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The Fandom Portals Podcast
"Welcome to Fandom Portals—the show that explores how your favourite fandoms can help you learn and grow!" 🎙️✨
Each episode, we explore TV, movies, comics, and games to reveal how these worlds and the characters in them help us learn about resilience, courage, friendship, and more.
The Fandom Portals Podcast is hosted by Aaron Davies and Adam Brasher, two friends who are obsessed with fandoms, storytelling, and building a community where passion and positivity come first. From Marvel to Middle-earth, Star Wars to indie comics, we dive deep into the stories you love — and how they help us learn and grow. ✨
The Fandom Portals Podcast
500 Days of Summer: A Love Story or a Lesson in Heartbreak? ft. Ben Wright from Hot Takes Film Club
Episode Summary:
This week on The Fandom Portals Podcast, Aaron is joined by Ben Wright from Hot Takes Film Club to discuss 500 Days of Summer (2009). They break down the film’s nonlinear storytelling, the realism of Tom and Summer’s relationship, and whether the movie paints Summer as a villain or simply an honest partner.
Aaron and Ben analyze romanticized ideals vs. reality, explore how Tom’s perspective skews the story, and debate whether the expectations vs. reality scene is one of the most heartbreaking sequences in cinema. Plus, they read audience reactions from Threads, Instagram, and Reddit, revealing how fans are still divided over Tom and Summer’s story.
⏳ Timestamps & Topics:
00:00 - Welcome & Guest Introduction: Ben Wright from Hot Takes Film Club
05:09 - First Takes: Our First Impressions of 500 Days of Summer
09:27 - Community Reactions: Reddit & Threads Weigh in on Tom vs. Summer
14:35 - Reel Deal: The Nonlinear Storytelling & Unreliable Narrator
19:36 - Cinematic Juxtaposition: The IKEA Scene & Expectations vs. Reality
27:15 - Breaking the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Trope: Did Summer Mislead Tom?
35:10 - Screenwriting Breakdown: Why the Film’s Structure is Designed to Divide Viewers
42:56 - Most Valuable Takeaways: Lessons on Love, Self-Growth & Emotional Maturity
51:20 - Gratitude & Growth: Personal Lessons from the Film & Relationships
1:04:04 - Sign-Off & Where to Find Ben Wright Online
🌟 Key Takeaways:
- The film challenges the idealization of love, forcing viewers to reflect on past relationships.
- Tom isn’t the hero or the victim—he constructs an idealized version of Summer rather than seeing her for who she is.
- 500 Days of Summer cleverly subverts rom-com clichés.
- Summer was not the villain—she was upfront about her feelings, but Tom ignored the signs.
🗣️ Memorable Quotes:
📖 "Tom falls in love with a two-dimensional idea of his perfect person and ignores the signals being sent." – Ben
🎞️ "The movie tricks you into taking Tom’s side, only for you to realize by the end that he’s been lying to himself." – Ben
🔗 Links & Resources:
- 🌍 Visit GeekFreaksPodcast.com for all fandom news!
- 🎞️ Follow Ben Wright on Instagram & Letterboxd: Hot Takes Film Club.
📢 Apple Podcast tags: 500 Days of Summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, romantic movies, love stories, heartbreak, film analys
Contact Us:
Website: https://www.fandomportalspodcast.com/
Instagram: instagram.com/fandomportals/?locale=en
Threads: threads.net/@fandomportals
Email: fandomportals@gmail.com
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/fandomportals
Hello and welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, the show that explores the fandoms that help us learn and grow. On today's episode, we are joined by Ben Wright from the Hot Takes Film Club on Instagram and Letterboxd, and we talked about the movie 500 Days of Summer. In this episode, we look into the cultural impact of this film, as well as how the perspectives of the different protagonists can help us understand relationships and love. We also talk about why communication in relationships is important and we touch on attachment styles as well. So, as usual, we want to thank you for joining us and we want to give a big thanks to Ben Wright from the Hot Takes Film Club. Make sure you go and check him out. Those links are in the show notes below. We hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1:Today. I am here in our virtual studio with none other than ben wright. He is the host of the hot takes film club on instagram and on letterboxd. His favorite films include the Negotiator and the Truman Show, and he has a controversial fact about himself that he's never seen the Goonies. We're going to flick to him in a minute, but today we are going to be talking about 500 Days of Summer. How are you going today?
Speaker 2:Ben, I'm great. I'm ready to talk about a real lads movie. Yeah, exactly, I want to crack open the beers and watch this film.
Speaker 1:That's 100% right. You know it's one we can all learn from. It's one that you know I think it speaks to guys and girls and you know it's like it's right. It was a new movie for me, so it was really great that you suggested it. So thank you so much for that. And guest show.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1:All right. So before we get into it, I might ask you a couple of questions about your Hot Takes Film Club, because I've had a little scour of your Instagram and your letterbox in a perfectly professional way, of course, and you have a goal, a very, very auspicious goal. Yes, yes, a very auspicious goal. Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about what that is and how you are tracking that on your social medias?
