about her body, like, being, "Oh, you're so nice and thin," this and that. I'm like, "Oh my god, mom, are you gonna give her a comp Like, oh, so.

0:35:10 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

0:36:09 Thomas: Yeah, thanks. Thank you for sharing that. That, man, that sucks. Yeah, that scares me so much too because as somebody who, know, I haven't particularly struggled, that although I weirdly, I've always had a thing about food. I think I don't know if it came from wrestling or whatever, but wrestling in high school, you, you know, it's very weight conscious. You got to make weight class. And I've always had this weird, you know what? And I, and I, I'm so sorry because I, experience is so much more relevant here, but I just realized something that I wanted to share if that's okay.

0:36:10 Charone: Sure mm-hmm

0:36:35 Thomas: I just realized, and this is maybe a Dear Old Dads topic, but I constantly call myself fat all the time. Like I just, all the Time. You know I have a a little bit of weight on my stomach. And I don't know why, but all the time, like fucking, I'm so fucking fat just all the time. I don't know. I don't know where it comes from. If it's society, if it's what it is. And I realized that I had an instinct say that I don't remember if I actually did, but I, but I, I remember I accidentally, I either thought about it or I accidentally did say something like that. And Phoebe was in the room and I was like, God, I'm so fucking fat. And I look over and I see Phoebe. I was like, oh my fuck. What am I doing? Like, I can't, oh my God. Like, it's so funny. Having kids is one of those things where it's like, it just can change so much if you let it, you know? And that's the thing.

You have to, you have to be open to it. But in that moment, I was like, well, I'm never fucking saying that around her. Like my God, like, yes, I have this problem I'll, I'll struggle with. Cause I, I don't know why I just seem to be mad at myself about it all the time for having like, I dunno, 10 extra pounds, but like, dear God, I almost said I'm so fat. Message around my daughter, what is that going to do to her? She's going to look at me

0:36:27 Charone: That's all right of course mm-hm sure

0:37:43 Thomas: And she's going to see like, well, he doesn't seem fat. Like, yeah, okay, maybe a little. Eventually, I'm not saying when she's five, but like over time, you know, if I continued that pattern and didn't think about it, that's gonna instill that message in her. And what's that going to do for her? And I was so horrified by the fact that I almost said that. One way or the other, I know she didn't hear it. I can't remember if it's because I didn't say it or because she was was just far away in the room. All I remember is being really conscious of like, wow, that was close. I'm not doing that. And, but that's why what you say, it hits me emotionally so hard because it is, I think, so easy to, like to accidentally over the course of a, you Know, we're with these kids, um, 24 seven and it's always like, oh shit, am I going going to accidentally just spew something that's going to cause damage? I'm going to be like, fuck, I look fat. You know, and is that going to cost them? It's so scary to me.

0:37:50 Charone: Right I Yeah, so ever since you know my niece was old enough to understand English, I've always been worried about you know and I don't even spend 24 7 with her but I'm always like oh my god I I don't want to say anything that's gonna damage her for life like I totally know the feeling yeah you want to say all the right things and and not like flip one subliminal message into her head that like screws up her whole life

0:38:49 Thomas: Right?

0:38:58 Thomas: Yeah. Well, why don't we take this opportunity? I want to ask you some questions, if you don't mind here, just about this issue in general, because I know, you know, it's something you care about and something that I'm trying to learn more about. But I think hopefully most people, I don't know about all society, but I think most well-meaning people are understanding now that shaming just doesn't work. Do you want to talk about kind know, where that's gone in your lifetime and your experience with that

0:39:01 Charone: Uh sure sure so yeah obviously um I'm very anti-body shaming I think everyone should be. And like, even, you know, even the people where it's so easy because we hate them so much, like Donald Trump, you know, like, it's, there are, you can say so many things about Donald Trump that are legitimate, you don't have to go after his body, you know. And he goes after women's bodies, like well, you know, literally and figuratively, but that's, that's the bad model. Don't follow that model. Like, so, sure,

0:39:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:48 Thomas: Well, a moment. Okay. Let's take moment on that because that's something that both I am aware of, but but I'm sure I've slipped up on. That's a really hard thing. Like, yeah, it's, it is one thing to be like, okay, I never want to envision like, you know, I plenty of people of all different shapes and sizes in my life. And I don't, I love these people and I don'T want to insult these people. So I'm a good conscientious person. And then when it's someone you hate and your, your lizard brain just goes to the first insult you can think of. And then I think that it's something that we all should grapple with that. It's a great point you make, like even someone we hate, but you're saying that and other people are seeing it. And if other people have body issues and they're seeing like, okay, sure. You haven't directly insulted those people maybe, but like, they're seen how you're reacting to someone else who, yeah, is someone hateable. But like, I think that's a really important point and something I've tried to grow on and, you know, obviously we all slip up,

0:39:55 Charone: We all Do, do.

