Just in time for the US election we look back at the greatest disabled American president
To celebrate Remembrance Day, sar and Jeff are joined by media studies legend Beth Haller to discuss the documentary FDR: American Badass. The film, a campy, over-the-top spoof, features Franklin D. Roosevelt as a werewolf-hunting president who contracts polio from a werewolf bite. Join us as we chat about some of the broader issues of disability representation in media, the challenges faced by disabled filmmakers, and the impact of ableism in Hollywood.
Listen at…
Grading the Film
As always, this film is reviewed with scores recorded in four main categories, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst. Like the game of golf, the lower the score the better.
How accurate is the representation?
Jeff – 2 / 5
sar – 2 / 5
Beth – 2 / 5
Total – / 15
How difficult was it to watch the movie?
Jeff – 3 / 5
sar – 1 / 5
Beth – 1 / 5
Total – / 15
How often were things unintentionally funny?
Jeff – 1 / 5
sar – 1 / 5
Beth – 1 / 5
Total – / 15
How far back has it put disabled people?
Jeff – 2 / 5
sar – 2.5 / 5
Beth – 1 / 5
Total – / 15
The Verdict
Regrets, I have a few
Transcript – Part 1
[Episode begins with the trailer for FDR: American Badass!]
Jeff:
You are listening to invalid culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture, adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid.
[punk theme song plays, Mvll Crimes song “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet”]
I’m arguing with strangers on the internet. Not going out today because I’m feeling too upset, argue with strangers on the internet and I’m winning. And I’m winning!
Jeff:
Welcome back to another exciting day of invalid culture. As usual, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and as usual, I am joined by my co victim, Sarah Curry. How are you doing, Sarah?
sar:
Feeling really good to not be living in America. How are you?
Jeff:
Yeah, how about that election? Very surprising, very surprising outcome that happened. Sure.
sar:
It’s great that candidate won.
Jeff:
Yeah, we totally know who won the election and we’re very surprised by it. America will never be the same, I assume.
sar:
Hope my American friends aren’t significantly, entirely impacted by these results.
Jeff:
Yep. It is either the greatest of times or the blurt of times depending on what happened after we recorded this episode, but it is totally November and that means that we need to honor the troops and that is what we’re going to be doing here today. And to do that, we have brought an All-American superhero. We are joined by a real expert, someone who knows every single thing about America. You probably know her though, as journalist, disability media scholar, writer of fantastic books such as The Beloved Representative Disability and Ableist World by Line of Hope, the newspaper and magazine writings of Helen Cower. Great one. Relevant for next year and disabled people transforming media culture for a more inclusive world. A book that I think I have a blurb on. Welcome to the show, the one and only Beth Taylor. How you doing Beth?
Beth:
Hey, how’s it going everybody?
Jeff:
Yeah, so good to have you on. So I have a little bit of a background. Did I miss anything? Who are you, Beth?
Beth:
Oh, I also have a nonprofit called the Global Alliance for Disability and Media and Entertainment that I’m co-director of. And we’re doing exciting things to try to get more disability representation in media.
sar:
What do you ally against?
Beth:
Ableism.
sar:
Good answer.
Beth:
Ableism in general. I never heard it phrased that way. Ally against. Interesting.
sar:
Well you said it was an Alliance. I was like, I need to know what she’s ripping shit up for.
Beth:
Ableism, crud in media that shouldn’t be on TV or film.
sar:
Okay, so you’re probably a big Corey Doctorow
Beth:
Who?
sar:
The guy who did, he did post humanism, but he also came out with this theory that’s really hot right now called Ification of Media, usually applied to media conglomerates. Yeah,
Beth:
Yeah. Yep. We’re in the middle of leaders. See what’s happening now in November because Hollywood is struggling these days and don’t realize that no one wants to go to the movie theater anymore. There was an article in the New York Times about literally all the companies, they all have major losses except for Amazon Prime and Netflix.
sar:
Really?
Beth:
Even Disney only broke even. So circling the Toilet.
sar:
Who owns HBO?
Beth:
Oh, there’s only about six companies that own all of us media
Jeff:
Pretty much.
Beth:
HBO is allied with, I forget who, I don’t want to tell
Jeff:
I think it was with Hulu, maybe? I’m not sure.
Beth:
One of them is Warner Brothers. They’re streaming Max. I know they’re not part of Netflix, Hulu, or I think Paramount Plus is with Hulu now. I mean, it’s all collapsing. And these people in Hollywood don’t understand that we all don’t want to pay $7 a month for seven different streaming platforms. It’s true.
Jeff:
Yeah. I love that. We got the internet and the first instinct we had was to just reproduce cable. We’re like, let’s just make cable again. That’d be good, but make it more confusing. That’ll be perfect.
sar:
It’s more expensive too, for the number of channels you used to get on the Rogers package 20 years ago, you’d get 500 and something channels, for like $99. Now we get six or $99.
Beth:
I know I still have cable in my house in Maryland, which I can watch anywhere in the United States on my laptop. And the one reason I did keep it, everyone was talking about, oh, I’m cutting the cord with cable. I’m like, no, I don’t add more things. I mean, I pay a car payment for it every month, but at least I don’t have to go out finding stuff that I want to watch and need to watch because of my area of interest is watching TV and film. And so now some of the people that got rid of cable are really sorry. They did you know?
Jeff:
Right.
sar:
I was certainly sorry during the Olympics. Missed cable for that.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, the good news is you don’t need to worry because break dancing has been canceled apparently. So you don’t need to watch the next Olympics because Santa Reigns supreme in the world of break dancing and all of these references are super topical in November right now. So the other thing that’s really topical for November right now is World War ii. That’s right, folks. We have decided to go back in time to honor the troops with a documentary film, which you may know as FDR American Badass now as a way of a little…
Beth:
Exclamation point.
Jeff:
Exclamation point!
sar:
Yes.
Jeff:
Yes. American Badass!
sar:
Yeah, that’s important.
Jeff:
That’s important. Now, by way of trivia, part of the reason this movie is on this show is because many years ago I was checking my mail and I opened my mailbox and there was an envelope there from one Beth Ha and inside the envelope was a DVD for a movie I had never heard of, which was called FDR American Badass. So Sarah and I actually got to watch a piece of media history when we’ve watched this film together. We’ve watched it from the original DVD that Beth sent to us. For those of you who have not watched this movie before from the box, FDR America Badass is quote, after contracting polio from a venomous werewolf bike, FDR won’t stop at single-handedly ending the depression and prohibition with the help of a team of historic failures. He must end World War II by exacting revenge on an army of Nazi werewolves from the comfort of his Albert Einstein design, wheelchair of death, an outrageous over the top spoof FDR America Badass is the untold story of our country’s greatest monster Hunter president. Does that match what you watched, Sarah? How would you say they did on the description?
sar:
I think important context for this episode is that I’m joined by two Americans who have some idea of what actually happened, and I took zero American history courses my entire life, so my American history is quite poor. So I was constantly asking Jeff throughout this movie, is that canon? Is that canon Even as it got more ridiculous, but I genuinely don’t know which parts are supposed to be based on real life. So I thought the whole thing was fun and I would love to be told which events were actually real.