Speaker 2:Well, I got really fed up after watching movies like dr strange and the multiverse of madness and things like that, where I was just like, okay, I think I can jump off the marvel bandwagon now, and um, and I thought, okay, well, what's a little challenge I can give myself and that is to watch one movie from every country.
Speaker 2:Uh, which, yeah, as I've looked into the countries there, countries there's going to be some which are going to be very tricky I mean, good luck finding a non like a fiction movie from North Korea, for example. But, yeah, ultimately I'm trying to track through as many countries as I can, just essentially to get some exposure to different cultures, to different creative people. You know, there's a lot of movies that I've found have. There are directors that have come from that, that have gone on to do things in America, and I've never really looked into their early stuff, like in Sandy's, the Denny Villeneuve movie from before he was obviously doing Dune and all the ones he was doing. So, yeah, so it was just an opportunity for me to branch out and Instagram kind of keeps me on track with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I really appreciate that goal because through this podcast as well, I've kind of broadened my horizons and I've started to watch a couple of movies from directors originating from, like, southeast Asia. For example, everything Everywhere, all at Once was one that I watched, completely like different to what I would usually watch. And, yeah, as you said, it's easy to fall into the traps of just watching the blockbusters and actually, since starting this podcast in August, I've just exponentially increased the kind of movies that I watch, and I'm very thankful for it. So I can't wait to talk to you when you're, to get you back and see how it goes Well.
Speaker 2:I've done about 25 countries already, so I've got to keep this podcast going for the next four or five years and I might get there.
Speaker 1:Sounds good. That's a good goal to have. So, yeah, do you have a sort of surprising favourite from a country that you didn't expect a movie that would appeal to you would come from?
Speaker 2:yet Well, I mean I guess I really enjoyed. Let me go to the title, right, it's a humanist vampire seeking consenting suicidal person, um, but I mean that's sort of a french polonais, not sorry, french polynesian, um, but it would call the french community in in canada, but um, that um. So canada, I could imagine, has a lot of backing. But but the one I guess that surprised me the most would be White God, which is a Hungarian film, and it is a more sort of violent version of like Homeward Bound almost, where the dogs are the protagonist but none of them speak. There's none of the dialogue that comes out of their mouths, and yet the dog actors in there are so expressive that you know exactly where they're at all times. That was a real surprise for me.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, I think I would bound, damage me enough as a kid, so I don't know how I go with this one. But yeah, definitely give it a try. So we always sort of start off with a gratitude and growth, but we're going to kick that to the end of the podcast. So stick around, listeners, for the end of the podcast, where we'll do our gratitudes and growths with myself and Ben.
Speaker 1:So we're going to jump straight into our first takes segment. All right, so our first take segment is where we discuss how we first encountered the media, what our initial impressions of the media were and what our feelings are after having watched it. We'll also flick to our social medias and also our new Reddit pages to see what you guys thought of the media as well. So, as we talked about at the start of this podcast, we are looking at the movie 500 Days of Summer. It came out in 2009 and it's about a guy who, after being dumped by the girl he believes to be his soulmate a hopeless romantic whose name is Tom Hanson reflects on their relationship to try and figure out where it all went wrong and how he can win her back.
Speaker 2:This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hanson, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one. The girl Summer Finnn did not share this belief.
Speaker 1:You should know up front this is not a love story I think we should stop seeing each other just like that, just like that. Start from the beginning and tell us what happened. We might flick to you first, ben, what were your first thoughts of this movie? Where'd you first see it? Because, yeah, you are the one that suggested this one to me, very thankful for it as well.
Speaker 2:So I did, yeah, um, so this, this, actually, as I watched this film over and over again, like I've seen it numerous times over the years, but I'm taken by how much I took from the film and the meaning that I, yeah, took from the film. Um, but I first saw it in Kingston in the UK, because that's where I'm from, not Kingston, but from the UK, and the girl that I was dating at the time was from Kingston and it was a rainy day and she had a very similar haircut to Zooey Deschanel in the film, and we did go into the theater after the rain and there was that scene in the middle of the film where she does turn up to his door in the rain. And I had to do a bit of a double take and look at the screen and look at my partner and then look at the screen. But what struck me from that film is, even though I felt like I was quite a romantic person like Tom, I actually found myself relating more to Summer and it was actually probably the seed that made me realize that I needed to end that relationship.
Speaker 2:I did not end it as quickly as I should and I did a very terrible job at believing that it was the right choice to make. But when I did make that choice, this actually ended up being the film that I watched in on repeat, but with American Beauty and I just it was just a comfort to have on in the background. I just knew them really well and they helped me sort of latch on to well. This film mainly helped me latch on to the message which I think I took from the film. So it is quite a deeply personal film for me. But also it's so interesting hearing the varied reactions to the film as well and seeing what I took out from it and then what other people took away from it is, uh, is vastly different yeah, no, I, I completely agree with you.