0:40:44 Thomas: But But I you know, like let's be careful with how we are insulting people, even though they deserve it because someone else doesn't, you know, do

0:40:52 Charone: Right, oh. Totally. And it's like we get these messages, and they're, some are some messages are subtle. Like we, and the reason, like, we internalize these voices because we hear these messages all our life. Fat is bad, fat is ugly, and the worst people are fat. Um, the Ursula from The Little Mermaid is the fat character, like, usually, uh, and this is just, I could go off on a whole other their podcast about fat and thin being a character trait, because I, I do audition for acting jobs, and so I read these character breakdowns, and and so often I see character, like, fat or thin being a trait of the character, like, And usually if it's fat, it's because this person is an asshole, or lazy, or you know, it's like, they that's when they want a fat actor. And It's just, it's so internalized that people don't even notice it. So, yeah, like, you you may look, and we look at ourselves, like, I, and again, I just, I should have stated this way at the top, but to me, fat is a neutral descriptor.

0:41:28 Thomas: It. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

0:41:51 Charone: It's not a value judgment. Like, I consider myself fat, I'm over 200 pounds, but does that mean I'm a bad person? No. Does that means I'm an ugly person? No. You, does that, so that's how I, that's my whole paradigm. Yeah.

0:42:03 Thomas: Oh, that's important yeah, just terminology question, because I've seen mixed things on this. I, yeah, what's your take on that? Because my understanding has been that it's a bit mixed in terms of people's views on it. But I use fat as a descriptor because I thought that to my knowledge, that was kind of the consensus among, know, fat people who actually should should be, you know, the ones deciding these things. I thought the consensus was like, that's kind of just the neutral term to use and don't use like obese or don't use that. What's your, what's your view of the kind of the terminology question there?

0:42:15 Charone: I don't think there is a consensus. Like, Uh, I, like I was saying to you when you had asked me to do this show, I'm like, I don't think there's anything I could say about fatness that Aubrey Gordon hasn't said better on the Maintenance Phase podcast. That's like a great podcast that she does with Michael Hobbs, if the audience doesn't know it. Um, and she's also written books, and, and she's, she describes herself as a fat person. Um, but there are plenty of people, I think, uh, especially women, um, who, uh, would balk at being called fat, or wouldn't describe themselves themselves that way. I don't think there's really a consensus, and I don't want to leave out people of other genders too, because everyone gets, has body image shit piled onto them. Historically, women have gotten it worse. Like, if you look at characters on television or whatever, or in movies, you'll tend to see guys getting a pass more than women when it comes to, like, the romantic partner, because of their, a great personality.

0:42:38 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

0:43:26 Charone: Despite their fatness, or whatever, like, you almost never see that. Like, Shallow Hal is like the one exception. And, and Jack Black was also fat, and it was like a fat, or horribly offensive-looking fat suit that they use, so I don't consider that movie very positive messaging, but. Um, but I mean, more now, more like, you've got Shrill, you, it's getting better, matter. But.

0:43:32 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah. And that's cool. There's I all often this attitude that, you know, all this virtue signaling that and blah, blah, but like, no, I mean, especially again, I know I always, it's my go-to as a parent, but I want my kids to see more representation and it genuinely has an effect. It's not just empty virtue signaling by Hollywood. I mean some of it might be in terms of their motive. I'm not saying they're like angels or something, but it does. I would say, don't you think it has a pretty big effect to see yourself represented in in a positive way, rather than, oh, Oh, this is a trait that characters have. If they, you know, we're supposed to not like them.

0:44:22 Charone: Absolutely, and, and so many things about it, you've got shows, uh, like Drop Dead Diva, or, I mean, so many things now where there's, you're also not only are you seeing representation, but you see, like, people, yeah, people being happy, people being themselves, not apologizing to be themselves, and being accepted, uh, being fashionable, like, I was, is always taught that if, if you have, you know, an extra 10 pounds or more, you better shroud yourself in a black, like burka.

0:44:52 Charone: That's the only thing you can wear. Know, God forbid you show the curves on your body.

0:44:50 Thomas: You got to dress like you're one of the like Muppet people in, in a Jim Henson thing where you're blending into the back. Come on.

0:44:58 Charone: Oh my gosh. So yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's so important. And, and of course, everyone, we all have our blind spots. I'm sure that I'm probably showing some blind spots right now, like, and, you know, this is a kind of like a marginalized minority struggle, but of course, not the same as other, note, in my notes here about the movie, I have the word fat face, to describe the fat suit thing. That it's not like blackface, nothing's like black face, but it rhymes, you know?

