FIGHT CLUB: "Soap" - with Amanda Moore

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07/11/22 • 77 min

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1999: The Podcast

Fight Club may well have been 1999's most important box office bomb. With a budget of $65 million, the film barely made back half that at the domestic box office, and barely cleared $100 million worldwide.

Yet it remains one of the cult classics of the 1990s, and people often remember it being a lot more successful than it was. A lot of that has to do with the format that would define film in the pre-streaming era of the late 90s and early 00s: DVD.

Its themes of toxic masculinity, cultural decay, overbearing capitalism, fascism, and how all those things are expressed in violence seem particularly relevant today.

And so this week, John and Joey invited Amanda Moore (aka Frank) - who spent a year infiltrating the world of the alt-right and neo-Nazis and has spent her time since exposing them and writing about her experience - to talk about her love of the film and how well it reflects what is happening beneath the surface of American culture today.

You can find Amanda on Twitter @noturtlesoup17 and on TikTok at noturtlesoup17

Its themes of toxic masculinity, cultural decay, overbearing capitalism, fascism, and how all those things are expressed in violence seem particularly relevant today.

You can find Amanda on Twitter @noturtlesoup17 and on TikTok at noturtlesoup17

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AMERICAN BEAUTY: "Roses" - with Aislinn and Tobin Addington

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American Beauty was 1999's Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards. And it was an unstoppable behemoth when it came to end of year accolades, cleaning up as well at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, SAG, and more. Critics practically tripped over themselves digging deep into their vocabularies to properly articulate the film's genius.

And yet, 23 year later, the consensus seems to be that the film is...bad.

So what happened (beyond the dark revelations of Kevin Spacey's long history of terrible, abusive behavior and sexual assault)? And is there anything left to make American Beauty a film that can still be appreciated? Is anything about American Beauty still beautiful?

This week, John and Joey are joined by the Addington siblings, Aislinn and Tobin, co-hosts of CageClub's very own The Contenders podcast.

They discuss their journeys from loving and then really, really hating Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's strange, misguided, ambitious, and hopelessly outdated failure.

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BOYS DON'T CRY: "Brandon" - with Logan Ashley Kisner

Boys Don’t Cry holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes critics score and a pretty astonishing 86% Metacritic. And with scores like that, one might get the impression that was and is a universally admired classic.

Billed as a dramatization of the events leading up to the 1993 rape and murder of 21-year-old trans man Brandon Teena, it was nominated for 57 major awards and won 37 of them.

14 of went to star Hilary Swank, 6 to costar Chloe Sevigny, and 8 to writer director Kimberley Peirce.

And Swank of course won the Oscar for Best Actress, while Sevigny was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

But critics at the time almost always misgendered Brandon in their reviews. And the film effectively erases the trans identity of its protagonist, which some argue is the result of a conscious and unforgiveable narrative and creative decision made my Peirce, who cast a cisgendered woman to play Brandon and who shut out essentially all input and participation from anyone in the trans community.

In the 23 years since its release, Boys Don't Cry has not aged well. But this week's guest, writer and trans horror historian Logan Ashley Kisner, argues that it's not all about aging - Boys Don't Cry is a fundamentally, irredeemably transphobic film.

Find Logan Ashley on Twitter @transhorrors and find links to his writing at linktr.ee/transhorror

His essay on Boys Don't Cry is available here: “Boys Don’t Cry” Has Always Been Violently Transphobic

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