Speaker 1:It's very divisive on the, on the social medias, on what people took from it, because I think it doesn't sort of fit into your natural rom-com sort of movie. It's more of a authentic view of what relationships can be like. Um, for me this is the first time I watched the movie and it's actually when you suggested it. That was the first time I heard of the movie as well. So, wow, yeah, yeah, so completely slid underneath my radar. Big fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who's the star of the movie, and also Zooey Deschanel, who's from the New Girl as well. Great in that one. But for me, initial watch, I kind of read a little bit about it first so I knew what I was going into. So I wasn't taken aback when it didn't follow that traditional like meet cute kind of complication and then end up being a happy ending afterwards. But I'm the same, you know, watching it. Through it I can sort of look at Tom's perspective and look at Summer's perspective. I can definitely see where they're both coming from. But I think if I'd watched this when I was a younger person I probably would have been more sympathetic towards Tom's position. But having watched it now, as a 35-year-old who has had the opportunity to experience a lot of different kinds of love, whether it be friendship, familial or romantic, I kind of did also look through this and see Summer's perspective a lot more strongly when I watched it as well. So that was really interesting as well.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, we might jump to our social media responses to this movie because, as we said, it was kind of divisive. So, on our threads community, if you want to join that, the show notes are below and you can join us on threads or Instagram or our new Reddit page and you can comment on all the different kinds of posts that we put up and we read them out in the show as well during this segment. So the first one that we're going to read out is called from is is from Bubba Wheat, and they said that they think it's fantastic. They loved how the storyline was nonlinear and the expectation versus reality scene is absolutely incredible. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, you know he said was not a great person, but he's still kind of likable. So there was that kind of perspective where they very much looking at Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the or Tom's character as the character that you know doesn't really dive into this sort of romantic relationship with the most realistic expectations.
Speaker 1:But then we also have a lot of people that have said you, you know, like peruna 2001, said, honestly, I didn't enjoy it very much and I didn't like any of the characters at all. Very viable as well. You know, uh, bobo, the leo who was on our reddit's page, said that they really loved the expectation versus reality scene as well. And then, you know, there are a few people on here that said, um, I'm a comment here now, but, as an example from one Reddit user said, you know, it changed my life. And then there's people asking how it changed their life and they said, you know, they watched it as a teenager and it stuck with them because, you know, they first watched the movie they were definitely on Tom's side, a lot like myself. And then, you know, or if I watched it when I was younger and then now they've become a summer supporter as well, so did your own uh reddit digging as well. Then what? What sort of reaction did you get for this movie from your community?
Speaker 2:I did. I mean over the last. I mean, how long has it been? 15 years, something like that, um 16 years since it's come out.
Speaker 2:I've heard things, and I've even heard joseph gordon levitt say hey, actually. Uh, tom is actually not the good guy that you think he is. So maybe you know, re-watch the film, have a think about it, and the most polarizing element of it is that people are taking sides, which is the thing that I never really did with it. Um, you know, people are either on tom's side and they're saying, oh well, summer was misleading him and uh, lying to him and was playing mind games, which I really think from like 2009. Was that really kind of pre-incel mentality of like girls are just playing games all the time and they just want to use you for what they want and then they'll ditch you kind of attitude, whereas you had the other side of it, which is the one that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was trying to promote, which is actually Tom's got a lot of toxic traits. He wasn't actually listening to her when she was setting boundaries. He had an idea of what he wanted from the relationship, but he wasn't actually paying attention to whether or not she was the one who was going to give it to him, and I always found that really fascinating.
Speaker 2:And some of the some of the polarizing comments I got was Summer is stupid. She knows that Tom is in love with her, she knows that she may potentially hurt him, and that's sort of a you know, pro-tom, anti-summer kind of comment, whereas on the flip side of it we've got Tom falls in love with a two-dimensional idea of his perfect person and ignores the signals being sent. That didn't match that image. So you have people who are reading it quite extremely one way and quite extremely the other. And something I didn't mention about myself earlier is that I have a writing background. I've studied screenwriting and I've written a few things myself. I've really done it more for my own sake rather than trying to make a career out of it, but through doing that I've learned a lot of writing techniques and I think when you actually look at this film through the writer's lens, or at least through a writing lens, you do find that there's something that sits in the middle. And yet on the internet obviously, on the internet everything's either extremely one way or extremely the other way.
Speaker 1:Um, and and that's really what we see with this is pro tom or uh pro summer and and lots of people clashing in the middle yeah, no, I completely agree, and even on our reddit community as well, we have somebody that agrees with, with some of your uh comments as well. Teo, we from our reddit says it's one of the most beautiful destructions of the manic pixie dream girl trope in a movie. We might go into that a little bit later, but what actually is a manic pixie dream girl trope? But you can see that there is that sort of middle ground where people are looking at it from an objective lens, not trying to say, okay, who was right in this situation?
Speaker 1:Was it Tom or was it Summer? Because there is no winners and losers in this situation. It's literally just a story of two people trying to navigate their feelings in a relationship which I think, by the time it came out in 2009, it was kind of ahead of its time. Yeah, because it there are stories now, for example, like La La Land or Marriage Story or Working Phoenix as Her very sort of similar vibes in terms of looking at a relationship from an objective standpoint or not an objective standpoint, but rather through a protagonist's unreliable narrator's eyes, which is what I loved about this film.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if I may say, I believe the way that the first 25 minutes is structured is actually deliberately designed to be polarizing. It is pushing you into a hero villain narrative and it is that unreliable, unreliable narrator um aspect, but it does start off with um. Actually, I never asked you whether I'm allowed to swear on this podcast, of course, yeah, yeah, I'm australian.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, true, um, well, I should quote um at the beginning. It does start with an author's note saying the kind of thing that you normally see in movies, which is the following is a work of fiction, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. And then it's followed by especially you, jenny beckman bitch. Like it's so unnecessarily aggressive. But what it does is it sets up the film as oh, okay, the person who wrote this is writing about something that actually happened to him.