0:45:12 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Ooh. Hmm. Sure, sure. Yeah, it's Yeah, similar in concept, just not obviously obviously not degree. Yeah, let's talk about that. What was your view on that? Because a lot of people, I think, you know, are mad that he, you sort of referenced this at the top, but that they're mad that He wore a fat suit and that, Know, like, why you can't you get a fat actor to play or whatever? But I I don't know, that that was a little mixed for me once I watched the movie, Because if you're portraying somebody who's, you know, allegedly so obese that they're literally on death's door, I don't think there's an actor in the world where they wouldn't have to wear a fat suit. So that that part seems a little mixed. But what was your view on that?

0:45:35 Charone: Sure. Well, there, there is that, but then there's the fact that again, the movie isn't exactly realistic. Like, so that the character is Charlie is supposed to be 600 pounds. There are 600 pound people on television. Like if you watch TLC or whatever, you know, and some of them are, have a lot of like mobility issues. Some of them don't.

0:46:12 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

0:46:23 Charone: Um, but I'm not saying you have to cast a 600 pound at like, so, the casting and the fat suiting of Brendan Fraser, right, uh, Hunter the writer said that he um never saw another actor for the role. So Darren Aronofsky, the director, apparently had considered multiple actors. I don't know who they all were, but Brendan Frazier was the first actor that Aronovsky presented to Hunter for the part. They auditioned him, uh, and they loved him and that was that. So I don't know who else was considered, flirted with.

Um, I heard on Pop Culture Happy Hour that the main reason that they say they didn't want an actual fat actor was set safety, which, uh, yeah, um, so um, I was listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, which is one of the clips I sent you, and so that's Glenn Weldon and Guy Branham, and Guy Branham is a actor, comedian, bad guy. So he, he was saying, like, uh, you know, like, he worked on the movie Bros, and uh, he was like, you know, I could totally uh get a certification that when I was working on that movie Bros, I didn't explode on the set. Like, he did not believe Aronofsky

0:46:57 Thomas: Hmm. That also sounds offensive to me. What? What does that mean? Oh, Love Guy Branum.

0:47:26 Charone: For a second about that

0:47:26 Thomas: Yeah, well, what is this safety? I don't know how to interpret that. What do they think they mean? I mean, yeah, I mean you could be suffering bad health even related to weight and not be 600 pounds, right? I mean that doesn't need to be the case, you know, but then you wouldn't get this whole fucking spectacle, I think. So, I

0:47:27 Charone: Yeah. Um, yeah. I don't know, like, for one thing, why does the character have to be 600 pounds? Like, well, that's the thing, is like, this, that's another reason, that's one of a handful of reasons, at least, why this movie isn't that believable. There are plenty of people who self-medicate with food. I've done that, you know, but you typically

0:48:03 Thomas: Means me too. Let's be real. I feel like everyone's done that. Carbs are medicine to me and it sucks.

0:48:04 Charone: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you know, and and um, and usually you don't get to 600 pounds. Now, the the story of this movie is supposed to, that this guy is like basically suicidal, completely given up on life and just wants to eat himself to death, and I don't know how many people have ever done that. And maybe the reason why Hunter felt safe doing it is because no one really does that, or, you know, virtually no one. And we can play the Hunter clip there. And that's, sure.

0:48:36 Thomas: Sure. Let's do it.

0:48:38 Clip: I found, you know, these kids were so unenthused about being there, and I just found that, like, the effort that I was putting into the course was like desperately trying to reach them. And so that effort, I think, is dramatized in The Whale and the way that Charlie tries to reach out to his daughter through this, through essay writing. So that was really the core of the play, and the idea for making him obese came from this idea that I wanted, wanted to put both the other characters in the play and the audience at a distance at the very beginning. So, you know, the lights come up and you see this man, and I think a large section of the audience, not everybody, but a large session of the audience, has been sort of culturally trained to put him at arm's length and to judge him and to reject him to a certain degree.

0:49:26 Clip: And the sort of experiment of the play was, over the course of an hour and 45 minutes, an hour and 50 minutes, can that distance be decreased so that if the audience is starting from here, is it a more profound journey if they start from there and then really come to empathize with him and identify with him despite the wait?

0:49:47 Thomas: Yikes.

0:49:48 Charone: Yeah, that's weird. And just for context, the beginning of the the clip was, he was talking about kids. He wrote this play when he was a teacher of writing at Rutgers. Apparently there's a writing class that everybody at Rutgers has to take, and so they have a lot of people teach it. And, you know, and he says the students really hated it, um, but yeah, he's talking about, he wanted to make the person, like, look like something you hate and don't regard as human, or something like, that's what I kind of hear.

0:50:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:14 Charone: Which, which you do by making them really fat, which, which, you know, to me is very nauseating to, to hear.

0:50:21 Thomas: Yeah. And I know, again, fully admitted, there are no perfect comparisons and you can't just swap things in and out. But I think you can at least look at the hypotheticals and you like and note that the character is also gay. But imagine if he had said that. Imagine if he had said, yeah, we want him. So he's gay because we wanted to be somebody that you just you just really don't like, you know, early on. And then, you Know, maybe you could the it'll be the greatest achievement in art history. If we can get you to like a gay person by the end of the movie, you would never say that.