Jeff:
Yeah. What do you think, Beth, does that sort of capture the movie?
Beth:
I have to do some Googling. When I was watching it as an American, that was my rewatching it. That was my question. Some of it seemed really accurate dates and things, and then other parts, and obviously the werewolf stuff wasn’t accurate, but I was like, wait, they might’ve gotten the right year for when FDR got polio and they might’ve done this and that. I was just hoping that the world that watches this in America, you can stream it on a platform called Crackle. So I watched part of it while I was in the car. This is like beyond excellent because it’s a better FDR than FDR was himself. Right?
Jeff:
Yeah.
sar:
That’s what we love in a memoir, always the best version. Right?
Beth:
Right. So it’s better than any actual factual account because he’s so badass.
Jeff:
Right. More true to the person through the hyperbole. Yeah.
Beth:
Fair. Just the camp, the highest level of camp is like perfection
Jeff:
And it’s extremely campy in part because it was written by and starring a bit of a tip movie legend, a man named Ross Patterson who has written a bunch of these, we’re going to call it spoof. I don’t know that that’s the right word, but I’m going to use the word spoof, including screwball, the Ted Whitfield story, Darnell Dawkins, Mel Guitar legend, and the eventual invalid culture movie, Helen Keller versus Night Wolves. Patterson also stars in this film. He is the hillbilly politician, Levon Buford.
sar:
Is that true?
Jeff:
That is him, yeah.
sar:
The director was Cleveland? The writer?
Jeff:
The writer was Cleveland.
sar:
Oh, the writer. Okay.
Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. Ross Patterson. And he has a bit of a cult following for a character that he played in an earlier movie of his in which he played a character called St. James St. James. And a lot of people really love that character, and I think that was part of the draw for this film on the B-movie circuit. Most people wanted to see him in a movie again.
sar:
Well, that’s interesting because Cleveland Buford’s characters one of the more shocking characters than what is premised as a fairly shocking film. He kind of went balls to the wall on that film.
Jeff:
Pretty out there. Yep. So yeah, I’d say that’s the Ross Patterson classic. Now Patterson did not direct it. He was directed, sorry. He was joined by director Garrett Bra who has done a lot of movies with Ross Patterson. These are two guys that have done a lot together. Garrett Brawith has worked in lots of stuff. He’s also worked in lots of roles. He’s done everything from acting to editing. He’s even a stunt man. He also plays Bob Saggot in the Unauthorized Full House story. And so I thought that was pretty cool as well.
sar:
What a rock.
Jeff:
Yep. Now Brawith was asked about whether or not they were concerned about the offensiveness of this film. Entertainment Weekly asked him if he was worried that people would be offended. He responded, I’d be offended, but trust me, there’s no danger of that. Pretty much everyone gets it on the chin in this one. That’s how we get back to our audience by finding a way to piss off everyone at least once. You are welcome. So I thought that was an interesting little quote,
Beth:
Other tidbit about the cast. So Lynn Shaye, she who plays Eleanor Roosevelt in this film plays Helen Keller in Helen Keller versus The Night Wolves. Beautiful. They put together all these people that are fantastic actors specifically to do camp. I mean, I think that’s one of the reasons it’s so good is because it’s not like a struggling actor who just needs the paycheck doing this goofy movie. It’s people that really know how to do a kind of spoof, campy, rocky Horror Picture show is kind of like the grandparent of all those kinds of shows and show that you can have a fantastically cool cult movie.
sar:
Absolutely.
Beth:
If you make it well acted and goofy enough. I think even though some of their jokes and FDR American Badass exclamation point are a little bit goofy sometimes, but they sell it so well, you don’t even really think about how goofy it is because you’re just roaring with laughter or some other character. And I mean, the fact that you’ve got all these folks that are really good character actors too,
sar:
Which everyone will accuse Lynn Shaye of because even casual movie watching viewers probably know Lynn Shea as the protagonist of the Insidious Series from the last couple of years. She’s also Constance for my video gamers out there in The Quarry, the RPG video game that just came out a couple years ago. She is done a ton of horror. So if you find yourself a horror film buff, she’s done American Psycho. She did Penny Dreadful. She did the really bad remake of the call, but Lynn, she was not the reason why it was bad.
Jeff:
Yeah. Lynn, she has been in everything. Barry Boswick, who of course plays FDR, he’s been in almost 200 things. The actor credits in almost 200 roles. I would say his most famous has got to be Rocky Horror. What I did not know is that Barry Boswick has also an accomplished stage actor and he won a Tony for the play, the Robert Bridegroom. I did not know that. That was fun.
sar:
Really?
Jeff:
Yeah. Abraham Lincoln is played by Kevin Sorbo, who you probably know as TV’s Hercules or maybe you know him from his transition into an alt-right tool. Pretty much everyone in this movie has a decent IMDB page and there were a lot of people in it, even though it only feels like there was maybe five or six actors, there was a lot of people in it. Even the Butler, George, FDRs Butler in the White House? George is played by the guy who played Kenny on the Cosby Show.
sar:
Hell yeah.
Jeff:
Everybody here is connected. It’s unbelievable. The cast that they drew together, and it was a really, really small budget. You can tell sort of, but the number of actors they have is you would imagine that would’ve ballooned.
sar:
It gave me the impression of one of those Adam Sandler hits for people my age where Adam Sandler basically calls up his homies and says, you want to fly to Hawaii and make a fifth rom-com? And they all go, sure man. So he’s got a $50 million cast, but there’s no way he even paid half that for them because they’re all his buddies. I would think the casting for this film went something like that just for the budget alone. This movie spent 10 times its budget in just the names they had, so they either weren’t charging or something more insidious.
Jeff:
I think that’s probably a fair assumption. A rumor is that Boswick apparently took the role as FDR several days before the begin filming, so very last minute. I think the other really important thing to note, it’s an independent film, has a very low budget, but it was actually largely pushed forward into production based off of a viral movie trailer. So they actually made a trailer that was kind of like a joke trailer about what this movie might look like. It did very well. It went semi viral at the time. So much so that the Phoenix New Times reports that when the film premiered at the Phoenix Film Festival, there was a packed house. People filled the theater to see it based on having seen the trailer be interested in the concept and knowing people that were in it and wanting to see them perform this. And so I am actually a little surprised that this movie has remained as under the radar as it has because there’s lots of star power. There’s a viral element to it, and it’s fun. I mean, it’s super silly, but it’s also kind of fun. So I’m actually kind of surprised that this thing didn’t become more of a cult classic than it has because quite a few years down the road now, and I haven’t heard anyone mention this movie in a long time.
sar:
Can I give you a counterpoint to that?