Speaker 2:Um, and we are seeing it through his perspective, and also the jenny beckman surrogate is the bitch, and so it's sort of like okay, so you've got your hero, you've got your villain, and it does kind of trick you into this. Okay, well, I'm going to be taking sides here kind of mentality. However, when you get to the end of the film, I can't imagine tom being the kind of person who he becomes by the end of the film who would write that especially you, jenny beckman bitch thing. So one would have to assume that actually the movie is trying to trick you into this polarizing thing. But by the end of it, I would like to think although I have seen interviews of um scott uh, I can't remember how to pronounce his name, but, um, the guy who wrote it, who and there?
Speaker 1:was a real jenny beckman.
Speaker 2:That's it, yeah um, scott neustadter, um, there was actually a real jenny beckman and, um, one would think that he has ended the film the way that he felt before he started writing it.
Speaker 2:So he's deliberately tricking you into this polarizing attitude and I think that's probably why we get a lot of that polarizing reaction in the end.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I would just mention as well another aspect of it is that Summer is the perfect villain character. The perfect villain is the complete antithesis to your hero and she, you know, in the opening narration they say he's heavily romantic and maybe he was misguided by a bunch of British pop songs and a misreading of the movie, the Graduate, whereas she is affected by her parents' divorce and something about cutting off their hair and not feeling anything about it. And then when they're in the um, the karaoke bar, they, they put out their idea of love like, okay, well, I just think that's a fantasy. Oh, but that's not a fantasy to me, it's something that I believe in, and the two of them just say oh well, we'll agree to disagree, but it does show that she is set as the antithesis to what Tom is, which is what you traditionally expect from a villain character. So maybe people were absorbing that kind of feeling when they're anti-Sama.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's very cleverly written in that way. It's considering the position of the audience and how to position them to go on this journey with the character as he goes on it, because, as we said before, you know he's the unreliable narrator. And yet, according to the DVD commentary, it is said that 75% of the film actually happened to Scott Newsetter, the person who wrote the screenplay for the film. And, yeah, I think it's kind of the way that it plays out is very sort of beautiful as well. So we might jump into our real deal section now, where we do dive into a lot of these in-depth conversations, because we're sort of diving into that territory now, which is great, all right. So our real deal segment is where we usually we randomly select a lens or piece of criteria to view the media or movie through and we discuss the elements with the intention of finding out whether we can rate it positively or negatively. Now I think it's a little bit unfair to to randomly generate things with guests that are coming on the show. So we have pre-prepared some for today. But if you think something is good today, ben, you're going to rate it, as I love the smiths, and if it is bad. You're going to rate it as bizarro crap. Bizarro crap, gotcha, bizarro crap. Yes, so if you don't mind, I might start off with the nonlinear storytelling as my sort of first real deal segment that I kind of want to jump into, because we've sort of touched on the fact that romantic comedies usually follow a very linear progression and with your writing background, I'd love to hear your take on this as well. Absolutely, yeah. We sort of see the meet cute, which is usually where they introduce each other or find each other in a very engaging way. In this movie not so engaging they literally just work together. You know, there is the love that then begins to blossom, which ends up in a conflict, and then finally with a resolution. That's a very traditional and predictable three-act structure for a romantic comedy movie. You could probably name a thousand off the top of your head that follow this sort of deliberate structure.
Speaker 1:This movie, the 500 Days of Summer, actually disrupts this formula because the sequence of events at the very start it starts off with the breakup for one and then throughout the movie it jumps between the days of the relationship, whether it be 235 or whether it be, you know, day 10, and the beautiful part about it is the cinematography or the, the screenshots of the, the cityscape and the tree and the colors. They also change depending on what the mood of the relationship is during that time. And you know, because it jumps backwards and forwards, it opens up on day 488, for example, and they've already broken up and he's going through that transformative period towards the end of the film. But then we jump straight into day one and it chronologically goes up until about day 25 or day 35. And then after that it starts to jump around again.
Speaker 1:So because it kind of subverts those usual expectations of a romantic comedy, it kind of talks and takes the perspective of us viewing through Tom's emotions rather than the objective reality that we usually see romantic comedies through. It also presents those selective moments rather than an active chronology and sometimes in relationships when you've gone through them and you're reminiscing about them after the fact, you can have this romantic or blissful which later you know when looking through a lens, revealed to be some underlying problems that you didn't see before because of your biases at the time. So I thought it was very interesting and very clever how this movie really encapsulated and utilized the nonlinear storytelling to really portray how Tom's journey had gone through. For the entire film, I think for this one I'm going to give it. I Love the Smiths for its nonlinear storytelling. What are your thoughts, ben?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I'm on the I Love the Smiths side of it as well. I mean, essentially, I can't imagine this film being enjoyable if you were to watch their relationship in a linear way, because there is this very quiet distance between them when things are starting to break up. They haven't broken up, but they're together, but it's all done in this very quiet way. And can you imagine what the middle or near the end of the film was actually going to look like if it was all done in a linear way where you know you have to sit through that silence between the two of them, and this is exactly yeah but uh, I mean also, I think, um, it very much gives you a nice, it keeps the levity going, you know, you still have some laughs and some jokes.