0:50:51 Charone: That was great. You made it gay. That is like the new game show. Like Noah has the make it black.

0:50:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah I mean, I think it's legitimate question to at least ask. I don't think things are always equivalent or anything, but I think you can I think you can ask the question. I think that there is a lot to that, to looking at that comparison. I Think there is A reason why you would never say that. And I think it's just a matter of progress because there is certainly plenty of time. I don't know, pretty much all of history before what, 20 years ago where like, yeah, they did make people gay in order to make you not like them in movies.

0:51:25 Thomas: Like that was like, that's you referenced the Disney Disney villains, they're coded as gay oftentimes.

0:51:21 Charone: Yeah. Yeah, no.

0:51:29 Thomas: Like, yeah. And I think that the only difference is progress. I don't think there's really a different moral issue going on there. Right?

0:51:38 Charone: And, and I wonder what it would be like if they, I think the real reason that they didn't hire an actor closer to the real size was kind of what you said earlier, like, could they even do it without the cringe becoming too overwhelming, you know, because you've got the director directing the actor, like, yeah, so this movie is basically about you being a hideous freak because of your size so you just sit there and be a hideous freak, like that's, you know, I really think that that was the cowardice that, you know, or maybe the hypocrisy they didn't want to face or something.

0:52:00 Thomas: Yeah. No kidding. No killing. Yeah.

0:52:13 Thomas: Right.

0:52:13 Charone: And I mean, Fraser apparently did gain some weight for this role with, I don't know what some people will do for an Oscar. I mean it's not safe. Don't do it. Like gaining a lot of weight for a role, losing a lot away for a roll, like dieting in general, like doing like manipulating your diet in general from just healthy food in, in moderate portions, like trying to mess with your body is not good. Know, maybe. And Yeah, I'm trying to like, kind of be balanced about it. Like there was people who will be like, I am a certified dietitian. And I say this, and, you know, maybe but like, In my experience, it's been like, the healthiest I've ever been is when I just kind of eat moderate. And, you you if you diet with a intention of weight loss or weight gain, you tend to damage your metabolism. I'm not a scientist, but you know, that that's been my experience.

0:52:32 Thomas: Don't recommend.

0:52:44 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:53:02 Charone: Well,

0:53:02 Thomas: Topic for another And that actually is a really good topic for another show. I'm very interested in because I've done some dieting as well. And I have some mixed feelings about that. I think that I think everything you say is true. I guess the only thing I would say is I don't really like the certainty of the statement that I hear some people make, which is diets don't work. I feel like that does more harm than good. Because I would listen to that and I would said, well, no, I've dieted and I lost weight. So that would make make me not listen to you, you know, but I, but there's so much truth in there because they don't work a lot. Like it's very hard for them to work. And there's reasons that, that you mentioned for that.

0:53:40 Charone: How much weight have you lost on a diet?

0:53:42 Thomas: I I've, I've lost, at least 12 pounds before. Um. And, and, but you know, I didn't keep it off, but at the same time I did have a lot of nice time that I enjoyed where I looked better. So it's like, just because something isn't permanent doesn't mean that it's useless, you know?

0:53:55 Charone: Okay. Well, there's that too, because yeah, any diet works in the short term, let's be clear. Like, um, and especially if you, if it's a matter of 10 to 20 pounds, you know, um, oftentimes we can change, like just changing habits and stuff can, uh, make you shift 10 to 20 pounds, but like, again, it's it's individual for everyone and the problem, you know, it's and I don't want to get too much into the weeds, but like, you know, if you've ever been a dieter, you know, stuff comes back, stuff stops working, you hit plateaus, gaining or losing, so it's not just math. Some people think, no, it's just math, math. Calories in, calories out. Like, your own body will prove you wrong on that.

0:54:02 Thomas: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

0:54:39 Thomas: Yeah well it's great point. And I think it is just math. There's just more variables that we don't control, you you know, Like, like it's not as though we can fucking create energy from the sun. Like, there is, I've been, the bottom line is you, the conservation of energy is not going to be violated, but there's all these variables that we don't, and I'm not disagreeing. I'm just saying, like, that's, I think that's what the trick is, is, you know, your metabolism is the variable and there's more that you don't control there. You can't just say, if I eat X calories, if I cut X calories I will lose weight and keep it off. 'Cause as you say, there's so much more going on. And I totally agree with all that. But I guess one thing, that a hesitation I have there, is ultimately, I think, and let me get your view on this. I think we do have a massive problem in this country and in the world now with our processed foods and all the shit we're doing there. And that ultimately is a diet issue. It's just

0:54:45 Charone: Could be. Yeah.

0:55:31 Thomas: A longer term fix. Like there's no short, I would almost amend it to say like no short term diet, you know, like it to my understanding.