Jeff:
Please.
sar:
I think part of the reason this movie doesn’t have the kind of longevity of something like the Rocky Horror Picture Show is because A, it’s got the special unit problem of very its time humor that is sometimes super uncomfortable to watch now, which makes it interesting fodder for our show in so far as we can kind of pick a park and mock, which jokes don’t land anymore. But if you’re sitting through an hour and a half of that, I know why you wouldn’t enjoy it. I don’t think I’m very pearl and even I was a little bit uncomfortable at some of the being made in the film. So I think one, it’s got the special unit problem, two memes just as an ephemeral cultural item, don’t age well.
Jeff:
Right?
sar:
So something like Rocky Horror, I think surpasses being called a meme because it was kind of, and Beth can correct me on this, it was kind of encapsulating a cultural moment in greater film, whereas something like FDR American Badass Exclamation Point isn’t really capturing a mood so much as capturing a very specific subset of chronically online people. And I think it would do extremely well with chronically online people with 10-year-old humor, 10 years ago old, not 10-year-old. Well, maybe both
Jeff:
Both. Both.
Beth:
Disability community would love it if they had heard of it too, because I think about when I was introduced to a great series of videos from the Mickey Faust Club, these disabled performers in Florida, and one of the videos is called Annie Dearest. It is a parody of Helen Keller’s story, but the parody part is Annie Sullivan is evil, like the mother in mommy…
Jeff:
Like the horror movie
Beth:
Like the mommy dearest.
sar:
Oh, okay. So the joke is that she’s an awful person, right?
Beth:
So I think that if people come to it with knowledge that this is not meant to hurt anybody’s feelings, and I think all the characters are pretty empowered and it’s nice to have a film of FDR represented where he’s seen in his wheelchair. And so I just wonder why we haven’t gotten a bunch more interest in it in the disability community…
sar:
Of FDR with Rocket launching wheelchairs more there be more films of FDR with a rocket launching wheelchair.
Jeff:
More of this. So I think Beth, your tapping into something important that I want to draw attention to. So obviously we have our opinions of this movie, but there are people who are more legitimate, well, not more legitimate than Beth, but more legitimate than Jeff and Sarah in terms of our opinions on media culture. And these are of course the critical reviews, the reviewers that have put stuff out. And while the movie actually does fairly well with critical reviewers, particularly in the nerdy sort of seamster world, the sort of B film circuit, very rarely is disability actually mentioned at all in these reviews. That isn’t typically the focus. So for instance, LB Lu Baky writing for Dead Entertainment says the good everything, the characters, the humor, the dialogue, and the over the top action sequences props through Ross Patterson, one of the best indie filmmakers today, John Ambrose writing for Good News now also agrees FDR R America Badass, no exclamation mark for shame is a funny, subversive, irreverent comedy that has a surprisingly good cast.
But this is different than the other reviews that I tended to find when I was digging through. So some of the internet commentary about this film does actually really latch onto this question of disability. So for instance, on Reddit, one Reddit user commented on the movie, said, the shriveled up polio legs will live forever red Free in my mind, another Reddit user commented, I usually don’t go to the bar because fuck that shit. But the one time I did, I was accosted by some Jag off who vehemently unironically insisted that this movie is amazing. Never going to bars again. Apparently not a fan. Not a fan of. This is the divisive rhetoric of today. This is where we’re at nowadays. Back in the early twenties times,
sar:
You can tell what team someone is on by their vehement take on FDR: American Badass.
Jeff:
I definitely now from anytime I’m at a bar, I’m going to accost every single person and only talking about FDR American Badass.
sar:
Grab the microphone, it’s a karaoke bar: Look, I’m just doing a straw poll. I need to know your opinion.
Jeff:
FDR: American Badass,
Beth:
Bring in a VCR or a DVD player to the bar, attach to play it on stage.
Jeff:
Yeah, put the LCD projector on my chair. Just project it everywhere. I’m everywhere I go constantly projecting this film.
sar:
I’m actually not surprised that they’re getting behe kind of extraordinarily biased or polarized arguments about this. Because going back to the other point, if you’re like a huge B film buff or you went to film school or your school made you do a number of film courses, shout out to Laurier or you’re big into the spoof scene, I feel like you would really get something out of this kind of b-movie love letter to B movies and kind of like some of the other films we had this season, it is totally unconcerned. If you are not their core audience, they don’t give a fuck if you don’t like it. They don’t even want wide release release for this really. So it’s kind of promoting its own cultural dissonance in that I think a lot of the people who would shout in a bar, oh my God, I love the Werewolf World War II film. That’s the reaction they’re cultivating. They want people to start arguing with that guy,
Jeff:
Right.
Beth:
I want to bring up the year too, so, promo for my new book, which you can get for free as an ebook: Disabled People Transforming Media Culture for a More Inclusive World. One of the people I interviewed for that book was Teal Sheer who has a web series on YouTube called My Gimpy Life. She’d be a great person for your podcast
Jeff:
If you’re listening, come on the show.
Beth:
The timing of things became very interesting to me when I was writing this book because Teal, I consider kind of a pioneer and these kind of disability focused series, but it was in the kind of early years of YouTube and in fact that social media is how she got funding. She self-funded a pilot episode and her episodes were only 10 or 12 minutes, sometimes only five or seven, and then she put it out on Twitter and I think her major donor, and she did GoFundMe and stuff like that. Kickstarter, I think it was Kickstarter or not GoFundMe. But anyway, so she found a major part of her funding from, he might’ve been Canadian actually, somebody who developed an app or an algorithm I think to late money, what’s it called? From Canadian dollars to US dollars.
Jeff:
Oh, auto exchange.
Beth:
Auto Exchange thing. He wrote the algorithm for it. So that even shows us how plugged in the community is because they don’t know what’s coming later. So they still think people are going to be going to the movies and I see this as something that could be streaming on your paid YouTube channel subscription or anywhere like that. And the same with what Teal was doing. She was almost too early writing Netflix saying you should put this on your platform. A lot of these streaming platforms claim to have disability content, but they aren’t out there grabbing up the stuff that’s already been made. This would be like Teal series that could have been, if you like this, you will like this. So these kinds of things are media artifacts that are still being pushed to the side, and I think it’s because of Ableism because
sar:
Right. Jeff, how many of our movies this semester have been on Netflix? None.
Jeff:
I don’t think. Netflix? No. Oh no, we don’t go to Netflix.
Hey guys, Jeff’s here, editors don’t. We absolutely have done a Netflix movie this year, the Hill. So there is one film we’ve done this year that was on Netflix.
We’re hanging out in Tubie, my friends. That’s where we hang out.
Beth:
Crackle?