Speaker 2:It is essentially it's more on the romantic side, but it is kind of a rom-com, just not in the traditional way that we would expect with matthew mcconaughey or something like that. Um, but uh, it is kind of like a pastiche or like a sort of mosaic of a relationship and you do get to sort of pick the little bits out of it that are most interesting. And I think if you were to tell a linear story that just that would just fall apart. You wouldn't be able to get the joy and the pain sort of flicking around throughout the movie. It would just be a lot of joy at the beginning and a lot of pain in the end, and it would be very uncomfortable oh man, I love that you just described that as a mosaic, and that is.
Speaker 1:That is really perfect, because it does pick pieces and present them to you in a very sort of purposeful way to present this whole image when you look at it from afar, which is that's awesome. So yeah, especially there's scenes that he puts together just in a linear fashion that are obviously non-linear chronologically, when we're talking about how they just juxtapose the highs of the relationship and the lows of the relationship and the one that comes to mind there's two that come to mind, but one most prominently is the Ikea scenes come to mind, but one most prominently is the Ikea scenes.
Speaker 2:Mmm, smells delicious. Oh honey, that's because it is delicious. I made it myself Bald eagle.
Speaker 1:Your favourite.
Speaker 2:The sink's broken.
Speaker 1:Well, that's okay, because that's why we bought a home with two kitchens. You're so smart, are we seen in the bedroom? Yeah, when they're in ikea, and that's there's the start of the relationship. I just love how they're sort of playing house in that moment. You know, they say, they quotes, like you know, oh, our sink is broken, um, and then, you know, the sink breaks again and and tom says to someone well, luckily we bought a house that have two kitchens. And then they I'll lead you to the bedroom and it's very playful and it's very fun. And you know, I hate to alarm you, my dear, but there is a Chinese family in the bathroom. Yeah, yeah, bald eagle, yeah, all these amazingly like funny sort of moments that you could tell that Tom was reminiscing about after the fact, as he's telling this story in a very romanticized and happy fashion, but then it also cuts at day like 285, I think it was almost straight afterwards, where they're talking the same joke. They're saying you know, oh, the kitchen's broken and the same joke.
Speaker 2:They're saying you know the kitchen's broken and you know someone's very nonchalant. Yeah, it actually starts with him trying to instigate that joke and she walks off and you sort of you see something that's you know. Oh, that's funny, why is she not engaging with that? And then it cuts back to when it was the joke and he played along with it really well, but that was like her joke and him tried to reconnect with her, rekindle that moment and then seeing what that moment was afterwards is, yeah, it's quite heartbreaking, quite isolating. Yeah, I would totally agree.
Speaker 1:I love that scene for that reason, yeah, and I think that's just one example where he's juxtaposed Mark Webber's juxtaposed the highs and the lows of love together. The other amazing scene is the one that has been famously quoted through our Reddit and threads community is the expectation versus reality scene. Going through it and watching it Me, watching it for the first time I was like this is really clever for one.
Speaker 2:So that from a writer's perspective, that is the low point of the second act is a fascinating point because actually I think what happens after that um and the differences between that and um and other rom-coms is kind of vital to the reading of the film um. But that expectations versus reality, I mean I think we've all been in that position and I think both sides, both videos which are playing side by side, they go into little like four by three squares off to the side, so you can see them both at the same time and it's acted so well. You can see these really subtle differences between Summer wants to, the way Summer wants to greet him, the way he was expecting her to greet him, the way that he wanted to engage with her, and the fact that he wasn't getting the same kind of chemistry back. And you can see that pain and that joy happening simultaneously. And I think we've all been in that situation where we're like, oh, this could be a really great night and a really great time to engage with the person that I care about, and you've kind of misread the situation and it's not really quite what you thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2:And the other thing about that that I found quite interesting, especially now at this, like I'm 37 and, you know, been at parties where I've only known a few people. He was so focused on her being the center of his evening. His expectation is she is cut away from all of her friends and she just wants to spend time with him. But the reality is, when he's there, he was so focused on her that he wasn't thinking about how to engage with anybody else at that party and he's just alone for most of the time. He's unhappy before he notices that she has gotten engaged which is what the point of that scene is is for him to realize that actually she's moved on and he hasn't, which is what creates that low point and causes him to let it out the door. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think it's just an incredibly relatable uh situation.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably why people latch onto it quite strongly yeah, no, I agree, and I think it really externalizes tom's disillusionment and his um, his idealized version of of summer. I think that, you know, he's obviously created this unknowable version of her, uh, in his head and as he's approaching the door and the scene progresses through, it just gets sadder and sadder to watch until finally, you know, I think it wouldn't be as impactful if they didn't um, put them side by side, because a lot of those expectations may be happening in the character's head and it can be hard for an actor to portray them on screen in a very sort of visible way so the audience can recognize how painful this moment is for that character. However, when, when Tom's expectation versus reality is put on screen for us, we viscerally see the moment. You know that's what causes him that, that upset and that heartbreak, because of how different it is from his idealized view. And throughout the whole movie, that idealized view of her is sort of pushed through the entire movie, you know, when they're, when they're in the first one to 30 days, he's talking about how much they have in common. He's talking about how amazingly beautiful she is and how they all like the same sort of music and he's definitely sort of falling in love with his version of her as opposed to who she is, as you said before, ignoring the boundaries that she's trying to set.