0:55:40 Thomas: And And everything. And I think we pretty much just agree. It's just kind of like a terminology thing, maybe, or like a slight word disagreement. But like, I think that it is a long-term issue that we should solve and it is a food issue. And it's because the way we do food, just to talk about America, our country, is just so bad. To me, it's just the same as any other issue where it's like, it used to be all about personal responsibility and we love being mad at people. We love judging people and we love saying you should fucking do this. You should, are you poor? Stop being poor, you idiot. Like that, like we love doing that as a country because we're assholes. Like we just love it. But I think over time, again, well-meaning people, people who want to more understand the problem and have compassion rather than like just trying to blame people, have understood, understood that a lot of these things, poverty, whatever it might be, and I think weight is included, that's not a question of individual responsibility.

0:56:37 Thomas: There's a systemic issue going on and it's that we pump, we distill the worst part, like the most fattening parts of food, and we just snort it like cocaine in this country. Like it's just, it's the food supply, the food that you, if you don't take a ton of effort, something that requires a lot lot of privilege, by the way, to have the time and the income to, to carefully, you know, consider your diet. It's so easy just to eat the shittiest shit. Cause that's what our food system is, you know? And I Feel like it's a systemic issue. It's not, it's something we need to shift our focus from, hey, how dare you, you don't know, not lose weight too. Can we fucking fix our food supply a little bit and not make it be so bad? Yes.

0:57:08 Charone: Yeah.

0:57:20 Charone: Yeah, so much corn syrup, sugar, refined flours, all that stuff is not good for you, and it's cheaper, and the food, you know, like, not to get too tinfoil hat, but food manufacturers Manufacturers and restaurants and stuff are always working on trying to sell you more food. And especially like the more diet culture takes hold, the more they have to find sneaky ways to sell more food, you know, and sneaky messages to tell you to eat more and more often. And, and yes, there's, there'S an element of personal responsibility and element of choice. I don't think I'm certainly not perfect in my exercise routine.

I always feel much better and, like, I'm and more toned and I'm, I do my body fat does go down when I exercise regularly. And, know, but it's, it can be very hard with schedule and it whatever, you you know, so I'm not perfect with that. You know, and, and with food, like, yeah, there are like, whether it's a psychological food addiction or whether it's just habits of what you get at the store, like you know, if it, you're, I was a single person for a long time, I would just get, you know, lean cuisines or, or healthy, you know,

0:57:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:57:43 Thomas: No.

0:58:07 Thomas: Kidding. Yeah.

0:58:24 Thomas: Oh.

0:58:24 Charone: Frozen boxes.

0:58:25 Thomas: The easiest stuff is the worst shit for you.

0:58:26 Charone: Right. Yeah. Or, you know, if I'm too lazy for that, I will confess I've said it on my own podcast. Like there are times when I've had Entenmann's donuts for dinner. Like that's, you know, I'm not blaming anyone for that, but myself for that particular choice. But you know you will seldom see a group of people that have worked harder than fat people trying to be Thin, unless you really know how to overcome it. The world will. And I mean, like the shame, the world will make your life as a fat person a living hell. So if, if all it took was exercising every day and eating this and not that, fat, no one would opt for the living hell.

And unless you've lived it, you really don't understand, like, if you're a person who has personally overcome being fat and you think you've cracked it for yourself and you're happy about that, then I am so happy for you, um, but I will also say, come back and talk to me in five years, because, uh, if you're someone who has been able to keep your lost weight off for five years through diet and exercise alone, without like medical procedures, amphetamines or anything, that kind of stuff, then you are a genuine unicorn. You are like, because most

0:58:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:59:25 Charone: People can't, you know.

0:59:27 Thomas: I hope, I, I want to make very clear, I, I know I've talked about some of my personal experience in this. I really hope that doesn't come across like I'm an authority on this by any means. I just was trying to relate a little bit. But no, yeah, I don't pretend that I know your experience whatsoever. And I don't mean to say that. So hopefully that that didn't come across that way.

0:59:27 Charone: Sure.

0:59:38 Charone: No. Of course. Of course. Yeah. No, not at all, but yeah, you're right, there is, it's, um, there's individual choice, there's always individual choice for things, or I mean, unless you don't agree, uh, believe in free will, and that's on another podcast entirely. I don't know, but, uh, you know, there's, but then there's the systems that set you up to fail, or you know, set you up to make these choices or have to, have to surrender to one thing or the, the other. Yeah, sure.

0:59:56 Thomas: Yeah. Well, yeah. Example, small example. Even though you've already given plenty, it's fine. But like I one time I found myself in desperate need of food. I hadn't eaten and I was out. And the only thing nearby was like a kind of a, you know, a gas station, a convenience store type place. And, you Know, I'm, I try to be health conscious. I don't like eating crap, you KNOW, like I want to eat better. And so I'm looking around, I'm like, what is the, God, there is nothing healthy here. What can I eat? And I see a burrito and I'm like, okay, you know, beans, cheese, like there's a lot of things, by the way, and this is more interesting conversation for another time. There really is a whole lot of stuff that we thought was healthy, you now, even 20 years ago that's like, no, that's actually terrible. It's actually better to just have stuff that has fat in it rather than low fat.