Jeff:
Crackle, baby.
sar:
What she’s saying, if you have to go to totally off brand platforms to even have a chance at finding this comment in your scroll marathon, maybe that’s saying something about what we’re funding or greenlighting or choosing to preserve or not preserve in our film history or what we think is film history. How many films, Beth, are disability related that are currently greenlit on the Blacklist trivia question? I don’t know the answer, but I would be thrilled to hear your take for viewers at home, the Blacklist is a screenplay list. I don’t remember who does it. Jeff can do a Google for that, but every year they write out the most promising screenplays and promising is never translated to mean going to be critically acclaimed. It’s the most people show interest in green lighting this, and these are usually the films that the Amazon studios and Netflix and Hulu pickup because they’re easy sell. I think that might have a relationship to how many disabled films are getting green lit vis a vis how many of them are ending up on the blacklist
Beth:
And also the kind of problems Hollywood has with actually letting a disabled person be in control of their content. That’s true. I know disabled filmmakers who have brilliant ideas, they even have scripts they’ve written, but they’re not going to give away. They’re not going to sell their script to some bozo in Hollywood who’s going to strip it clean of all the disability
Content, not higher disabled actor. I mean, there is more of a actors now and writers are now at least putting a clause into some of their scripts that they will only let you film it if you use a disabled actor for part. But I don’t know, I think Hollywood has lost so much money because of the pandemic. We’re talking billions and billions and billions of dollars that they were really poised to start having more disability representation. I actually gave a talk to the Lionsgate film studio in January of 2020 and they were so proud of what they were going to be doing. They had the movie run that was coming out, which has a main character who’s an actual wheelchair user, and it’s like a two person kind of thriller. And so she carried the whole movie and she was new to being, I think it was her first film anyway, it was like a Columbia University student in New York and it’s really good.
But I think the last movie I saw in a theater was that, and Crip Camp. I saw Crip camp at the Museum of Modern Art Theater, and I saw Run in a little tiny theater that Lionsgate has in Manhattan. I took my friend Emily Ladau to it because a wheelchair user and writes about disability and media sometimes. And so we watched it and gave them feedback and also Emily’s a journalist and we had trouble with them because when I asked that somebody uses a wheelchair come with me, not my disability, I said, she’s also a journalist and would love to interview the young woman who is the star of the show or the movie. And she used to be editor for Rooted in Rights and some other publications that were more disability focused. And literally they were like, oh no, we want to get it out in mainstream publications. And I’m like, this has been a problem for the promotion of film content for a long time too, is they don’t see disability publications as resonant with the society, which I think is totally opposite of what they should be doing. They should be putting all the articles that they want written by disabled people. Then you’re going to get the disability audience. But one last example from how, because my organization, the Global Alliance for Disability and Media Entertainment, we’d done some consulting up until the pandemic through everything for a loop. And that’s why I ended up being a speaker to the Lionsgate movie studio, the people that worked there because they had reached out and we were reading some of the scripts and stuff. The first problem was they would give us a script to read after they’d shot us the movie. Excellent, perfect. So that was a problem. And so we watched Run long after they, we saw a director’s cut, I think. Anyway, and so Emily and I had some suggestions. The one good thing was we got them to change the poster. We said, this is going to be super offensive.
Jeff:
Perfect. Oh no. Are you able to share what the original poster was?
Beth:
I don’t see why not. The original poster. It’s a very good thriller, so they’re trying to go for some kind of Hitchcockian poster and they made the stairwell look like a spine.
Jeff:
Oh, classic. Yeah. Yeah.
sar:
Nice.
Jeff:
That’s quite the trope.
Beth:
Emily were just like, no. And there was something they did at the end of the film that I won’t spoil for you.
Jeff:
Yeah, big spoiler on that one.
Beth:
Yeah.
sar:
Well, if I could apply you with theory for a second, do you think that especially around it got my mind going when you were saying that by the time they had showed you as a disability consultant, a film or an image or I dunno, clips from the motion picture. It was already between 60 to 80% done. And that struck me as very similar to the stuff they’re doing at the UK labs around schizophrenia research in so far as the LXP users that they have do consultations, and this is kind of picking up speed in America, but not anywhere to the extent it’s being used at the NIM initiative at the uk. They would consult them so late in the process of these huge implementations that it came off as kind of a convenient performative politeness act like, Hey, we’ve already pretty much implemented this, but could we get your sign off really quick?
And not at any part of the initial development process where they could have asked things like, Hey schizophrenics, do you think any part of this program might be feasibly helpful to you? Why or why not? It just does not seem to occur to any of these experts. Why don’t we just ask them between steps one to five instead of step 2 72 80, and then in the instance that they do get feedback that is less than favorable, they’ll be like, well, I mean fuck disabled people. They don’t know anyway. They’re not going to like anything we produce
Jeff:
And it’s not for them, right?
sar:
It feels like such an easy solution when you pick up a blacklist script, just have a consulting table right then and there. As soon as we pick the script and have people there with lived experience who are like, Hey, I’m going to tell you why that’s problematic and you can do what that information, what you will. The downside is that would make a podcast Jeff’s completely irrelevant impossible. Because now through that consultation process, we have nothing left to mock.
Jeff:
We’re not making movies like FDR American Badass,
sar:
But I thought that that was a really interesting similarity between kind of how things get developed and produced in Hollywood studios and how research disseminates in especially psychology, mental health, sociological trends, big UK publications.
Jeff:
I think what you’re really, that line that you’re kind of drawn here, that’s a really important one for us to hold on to is this notion that in the same way that I think academic research is predominantly done on and about disabled people and is being produced for non-disabled people, for other academics that are not disabled. I think so too. In the film world, I don’t know that Hollywood perceives disabled people as viable audience members, so they’re not making any of these films for us. They’re making it for what they perceive to be the buying audience. And so it’s like, well, yeah, so why are there so many inspiration porns? Why there’s so many horror disabled character? Well, because that’s what the non-disabled audience, I don’t want to say enjoys, but it animates the audience, the non-disabled audience member to be, oh, I feel sad for this disabled kid.
sar:
Or see, I would even contest that though, because every time I watch a mental illness movie, I get 30 people in my inbox asking, Hey, was this accurate? So they do want to know how much of
Jeff:
It is truthful. The audience does. I don’t disagree with that, but I don’t know that they’re getting that deep into it, strangers.
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast? Go on to our website, invalid culture.com, submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie, have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, invalid culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the trash. Be sure to tune in again next week for part two where we will start to dig into the movie and find out whether or not it wins. The coveted Jerry Lewis seal of approval
[punk theme song plays, Mvll Crimes song “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet”]
Arguing with strangers on the internet. Everyone is wrong. I just haven’t told them yet.
Transcript – Part 2
Jeff:
You are listening to Invalid Culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture, adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid.
[Punk theme song, Mvll Crimes’ “Arguing with Strangers” plays to start the episode]
sar:
Going out today because I’m feeling too upset arguing with strangers on the internet. And I’m winning.
Jeff:
I’m winning. Welcome back to another thrilling episode of Invalid Culture, part two of FDR American Badass joined as always by co-hosts Sarah Cur and a media expert scholar all round. Amazing person. Beth Hayward here again, and I’m sure that we all would like to talk a little bit about the election, but I think we should move forward because we have to talk about a very deep film, which is of course FDR, American Badass. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the plot here. So for those of you who have not watched this film before, FDR American Badass begins with Franklin Delano Roosevelt out hunting with some friends when they’re attacked by a Roman werewolf common in the United States. Apparently FDR manages to kill the werewolf, but not before being bitten. Unlike the fabricated world of Teen Wolf where a werewolf fight turns you into a werewolf.