Speaker 1:And I found it interesting to watch some of the scenes where they're initially sort of meeting and where Tom is obviously taking on the verbal cues of, or the body language cues, rather of, what Summer is doing in his memory as opposed to what she's actually saying.
Speaker 1:So Summer did say after the bar, for example, when they go out and they talk about his friend reveals that he likes her and she goes okay, do you like me?
Speaker 1:Is that true? And then if you look at that conversation and you ignore the body language, like if you just close your eyes and you listen to the actual dialogue and you take out the tone and inflection, the words that they're actually saying, it doesn't really indicate any sort of connection or any kind of, you know, feelings this way or that it's just a conversation that sort of really shows some are highlighting her, her trying to understand a situation about a new friend that she's obviously trying to make, but then you, that she's obviously trying to make, but then you know, you add the body language cues, combine it with the fact that we have an unrelatable narrator in Tom and that's almost me looking at it going. This is how he remembers that scene and he's unreliable to start with, but he's also drunk in his moment. So that first initial connection that they have how reliable is it and how happy or how you know? It's a reality check or a character perception really, which was really interesting to see for me too.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that non-linear storytelling really sort of knocked it out of the park for me can I ask you a question then, because I the way you're talking about it, I think maybe you and I see things slightly differently, is that? Yeah, um, I think it is the non-linear nature of, uh, the movie which makes it the unreliable narration, if you see what I mean. Am I picking up that you think that the way that things are visualized on camera isn't actually the way things went down? Is that how you interpreted it?
Speaker 1:The way that I interpret it is, the movie is structured in a fashion as to where Tom is looking at it in hindsight in regards to how he remembers the relationship and the parts of it that he remembers back in the early days, when it was great, because he's trying to figure out where this relationship went wrong. And then eventually at the end, when it starts to get linear again, right at the end, when he's starting to, you know, work on himself and start to go through those architectural sort of projects and designs and really dive into his passions, as opposed to focusing all of his energy on a relationship that he's idealized. I feel like that is when he starts to become a more reliable narrator as to where he is sitting and feeling within the film. But prior to, as he's kind of like reminiscing and being remorse or remorse about the relationship that wasn't there, I feel like we can't really trust or see the things that he kind of remembers. If that makes sense, that was my take from it anyway.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting. Yeah, because I think what I took, as was everything that we see on screen, is what happened. The body language was the way things were. You know it's not playing through his hindsight necessarily. You know it's not playing through his hindsight necessarily. We are seeing the relationship, but we are seeing it skewed more towards how Tom sees things, because we don't really see Summer alone in the film. I don't think at any point because it is Tom's perspective, but I always thought we were sort of sitting in side sidecar to what actually happened and that allows us as an audience to look at it more objectively than thomas. So we can sort of see when tom's saying, because you mentioned in the early stages, when they were getting into a relationship, there's some volatile switching between um, oh, my god, she loves the smiths, I think maybe I'm in love with her, and then like, oh, she said that she had. What was it she said?
Speaker 1:my weekend was good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like, did you hear it? She said good skank. Like it's saying words like that. It's so, so volatile that I feel like we sit sidecar and we get to see him in his worst points and his best points or his most optimistic or his most um, uh, you know, downfallen, um, so yeah, so I mean because that, that, that uh synopsis that you read at the beginning does sound like we're introduced to him sitting and thinking about the relationship and yet actually the reality is the, the beginning of it is them two sitting on the park bench, the way they are, near the end of the film, um, and he's, he's, as you see that scene, he's thinking about what that interaction means to him there and then Not necessarily reminiscing. But yeah, I wonder whether that changes the perspective for the people on Reddit as well and how they see it as well if they think about it that way, because I'm sure they wouldn't be so harsh against Summer if they knew that it was all skewed from Tom's angle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the reason I kind of came to that conclusion was, you know, during the later stages, when he was going through that transformation, they did replay a few scenes that had happened previously.
Speaker 1:One that I can remember is when they're in the record shop and they were talking about how Ringo Starr is her favorite Beatle, and the first time you see that it seems like a playful sort of discussion. And then you know later on, when they're in the the record shop he sort of holds up the ringo star album and the body language is like a like between himself and, and summer is kind of cordial and playful and nice. But then when he's reflecting on it you can actually see that her, her body language shows that she's kind of dismissive. Where she's seeing that this you know reaction is happening from him. She knows that he wants connection and she can't give it to him or doesn't want to give it to him. And there are a few scenes like that. As as to where I sort of started to think okay, is tom now starting to realize that perhaps she wasn't that into him in the first place? That's sort of where I sit with it.