1:00:23 Charone: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:48 Thomas: And then what you've subbed is worse, like way worse. And so I'm like, all right, burrito should be filling. You know, that'S got some protein, the beans. Yeah. All right. I'll go with that. Shouldn't be the worst thing. I get, I buy this burrito and I think this is a, again, a product of our system and everything having to be as cheap as possible and making as much money as possible. This fucking burrito was felt like 19 tortillas rolled into one with like one bean in it. I'm telling you, I was like, what the fuck? I just ate like seven rolled tortillas. Like it looked like a burrito, but it was all tortilla.

So it's all the worst part. Like that's all the part that I was Like, all right, it has some tortilla that's some carbs, you know, but you know it'll bounce out with some of this other stuff that at least fill me up and not be terrible. Nope, just all tortilla and it's like, yep, that's that's the the food system in like a microcosm. Like you think you're eating this healthy thing, but really the cheapest stuff is the worst for you. And that's what people are going to put it. That's what companies are gonna put in because it makes them more money. Like it's just, it's

1:00:50 Charone: Oh, my gosh. Right.

1:01:24 Charone: Oh, Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

1:01:46 Thomas: Terrible.

1:01:46 Charone: And then, you know, it's just, um, synergistic with the diet industry. The food industry can make you, you know, more fat, and then the diet, history, can, you know, take your money. They take your money this way and then they take your money that way. Yeah.

1:02:00 Thomas: Yeah. About that. I was under the impression, I could be wrong. I wasn't under the the impression that Brendan Frazier was someone who struggled with weight and was open about that. And so that's why that is what I was interested about because it seems like in my mind, if I was trying to evaluate this, it feels like that is a little bit more fair game to be be like, yeah, this is someone who's struggled with obesity. Sure. They're, they're doing prosthetics because we're writing a character that's like, you know, so unhealthy that I don't really think if if we're going with this concept, I don't think you can find an actor that's going to be to that degree that they're wanting to do. So having someone who has struggled with weight, wear a fat suit feels a little bit more, I dunno, like less of a harmful choice to me, but what is it? Am I wrong in that? What do think?

1:02:44 Charone: I, so I was tried to actually look up because, um, I had heard from, is actually, um, Fat Culture Critic's channel on YouTube, that he had, okay, so he did do some purposely for The Whale, but he also, um, has, like, his own, like, getting older, and and all those, um, physical injuries he's had from previous jobs have also contributed. So apparently it's a little of both.

1:03:04 Thomas: Okay.

1:03:04 Charone: Uh, so I mean, you can see why, like, maybe as an actor, um, someone who's, who's struggled with, I mean, everyone, here's the thing though, like, who hasn't, very, very few people haven't, like, had a psychological struggle with their body.

1:03:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll say it. I mean, Brendan Fraser, I hadn't seen him for a hundred fucking years. And last time I saw him, he was George of the jungle and he looked amazing and he's older. He does, you know, he's struggled. He doesn't, he doesn't. You know, I gotta be careful with my wording. I guess he, he looked fit and know now he's, he said the struggles you've mentioned. So I feel like maybe, Maybe especially to be somebody like him who, you know, I imagine there's got to be a lot of difficulty in self-image when you're, you know, on the big screen and then all of sudden you're past your prime, maybe, or you, you know, you don't, your body doesn't look like you want it to anymore. And so I guess all that is to say, I feel like it's a little bit more than the average person's struggle might be with weight. That's all.

1:03:20 Charone: Right.

1:04:04 Charone: But it's, it didn't, like, I, like, I felt like, I feel like if they were gonna do this movie, they should have hired someone who was like, God, I don't know, men's sizes, like women's sizes, is, like, you know, uh, somewhere around a 26 or 30 at least, I, I don't know what fredden Frazier's size is, I, like, I guess bottom line is, I think he was too thin for this part, like, and not just politically, but, um, cosmetically, you Um, actually, um, Fat Culture Critic on YouTube, her real name is Sarah, uh, she has a lot of videos about these topics, and she has one, because she does costume design, she's talking about fat suits and why they're bad, like, they're bad socially, but they're also just bad costume wise they always look kind of uncanny valley, they never quite look right, you know.

1:04:19 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Unless your whole film is lit like a fucking cave and you can't see anything. It's the only way.

1:04:49 Charone: Yeah. Well, I mean, even in this film, I, you know, every time you see Brendan Fraser's face, it doesn't look like a real person's face. It looks more like the dinosaur baby from Dinosaurs, right? Like, yeah why don't you play the pop culture hour no

1:05:01 Thomas: Oh, did you want to play that clip now? Or let me know. We got a couple more clips. My pleasure.