This historically accurate film explains that werewolf fights, in fact, have stricken FDRs legs with polio leaving them as shriveled floppy legs that quiver like meat Jello, FDR relieved that his penis still works, but devastated by his inability to walk meets a young disabled boy who inspires him to fight back against the polio and run for president of the United States. So I want to pick up where we left off there, Beth talking a little bit about this pivotal scene. So FDR is in bed and he’s upset about, needed a wheelchair, and then this Tim character comes in, which is usually sort of a point of mockery, often a terrible character. The sad, pitiful disabled child. They sort of vert this though, right?
Beth:
Definitely. I think I just love that scene because the child is basically as a wheelchair using child. He’s basically guiding the president forward in his journey, is now a disabled man and hopefully a disabled president because he wants to run it’s genius. And here, let me little fact background is that when Kenneth Branagh did this, a movie where he played FDR, that was from 2009 or something, Teal Sherer who was in that movie, she was in a disabled dance group in college that performed and then they saw that she wanted to be an actor. So she got hired to teach Kenneth Branagh how to use a wheelchair for his role as FDR in the non spoof movie of FDR non spoof.
Jeff:
Amazing
Beth:
My info for that Anyway, but I just found it, this was such a great kind of twist to make the disabled child, the powerful one in that relationship, the one with all the knowledge and then the newly disabled man who’s a governor of state like accepts that knowledge from him and says, okay, this is what we’re going to do. And then the secretary finds his hot dog legs sexy. So
Jeff:
Right, right.
Beth:
It’s all good. I mean, this should be on Netflix. It should be, and I think back to your point Sarah too, about whether people are cringing through it. I think if going into it and Netflix and some of the other ones have that little two sentences about it or you can watch the trailer or whatever, I think people that are into that kind of comedy, they can’t find it because they don’t know about it on Crackle or wherever. But if it was on one of the major streaming platforms, then people that love that could see this different disability kind of discourse where this is an empowered president basically because of his wheelchair and not before. I’m not talking about when he under understands that he can still be president as someone who uses a wheelchair. That is a really empowering statement that probably only a parody could really address because in real life, like we talked about, he hid his wheelchair at all times.
Jeff:
Right. Which was not even a part of this discussion. Right? See?
sar:
But he wouldn’t have hit it if it was the Delano wheelchair.
Jeff:
Right? It was the Delano 2000.
sar:
I would’ve to every press conference, look at this, this is what you’re up against.
Beth:
Have you seen the real flamethrower wheelchair that exist?
Jeff:
I’m a very big fan, the real ones. Did you say there are wheelchairs that people made flamethrowers for? Yes,
sar:
Oh my God!
Jeff:
It’s amazing. Very cool.
Beth:
It has like tractor wheels.
Jeff:
Yeah. Tank Tracks.
Beth:
They’re all-terrain, wheelchair, and someone attached a flamethrowers.
sar:
Okay if we are talking about act ones, I actually really love that Beth brought up the empowerment angle because this movie, for everything that I could fault it for actually does that bit really well. Disability is a total non-issue in the way that sexism and racism and homophobia are just total non-issues and shifts,
Jeff:
Also non-issues
sar:
In this alternative universe where he jumps into that wicker chair and no one gives a shit and he didn’t even really seem to give a shit apart from waking up in the hospital and asking if his dick still worked.
Jeff:
That was the primary concern.
sar:
Beyond that, he was like, alright, I’m fine, whatever, let’s get in the chair and go.
Beth:
And I think that actually may be part of the empowerment of a person, the actual person of FDR who was raised as a wealthy person and so does not see any problem he can’t handle because he was raised as very, and I think he has even a regal look with that extended cigarette holder that he used in real life. So I think part of it is also the personality of someone who was raised in wealth and kind of knows, doesn’t know that they can’t do anything they want. And for this case that’s in particular because I see that a lot with people talking about white privilege and other areas of privilege, but we don’t talk about just economic privilege that sometimes a disabled person might have too. Absolutely. And so that’s not bad for FDR to be portrayed this way. And it’s not even bad that he might’ve been liked that way in real life because somebody with white privilege and wealth in the 1930s still might’ve been knocked down by suddenly having polio and not being able to move forward with their political career. And the real FDR did not do that. He embraced that and apparently he had no problem interpersonally, interpersonally with everybody who interacted with him and came to the White House. He was in his wheelchair. Did they
sar:
Even show scenes of him in the plantation south? And I thought it was kind of unrealistic that nobody was commenting at all on his wheelchair even when they got into the hot tub. And I was like, okay. Right.
Jeff:
How did they get in that hot tub?
sar:
Yeah, right. Fine. Now that you’ve added the regality angle and the additional context of it honestly would not have occurred to him that people would make fun of him for that or that they would think that he was incapable of doing something. I think it adds an extra layer to some of those scenes where I was kind of sitting there outside of context going like, why aren’t we talking about this?
Jeff:
Right? Yeah. I think it’s probably unintentionally clever. I don’t know that they were necessarily thinking about that when they made the film, but it does actually land for illiterate in some ways. Right.
Beth:
The hot tub is fantastic because right before you get to that scene where Cleon is introduced,
Jeff:
Well, let’s do that because that’s our next step. So we’ll start there. We’ll come back to it
sar:
Oh is this act 2?
Jeff:
Yeah. I didn’t know how to cut this up. So this is how I cut it up. Okay. So back to the story. So FDR goes on a cross east coast of the United States tour to meet with working class folk and learn about the impacts of the Great Depression. On his travels, FDR will then meet up with a southern gentleman and re pube congressman named Cleon Bay Bridge, Beford, who was also bit by a werewolf and survived. They’ve become fast friends sharing meals and his wife with Beauford promising to help secure FDA’s victory in the coming election. A victory that is celebrated by the entire family, active foolishly ud, some vase pooping. Yeah, this is where it’s very much that sort of 13-year-old humor. Meanwhile, in Europe, werewolf Hitler, werewolf Mussolini and Werewolf Hirohito are screaming to take down America. The plan is simple, poison alcohol with werewolf blood through and then through the Italian mafia bootleggers, this will make you into a vampire. So they’re poison in the water with blood, you drink the blood, you become a werewolf. And now America has been colonized by the werewolves, I suppose.
Beth:
I thought they were only poisoning through the liquor.