Speaker 2:See, I was of the impression that we saw the scene where they jokingly bonded over Ringo and Best Beatle not the Best Beatle and then, when he does lift up the album, I thought that was very much a scene further down in the relationship when he's trying to rekindle these things. That was the spark to begin with. So it wasn't the same scene that we were viewing. It was actually we were just watching him try and keep that spark alive later on in the relationship and at that point she was already at a point where she just needed to step away maybe that is true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to watch it again because there's so many different takes that you can sort of pull from it. But, um, yeah, I think for me definitely the the non-linear storytelling really does serve its purpose through this, this movie. It keeps you engaged. As you said before, you know the. If it was told in a linear fashion because of how like real and non-rom-com, you might say that the the actual events of the relationship are, it probably wouldn't be palatable to sort of sit through and watch without getting some severe secondhand awkwardness or embarrassment. So very good creative choice, I think. Did you have any real deal segments that you wanted to to mention?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, I think I'd like to talk about what my actual reading of the film was, because, um, I mean, you know, you, as we said, we got people on reddit who are saying, oh, tom's this romantic and summer just wants to dismiss and just wants to play with him and use him, and he's, he's the vulnerable one, um. And then you've got the other side of it where, um, people are saying, actually he's really toxic and he wasn't listening to her and he just wanted an idea of her. He didn't actually want her, um, and where I fell in in the middle, um, and I and I, I think, because of my writing background, I sort of look at how that final act is, um, structured, um, and that's how it informs. My view is that, essentially, when you're writing a good character who has a character arc who needs to change, you will have a character that starts off in a situation of, well, in this case, depression and sort of generally being a bit bored and listless and not interested in anything. And then there'll be this inciting incident, a spark, that's when he sees Summer. And then that'll be this inciting incident, a spark, that's when he sees Summer, and then that's what sends him on this journey to take him out of where he was before and change him into something new. And so, in order to do that, what you have is an external want, and his external want is to get Summer. He wants to be with Summer. What his internal need actually is is to grow himself, get to know himself, love himself rather than someone else. Stop looking for external validation, which he's. He lights up the screen anytime summer is looking at him and then he's just a dark cloud anytime that she's not giving him the kind of intention that he wants. And so there's this internal need that a character should have in order to have a good character arc. So they'll go after the want, they'll be striving for the want and along the way, the thing that they want doesn't quite become obtainable, or it's something that they realize actually that wasn't what I was fighting for all along and they move towards seeking what they actually need deep down.
Speaker 2:And so in rom-coms you'd get to this point where I don't know someone's done something very silly. Well, let's say she's all that, for example, to age myself, but there's the bit where I can't remember the girl's name in it. But she realizes that she was a bet all along and Freddie Prinze Jr didn't actually want to date her. But then you know that Freddie Prinze Jr is actually secretly falling in love with her. So when she finds that out, that's that second act low point, because then he has to really fight to get her back and that's the whole. Like third act of a romcom is I want to get her back. That's, that's the goal and that's normally the thing. And then they kiss and and live happily ever after.
Speaker 2:But but as soon as tom hits that second act low point, which is that, um, expectations versus reality, that's where it really hits home and he sort of melds into that sort of painted architect background. He doesn't turn his attention to getting her back. He's, he hates himself, he drinks, he eats a lot of twinkies, which is an interesting vice. But what he does is when that, when vagabond kicks in the wolf mother song, it's got the boom, boom, boom and he's bouncing that ball on the floor.
Speaker 2:That's him sort of going like well, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna punish myself because of this woman who I have such strong conflicted feelings? No, I, I need to really pick myself up and he's already quit his job at one point and uh, um, and so it's him investing in himself and that's very much him moving from the want he's sort of let go of Summer. He won't be able to get Summer, but what he actually needs is to invest in himself, and the whole of the third act is him just investing in himself. And that was the message that I took from it is that actually both characters are flawed. She thinks she might potentially be able to love Tom, but she's not sure of it, and that's what she says at the end of the film is like I found something in my new husband that I wasn't sure of with Tom.
Speaker 1:Why are you looking at me like that?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I guess it's because I was sitting in a deli and reading Dorian Gray and a guy comes up to me and asks me about it, and now he's my husband yeah, so Now he's my husband yeah. So, so what if I'd gone to the movies? What if I had gone somewhere else for lunch? What if I'd gotten there 10 minutes later? It was meant to be, and I just kept thinking.
Speaker 1:Tom was right. Yeah, I did, I did.
Speaker 2:It just wasn't me that you were right about.
Speaker 2:And tom is so toxically obsessed with the idea of being loved or finding that movie romance that he's not being able to invest in himself, he's not being able to build himself as a, as a person, and that was the message that I really took from it and that was actually one of the things where I was like I want to leave the country, I want to go see things, and I'm in this relationship and I don't think we're going to be able to do it together because we kind of want different things and yeah, and so I I bought myself a ticket to, uh, well, to various places, and that ended in New Zealand was what I latched onto from the film and that's why it's it's so interesting hearing these people sort of going like someone's a bitch.