1:05:09 Clip: When they cast Brendan Fraser as an extremely fat gay guy, him being neither extremely fat nor gay, I was like, is this the best we can do? And it led me to a lot of curiosity. I bought the play, I read the play. I wasn't a fan of the play but I still went into it with hope and also the experience of working on Bros, a movie where a lot gay men were very frustrated with the film.

I was very much thinking about the narcissism of small differences. I was thinking about about how inclined I was to dislike this thing. You know, in a world that doesn't represent people like me very much, it was purporting to come close to representing me. Except that the character who is supposed to represent me is half a puppet. It's person lodged in a puppet, and the mental gymnastics required to believe that the most empathetic way of telling this story, the way of getting inside the mind and the heart of this character, was using all of the tools of the clumps and shallow Howl combined, weren't great. And we all love Brendan Fraser and we all want the best for Brendan Fraser, but his sincerity and his beauty as an artist was not enough to liberate this from the direction or the writing.

Yeah, the direction of the writing, I mean, I'm gonna give them both the benefit of the doubt. I don't think there is a sociological statement trying to be made here. I don't think that they're positing that fat people are fat because they hate themselves or that fatness is something people do to themselves out of guilt or shame or self-loathing.

1:06:47 Clip: It is trying to do is say that this guy is doing that, right? So, it's not making a societal statement. It is try to make a narrative statement, a dramatic one. And the reason this film fails as utterly as I think it does is I don't buy it for a second. It does not make the case. I don't believe this movie. It doesn't make any sense. Like, why is he doing this? Like, has he decided to bring this upon himself? Why has this person who teaches an art form so inelegantly kill himself? And watching Brendan Fraser and a bunch of plastic gorge on cold KFC while a Foley artist makes a bunch bunch of noises, it never felt real in the way that like, look, I am not somebody who's personally experienced drug addiction. So I was able to watch Requiem for a Dream and be like, wow, that's super intense.

And I think there are people who are able to watching this movie and be like, goodness gracious, it must be so terrible to be so broken as a person that one does this. As an actual fat person, I'm like, I don't think anybody does this? Yeah, here's the thing. There is no truth here. There's no humanity. There There is no real emotion. There's a hell of a lot of grasping at emotion. So it's emotionalism, right? There is not true sentiment here. It's all just false sentimentality indicating all over the place.

1:07:19 Thomas: Well,

1:08:07 Clip: That's why every moment, every frame just rings false and manipulative. Let's talk about the score at some point.

1:08:15 Thomas: Geez, I hadn't heard that.

1:08:17 Charone: Was Guy Branum, yeah.

1:08:18 Thomas: But holy shit. Yeah, that's what what they they said.

1:08:21 Charone: What they said, exactly. Yeah, that I was going to tell the audience, just listen to that whole podcast, it was Pop Culture happy hour from NPR, it's like 20 minutes, and it's, they're so on point.

1:08:29 Thomas: Absolutely. Yeah. I'll link that in the show notes for sure. That's wow. Uh, that's a lot of good stuff and, and compelling case there. I see what you mean. I think that makes perfect sense in terms of the fat suit stuff. Yeah, I, it didn't need to be, this movie sucks. Not only does it suck for every political and social reason, it also just sucked as a movie. Be. And I'm glad to hear that I'm not crazy. I feel like those two gentlemen, uh, Uh, I think had the same feeling I did, which is just, it's insincere. It's not, it'S just a bunch of indicating is the perfect word. It's, it's a bunch of indicating. It's using these tropes. And look, I love the girl from Stranger Things. I, I THINK she's, she'S good. The character was so one note and fake.

1:09:13 Charone: Right.

1:09:13 Thomas: Like, like you're just being as shitty as possible. Just be a shitty evil person as shitty as possible because you're shitty and you hate your dad. That's not a that's not a character. It's just fucking dumb. You know, it's just like it's too it's too tropey. It's just too basic. It's indicating, you know, it's just all these little things, these little tropes to indicate what you want to say rather than genuine emotional expression, genuine character. In are.

1:09:36 Charone: Well, yeah So I was also going to say that, so, Sarah is, that I, it's, I hope I pronounced it right, and she's part Egyptian, so I think that's an Egyptan name, is that a, uh, I think she does a couple of podcasts, um, but her like main thing is YouTube, um, a channel called Fat Culture Critic, and so she was talking about, uh, the fat suits and how, um, other thing about like, not, not only are they kind of dehumanizing just in the sense that you're making like, yeah, you're, you're making a puppet out of what's supposed to be a person, but also that they're not authentic.