Jeff:
Yeah, through the alcohol. Yeah. FDR isn’t going to let this happen. Of course, he is outfitted with Einstein’s Gallo, 2000 a rocket launcher machine, gun wheelchair being the second weapon read wheelchair that appears this season on invalid culture. Nice. Now, Sarah, what is the favorite of the weaponized wheelchairs? You team Delano 2000 or are you team Mr. Do legs
sar:
And I’m using a lot of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon references just because the House of the Dragon finale was really recently, but it kind of gave Targaron versus Lannister, those two chairs. The Lannister chair is definitely the Delano chair. It’s gold. It’s got the insets, it’s got multi-port exits for the rocket launchers. You can actually see him load it at one point, which Mr. No Legs didn’t bother with. Mr. No Legs has more of the proletarian special, which I like to think is more rugged because the message, the social message. But I think I’d have to go with the Lannister, obviously.
Jeff:
Yeah, you’re a Delano 2000 fan. Yeah, fair enough.
Beth:
Yeah, I think the other thing that’s interesting is so Warm Springs was a real place that he actually bought FDR actually bought it. He found this, it’s in Georgia. He found the warm springs so helpful to his polio.
sar:
Can you do that? Can you just buy regions?
Jeff:
You can if you’re a Roosevelt.
Beth:
No Warm Springs…it’s like a spring place.
sar:
Like a state?
Beth:
Yeah, or more just like a springs place. I went to a state park that had springs. So this is him just buying a farm that he’s putting, not a farm, but buying something that was already used for the warm springs that he could afford to keep running. And of course people, a lot of people had polio starting in the twenties through the fifties till the vaccines. So it would be a place where everybody that had polio could come and you go and there’s actually a warm springs picture of him in a wheelchair where he’s talking to a little girl who’s standing next to her. I can’t remember if she had braces or not on her legs. But anyway, so I mean that’s like campy gold to take this actual resort and distill it down to being a hot tub. Also financial assist because you don’t have to go film anywhere outside. They probably need somebody who actually owned that. So I think that’s super interesting.
sar:
That’s a cool piece of context.
Beth:
I think we have to Google it, but I think one of the first things he did when he became president was throwing out prohibition and suddenly alcohol was legal. So that was defeating the werewolf Nazis by doing that.
sar:
That’s right.
Jeff:
I will say so in the description on the box, they talk about right off the rip about how FDR ends the great depression and prohibition, but those actually were barely parts of this movie. That’s the first 20 minutes, maybe not even 20 minutes, they just sort of brush it aside. I honestly think they should have spent more time talking about that little bit of his history.
sar:
We are in misalignment here. I think if your team Mussolini Hirohito, my man Hitler, the werewolves of course, that was actually central to their plan of taking over America. The alcohol only worked because it was prohibited in America. So they controlled all the streams of entry, which is how they were poisoning millions and millions of people at once. And then one of the throwaway jokes is that nobody actually drank the sake because it was for women and sissies.
Jeff:
But I don’t think that we really heard doubt. There could have been this moment of FDR being like, I know the way to stop this. I’m going to legalize alcohol again. That was just not really addressed. But it’s like that would’ve been a moment. I think that could have tied back to the history to be like, oh, remember when he did this? This is why he did it. He did it because of the werewolves, which with a fly. But for a non-American literate audience, maybe not as obvious. Now I do need to ask Cleveland Bay Bridge. Buford is not a real person, correct?
Beth:
I don’t think so.
Jeff:
I don’t believe that is a real congressman. I looked everywhere. Please, if I’m wrong, Americans let me know. I do not believe Cleveland porridge. Buford is a real person. I think that was made up American.
sar:
Is there a CBB Congressman and they just changed the names?
Jeff:
I don’t believe so. I think this was just fully made out by belief.
sar:
Composite Character?
Jeff:
Yeah, composite of all sort of southern Republicans. Maybe.
Beth:
If he did go to Georgia, he’s not going to meet many Democrats back then.
Jeff:
Yeah, no,
Beth:
Except for black people who loved FDR because he helped get them to work too. His policies to get the US out of depression, out of the Great Depression included all people, all citizens,
Jeff:
Right? Yeah.
sar:
Was that why there were so many scenes with the random black basketball? He was invited to voting night and he was playing basketball in a ton of scenes that he really had no business being in. And the Southerners, I think called him their slave. But FDR himself never refers to him that way. He seems to just be chill with the presence.
Jeff:
I think it was the other way. I think that the Northerners were like, he’s a slave. And then there was a huge fight over that. And then the joke reveal is that he’s not. He works there. He’s educated that it was actually the Northerners that had sort of the wrong idea or the racist understanding, I think was sort of the joke that they tried to land. But this is the thing, unless it’s a dick joke, they struggle mightily to land other jokes. They really can only land sex jokes and drug jokes. In my opinion, I don’t know that a lot of the other people landed in many ways. So after foiling the Italian mafia with his tricked out wheelchair, FDR is left to make a decision about how best to repay the fascists in Europe and Japan. Meeting with in Churchill, FDR explains his reservations for getting directly involved in the conflict.
He explains that the American people just won’t stand for it. FDR has an affair with the secretary for whatever reason. I guess that’s a shout out to the real FDR. There’s the sex scene with the ketchup up of mustard. This then leads to a barely returned to B plot where FDR and LNR are having a bit of a lover spat after learning that the access forces are taking over Europe and getting high with the ghost of Lincoln. FDR decides it is time for the US get involved in the war. Pearl Harbor never happened. You heard here first. This will lead to our thrilling conclusion in which FDR takes his Delano 2000 Airborne. He attacks Europe, conveniently killing Hitler and Mussolini were on the front lines of the battle, which is of course, as we know in exactly how World War II ended.
sar:
Well, Churchill and FDR were also on the front lines. So they had the medieval style, the big homies right up there at the front. Bannerman.
Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s exactly what happened. You’re welcome troops. Thank you for your service. Now that’s our movie in a nutshell. Those of you who have listened to this podcast before will know that we have a fully rigorous peer reviewed, completely scientific rating system, which we call the Inval Culture Scale, which we use to determine whether or not this film passes muster. Now, as you know, we played this game a little bit like golf. The lower the score, the better the film is. Okay, first up, on a scale of one to five, with five being the least accurate, how accurately does this film portray disability?
Beth:
I say two just because of the empowerment scenario. I mean, it’s a spoof, but this is a wheelchair user in almost every scene after he gets polio from the werewolf that he is using his wheelchair as part of his life and it’s no big deal. After he decides and then he gets tricked out by Einstein, and now it’s a way to win World War ii. So even though it’s a spoof, it’s a spoof of empowerment, not a spoof of inspiration porn or ableism.
sar:
I agreed with Beth. I also went with two, and a lot of it was for the empowerment reason. I like to put this in contention like I did earlier with special unit, which was a film that was also ostensibly a parody, but we couldn’t stop talking about how it was laughing at the disabled people instead of laughing with the disabled people. And I think contrary wise, this film does a pretty good job. One of the reviewers said of laughing at everyone who appears, including the disabled individual. It was almost a total non-issue that he was a wheelchair user and they actually create boons for him as a result of having the disability. So I felt two was fair.
Jeff:
Yeah. Alright, well we are in copacetic alignment here. I also gave it a two for many of the same reasons I took Microsoft. I think the over-reliance on does my penis work? I mean, that’s super trope, I would say for sure. And yeah, I’d say it’s a two. I will say though, I want this on record, if this was a question of how accurately does this film portray werewolves, I would give this movie a Bloody five. It is wrong in every way about werewolves in every way, how werewolves work. I mean, there’s no reference to the moon. The Nazis and the fascist werewolves are always werewolves. They don’t transition back to humans. I’m very upset about this. So two on disability, five on werewolves. Okay. Scale of one to five, with five being the hardest, how hard was it to get through this film?
Beth:
One, it was a blast as a viewing experience. You don’t have to use many parts of your brain, but it’s like good comedy and every little tidbit kept me going, when are they going to spin the Batman, the bat cave presidential seal again? And it moves really fast. So the comedy, they don’t stick with one bit for a long time and milk it forever. So I think the quick pace helped with of the comedy that might’ve been a little bit goofy. And also the good acting. You really, I was bored when the werewolves were on the screen, so that would be the only thing that I would’ve cut back time on. I didn’t care about them. I wanted to see what FDR and his team were going to do, but I really felt like it was a fun watch. That’s why I wanted to get out there so more people can know about it.
sar:
I’m in total disagreement with that. We’re in agreement on the score. I also gave it a one, but the werewolf scenes were my favorite scenes regardless of historical accuracy in either the werewolf or the humans for which they were based. I had a lot of fun, and I dunno if that means I’m a secret fascist or I’m a Nazi or something. But I think some of the most fun scenes in the film was the kind of outright mocking of totalitarianism and the bone headedness of their schemes.
Beth:
Yeah, yeah. All for that. I’m all for that.
sar:
Oh yeah. There was a bit they kept doing where as soon as an assistant would finish helping one of the leaders, they would shoot them in the head and get another assistant, which feels very reminiscent of kind of Putin’s Russia right now. So something’s never changed. I love those, but I tend to parody of political systems more than I like Scatological humor and dick jokes. Those really just don’t land for me. So I found a lot of this film. I was petting Jeff’s dogs. I was kind of absentmindedly looking at the screen, but I had enough fun with it and I totally agree with it. Agree with you about the pacing. It was quick. So one,
Beth:
Yeah, I think the thing, I’m not a supporter of Nazi werewolves or ves or Mussolini werewolves, but for me, I guess I’m more of a vampire girl. Werewolf never be for me. Oh, you needed to see the Lincoln movie. I was wondering. It came out the same year.
Jeff:
Yeah, this was all connected.
Beth:
I wondered if it was referencing when they kept talking about what Abraham Lincoln did, they were referencing
sar:
It’s an AU.
Beth:
I saw that one, but it’s not a parody. It’s an actual
Jeff:
Well sort of, yeah.
sar:
Oh, Lincoln was canonically a vampire.
Beth:
No, Vampire killer. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer.
Jeff:
Vampire killer. Yeah, he killed the vampires Sarah. He was on the side of justice.
Beth:
They would reference Abraham Lincoln. All I could think of was that movie. And I was like, but that was vampires.
Jeff:
Yeah. So this movie of course comes out when there’s this whole revisionist history thing happening in movies and books.
sar:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Jeff:
Exactly. It’s the exact same type as all that, right?
sar:
Oh my God,
Jeff:
I think they were definitely nodding. So I’m going to be the outlier on this one. I gave it a three. And this is deeply personal to me. This is not actually, it’s the werewolf thing again. It’s the werewolf thing again. No. So when I watched this, I was really amped up to watch this. I thought I was going to really, really enjoy it. And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I did find the level of the humor really got tired fast for me
That it was just sort of the same thing over and over again. And I’m like, I understand why this is probably funny if you’re half wasted and you’re with your bunch of friends and you’re filming this thing together. And it’s just like, wouldn’t it be funny if these historic figures that are well regarded sort of historical figures are these sort of plotty mouth, whatever. I’m not saying you can’t do that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy that, but I found it was just a little thin. I thought it was going to give me a little more. So I thought the worst film I’ve ever seen, I mean there are way worse films that I’ve watched for this stupid podcast, but I actually found myself enjoying some of the other movies that we watched this season more where I was a little bit watching. I was checking my watch toward the end of this one.
Beth:
Was there any difference between when you watched it back when I sent it to you?
Jeff:
Yeah. I liked it more the first time I saw it, but it was like 10 years ago. I was a baby back then.
sar:
He’s a different person now.
Jeff:
I’m much more sophisticated now that you see I’m a real…I’m the eldest boy now.
sar:
Oh, here we go, Kendall.
Jeff:
Okay, so my first little favorite question, on a scale of one to five, with five being the maximum, how often did you laugh at things that were not supposed to be funny?
Beth:
Yeah, I think that for me, I rarely because I thought everything was meant to be funny. So that’s why I gave it a one. So when I interpret this as when humor was not intended was that it was directed at something that it shouldn’t have been directed at. So I’m probably misinterpreting the question like you said, you that’s a totally valid interpretation.
Jeff:
That’s exactly what we’re asking.
Beth:
This nonstop comedy, what I wouldn’t say was nonstop laughing, but I did chuckle at certain things because it’d been so long since I saw it that it was basically a first viewing for me. And so all the cleverness I think works really well on the first viewing, but you don’t need to watch it a second time.
sar:
No, not necessary.
Beth:
So that’s why I put a one because I just felt like everything was planned. And even some of the references that maybe a Canadian wouldn’t get the hot tub in place of Warm Springs resort, that kind of fun stuff, or some people might not know what the spinning thing was from. So you’ve had me at spinning bat cave presidential White House. It was just so nostalgic for me for a lot of the kind of old goofy boobies that America used to have because I think in addition to being this spoof for parody, it’s also kind of part of the B movie genre that was really big. And in the thirties, forties and fifties. And also movies were really big in the Great Depression because
Jeff:
Right, huge.
Beth:
They cost 5 cents. And so if you could scrape up five pennies, you could go probably into an air conditioning environment and watch movies all day for 5 cents. So there was that B movie level of quality that I just thought was there, and that was why I was going to give it the one because
sar:
I think that’s a great answer. I agreed with you, but I was coming from the opposite spectrum. Like you said, I am really not the target audience for this film. I wasn’t alive when any of this happened. I don’t know anyone who was alive when any of this happened. I know basically nothing about American history. I have no relationship really to American politics pre-Obama. So 2012, I’m two years out of high school at that point. I think that’s when I started getting into Obama. But that’s my cultural touchpoint for any kind of relationship with American politics. So this film is really not for me in any way. And I still found myself enjoying it, but I don’t think enjoying it for a lot of the more clever references. When Beth was talking about the cigarette that I thought was, because I’ve seen it on people like Groucho Marx or these forties feminist figureheads from historical films.