Authentic, so no matter how good the costumers are, there's all, yeah, there's this uncanny valley effect, and it takes you out of the story because you're thinking at least on some level about the actor's costume and transformation, so you're like, not, it's not the movie's not real to you because you can see this whole fat suit effect and even if it was really really good you still know that this actor doesn't really look like that, you're think about it, um, so she actually did that, and she did a video on fat suits and she also did a video just about the whale itself, and it was before the film came out, she had read the play, but she

1:10:19 Thomas: Hmm. Oh.

1:10:40 Charone: Had a very strong reaction to it that was really resonated with me and she was really upset about it. You can see it. We have the audio, not the video, but if you want to go to her channel, you can see the video too. She was just speaking. She wasn't able to write a script about it because she got too angry, so she's just speaking off the cuff.

1:10:56 Thomas: I know how that is.

1:10:59 Charone: Yeah. So yeah, feel free to play that for the audience. And maybe that'll be like a good end to it.

1:11:02 Thomas: Yes. Here we go I

1:11:04 Clip: So this is a play about self-loathing, about queer self- loathing and that is expressed visually through fat because fat is a thing that this writer hates, it's oh it is so palatable that this that this writer does not see fat people as humans. Um, yeah. I mean, you can tell by the title.

1:11:43 Clip: Um, it is bloody. It is just an awful thing to read as a fat person. This person who wrote this has never thought for one fucking second about what this might feel like to read as a person.

1:11:59 Clip: And that is coming from a gay writer who knows what it is like to be hated and has never considered what it might be like as a person from a marginalized group, from a different marginalized group to his own, might be to read something that is hateful, hateful towards that group.

1:12:25 Clip: This man needs to be deeply ashamed of himself and not because he's gay. I'm queer. That's not a thing to be ashamed of. That is a thing we should celebrate. And I'm sorry for whoever made him think that it was a thing to be ashamed of, but by God he does not get to use my body and bodies like mine as a way to express that, to work through that. No, you don't fucking do that.

1:12:55 Thomas: Don't think she liked it. Not A fan.

1:12:56 Charone: I it. No.

1:12:58 Thomas: Left this reviewer cold. Yeah, no, for sure, that's, uh, yeah, that's intense, that's, I get it, yeah.

1:13:00 Charone: Yeah. Very, very powerful. Like, and I think I had watched that before I watched the film. So again, I was a little prejudiced going in. But, but yeah, Sarah is amazing. I definitely recommend her channel and her content, and um, she graciously gave permission to use her audio, so

1:13:11 Thomas: Oh That's, that's very nice of her, and, uh, yep, again, link in the show notes, check that out, recommend, um, and I'll tell you, Sarah, you don't have to have been biased against the movie to hate it, because I, I was prepared for it to be like kind of good, but I'd have to feel conflicted about it, no, just sucks, so don't no worries on the, like, letting us know your preconceived notion there, I don't think it mattered, the movie sucks, sure.

1:13:29 Charone: Right. Right. Well, I agree, but hey, that's an opinion, and for anyone in the audience who's like but I liked it, like, you can like what you like it's it's fair no it's

1:13:47 Thomas: You're wrong no yeah you can like what you're, no, I know, I've just just, that's always a joke. You can like what you like, of course, all the time. But I would strongly disagree with this one because it was just not good. No, that, that I love that. Thank you so much, Sarah, for coming on and exploring these issues a little bit. If people want to find more Sarah, where should they go?

1:13:54 Charone: Opinion yeah Uh, Well, I, um, I don't podcast anymore, I might go back, but I haven't had enough time for it lately. I've been trying to get around doing some acting. So I'm in, there's a film coming out that I have a scene in. It's coming out in the spring. It's called Dog Fugitive. It is about like a talking dog that does like detective stuff. So I actually, I don't even know what the whole script is, but one scene in it that is hopefully funny. We had a good time doing it. And, I uh, was in a pilot called how to be a New Yorker. It's on my Instagram. So there's an episode of that. And I've got, I did a film up with some film students in Cleveland that's coming out called, um, the coverup. So, um.

I have a website, um, Charone Frankel.com, which just has my like photos and not nothing too exciting. But if you do want to follow me on like Instagram, it's at Charone Frankel, Facebook, whatever, you know, So anytime I've got something new coming out, I'll definitely share it. Thank you so much, Thomas, for inviting me. This was so much fun.

1:14:31 Thomas: Oh, my pleasure. No. Thank you for coming. It's been far too long. And yeah, I look forward to being in touch and put all those links in the show notes.

1:15:17 Charone: Awesome.

1:15:17 Thomas: Check out charonefrankel.com if you want to and uh thanks again and we'll talk soon

1:15:21 Charone: Thanks, Thomas.

1:15:40 Charone: But uh I don't even remember what where what this had to do with the film

1:15:43 Thomas: Oh, we, yeah, we branched off, but, but what, yeah.

1:15:44 Charone: Oh the fat suits and everything yeah sorry

1:15:48 Thomas: Oh. Oh okay. Yeah.