I thought it was mocking him. I didn’t know about his background. I didn’t really get the hot tub scene. I found the totalitarian jokes kind of funny, but highbrow humor here was really lost on me. The other problem with this film, and I don’t even think that me not being the target audience was a problem necessarily, but it does impact my score. It had a really absurd jokes per minute in the screenplay, which is something we talked about with special unit where if you’re throwing enough jokes per minute at the wall, something’s going to land. But it’s also going to frustrate the audience if too many of them, and I think I’m speaking for Jeff A. Little bit here. We were both a little frustrated by the end of the film at how many in a row weren’t landing. So that’s kind of the core dice roll of putting that many jokes into a screenplay. Right? So one.
Jeff:
Yeah, again, I think we’re all aligned on this one. I also gave it a one I laughed, and when I did it was at things that were obviously intended to be funny. They were clearly trying to get a laugh out of these things. There wasn’t really any moments where I saw something that was just so absurd or so silly that was not intended to be, I mean, that the entire thing is intended to be silly. And so in some ways they’re kind of protected a little bit, I think, which is interesting. Last, but certainly not least, on a scale of one to five, with five being the most, how many steps back has this film put disabled people?
Beth:
Since I was watching it kind of with fresh eyes, I don’t think it puts disabled people back at all. So I gave it a one. Yeah, I could have done without the Scatological stuff or whatever, but I actually think the sexual content is really important because FDR is presented as a sexual being. And for most of the movie, he is a wheelchair user. So in a lot of sense they hit on truth and parody because they were just trying to break all the tropes. They ended up making this movie that did not pander, did not have pity, did not do anything insulting because I could see to disabled people,
sar:
I’m going to go right in the middle with 2.5. I think on its face, there is not anything really disastrously wrong with this film. And I do really agree, and I said to Beth earlier that I really like the empowerment take this film has where it almost gives you this shit’s creek alternate universe of what if nobody gave a fuck about wheelchairs kind of thing. And it does kind of hit that home. What I think the problem is, which is kind of related, you can’t talk about this film without talking about special unit because it’s on a different side of the spectrum with what both these films were trying to achieve as satirical vehicles for disability culture. I think if this became a kind of symbol of disability on film, that would be a problem because it’s kind of defined by nonstory making complete misunderstandings of history and stupid lowbrow jokes that people will think, oh, that’s what disabled people understand and think is funny. And I don’t think that’s what they tried to do, but if you make this film emblematic, that is what people are going to take away from it. In the same way that, and I’m going to bang my drum on this a little bit here. When a Beautiful Mind became emblematic, we started associating traits with that film, with traits of mental disability in general. Right now, swap out a Beautiful Mind for FDR American Badass. I think that would be disappointing at best. 2.5.
Jeff:
Yeah. Fair. Yeah. So I’m right in the middle of you guys. I’m going to give it a two. I’ve waffled a little bit between 2.5 or 1.5 and two. I think that light, Beth mentioned disability is such a non-factor in this film that I kind of love that and in a way that I don’t think that they were intentionally ignoring it by any means. It wasn’t your typical same old joke like, oh, he can’t walk. That wasn’t sort of the ongoing low hanging fruit joke. Having said that, I was really struck by the volume of comments online about polio legs and about specifically his polio legs in people that were commented on the film. And so clearly that polio legs, they landed with people. And I think it landed in a way that the center of that joke was look at how gross they are and look at how creepy it is. And then that becomes sort of the root of the sexual scene with the ketchup of mustard in that it’s this grosso humor is sort of what they’re going for. And so I’m like I, you’re right up against the line there. I think you’re right up on the line in that, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it, but I am saying that this does continue a long line of this idea of disabled bodies are gross in some way, but I think that’s actually a relatively minor sin in a movie that got werewolves so wrong, so, so wrong. We’re back to the werewolves guys not letting it go.
sar:
We also have to underline if we’re going to do parody, it’s not fair to say for a whole group of people that’s not funny or that didn’t hit because when we were talking about special unit, we agreed, there is a group that thinks this movie is very funny and they are a disabled audience. That group is not us, but they’re out there.
Jeff:
And I think this movie is the exact same. I think there’s a large group of people that I might not say this is the best movie I’ve ever seen, but I think based on our scale, this movie is actually pretty good. And if we tabulate our total drum roll, FDR, American Badass on the Invalid Culture Scale gets a 19.5, which puts it at the high end of the second top of the list Regrets of I have a few, which seems pretty fair.
sar:
Yeah, I think that worked out. I think it’s in no way a serial offender. It makes all the same couple mistakes over and over and over again.
Jeff:
Right? Yeah. And even if they’re, I don’t know that they’re necessarily mistakes. It’s true.
Beth:
Yeah. One thing I would add is the lack of authenticity. I mean, I think we haven’t talked about that, but none of your questions got that. So if had one more question, of course. Not that I know of. Anybody involved with this production had a disability.
Jeff:
Yeah
Beth:
Why I recommend people watch things like My Gimpy life or any dearest, which you can find on YouTube, both of them, because then you see comedy coming from the disability community, which it would be good for people to have kind of contrast. I think this is a very funny movie. They’re not intending any harm toward disabled people and they’re playing with tropes that need to be crushed about disability. But still, I think it would’ve been a different film. And so now we just need a disabled crew to remake this movie. Yeah, make a Broadway show. Broadway show with songs.
Jeff:
Yeah. I would honestly…
Beth:
Off Broadway show…with songs.
Jeff:
put Zach Anner in this. I would love to see what someone like Zach Anner would do with this film. So yeah, Ross Patterson, if you’re watching, get Zach Anner got a couple other cool dudes. You could still be Buford, that’s fine. But then let’s do it up and let’s raise the humor up like half a bar. Not even a full bar, just half a bar up a little bit. Maybe just the pooping in the face thing. I don’t think anyone found that funny. So maybe cut that.
Beth:
I don’t even know why that was in there.
Jeff:
Yeah, it was a weird, I think it’s just Poop is funny. Maybe. I don’t know.
Beth:
I think it was the Gross Out era too. 2012. More the Gross Out era.
Jeff:
Oh big time, big time product of its time. Just as we are all products of our time. And it has been a lovely time. Sarah, to you. Beth, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Beth:
Thank you. So happy to be here.
Jeff:
You totally survived. We survived. And I think that probably you should come back again next year because we should talk about Helen Keller.
sar:
We’re dying to do that film with you.
Beth:
Yay. That’d be awesome.
Jeff:
Thank you. We should totally do it. And with that, this is the end of our season of Invalid Culture sort of. We have one episode left. It is our Christmas episode, our holiday episode. We don’t know what to call it. Episode it is coming out in December. It’s special. It’s different. We’re not going to be talking about invalid films. Instead we’re going to give you guys a bunch of little presents. So tune in next month, check it out, and we will be back again with another fun season before you know it of invalid culture. Stay safe out there, folks.
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a Friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast? Go on to our website, invalid culture.com, submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie. Have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, invalid culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the trash
[Punk theme song, Mvll Crimes’ “Arguing with Strangers” plays to conclude the episode]