Speaker 2:I get this kind of stuff I never understood, but I do think it's that third act and the way that it's written which really solidifies my opinion that I've kind of read into the film what was meant to, what was intended to be. Uh, read from the film. Yeah, so that's that's. That's the kind of angle that I come at the film from, and I hope other people do too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually really love that because it is so different from usual. You know, romantic comedy, third acts, where, as you said, they do kind of chase after the, the person that they lost, and that sort of investing in self. It was actually my favorite part of the movie is when he sort of stopped bouncing that ball and was like right, here we go. You know he quit the job that had been dragging him down for all these years. You know he'd been there for four or five years and he never, ever wanted to write greeting cards in the first place. No-transcript, that so much that that sort of take from it. Um, yeah, thanks for thanks for sharing that, ben, I appreciate it. So now, now, what we might do is, I think, um, I want to talk about the cultural impact of this movie, because you know we did talk before about, you know, that that one true love trope or the manic pixie dream girl debate. For those that don't know, the manic pixie dream girl describes a quirky or carefree female character that really only exists to inspire a male protagonist or or have their growth in that way, and I think that a lot of people who who do take that side of you know, tom being being the one who's downtrodden because Summer steps all over his heart and leads him astray. I think a lot of these, these people like failed to understand or maybe misunderstand the fact that Summer wasn't written that way. She was perceived that way, tom, and I think we do see that a little bit later.
Speaker 1:You know, she does have that enigmatic sort of personality. She does make her boundaries very, very clear. In the beginning she says you know, I don't want anything serious. They do it in the bed of Ikea, is that okay? Because some people freak out. She made it very, very clear. But then you know there's also the I'll go into a little bit later what my sort of take is on it in terms of, uh like, connection styles and things like that. But you know there is that idea that she does want connection, but only a sort of certain amount of connection. But she does make that very sort of clear throughout.
Speaker 1:And the scene in the bar that we talked about earlier, where their love definitions are quite different, there is never a point where Summer misleads or strays him in terms of you know the words that she says. And you know Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually goes on to say, as we mentioned before, you know, this is about a guy who misinterprets a woman and finally in the end he learns that his view of love may have been misguided in the first place. So I think culturally when this came out it did spark a lot of those sorts of conversations about you know, what is this happy endings thing that we expect from a romantic comedy? And more movies became sort of mainstream that now explore love as like a learning experience as opposed to a destination that you get to. So that was a really interesting take for me in terms of the cultural impact of this movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I mean, yeah, if we're looking at it as a product, as a movie that's released. We went through through the 90s and into the 2000s. We had a lot of these never being kissed and, as I said before, she's all that.
Speaker 2:And Matthew McConaughey had that big run of um rom-com he did, which he tried to get away from, and we were used to this kind of format of like ha ha ha. Isn't it so funny and charming that these two people kind of secretly love each other even though they hate each other and you know all of this kind of stuff? And I think this kind of movie decided to actually look at things from a realistic perspective. Um, and in terms of the manic pixie dream girl thing, that was such a wild time. It started with um kirsten dunst and elizabethtown and it was a reviewer that described that character in elizabethtown as a manic pixie dream girl, and then that kind of like picked off and people were like, oh my god, that person's a manic pixie dream girl and that, and this is a trope and it is a thing, and you, you can kind of see it in like um lilu dallas and uh, in um fifth element and that kind of thing. It's like this, you know, like a flighty, um almost unattainable yeah yeah, but like colorful.
Speaker 2:You know the the? Um, what's the name? Uh, ramona flowers from um scott pilgrim. There was this big conversation about it and it's funny because like at that time Zooey Deschanel hadn't become New Girl yet, but New Girl was very much the commodified Manic Pixie Dream Girl story, that where they I think I didn't really watch it all the way to the end, but I think they sort of like started breaking down that trope a little bit. But this film was kind of breaking that trope down to begin with. It's like actually this person's a real person. Um, you know, yes, she's flighty. She moved from michigan because she was bored. You know, like she just picked up and left. She, she was like I'm having fun. Why do we have to label?
Speaker 1:it I think things.
Speaker 2:Why do we have to do all these labels and stuff? I'm just having fun, so that's that sort of flighty element. But at the end of the day, um, even though we don't really get to see summer's uh wants and needs played out because we're not really allowed to go into her world, um, without tom being around, she does have an arc. Um, she starts off as being jaded and thinking that love is ridiculous and that really it's. You know, we're young, we can just express ourselves, we can go out and experience things. That's where she starts and then by the end she's going.
Speaker 2:Actually, actually, tom was right. Like I didn't expect it to be the case, but Tom was right and I fell in love and if I hadn't been at that cafe at that particular time then I wouldn't have met my husband and that there is a fate and a destiny involved. And Tom's learning that things are a little bit more nuanced. Um, you know that it can't all be fate and destiny. Sometimes you kind of have to make your own fate and your own destiny and you have to love the position you're in and love yourself a little bit more instead of looking externally.
Speaker 2:So they both have these depths and unfortunately in this film, like because of the way it is structured, you don't get to see some as change in the way that you see tom's, but I do think they give her a layer and an ability to change and make her feel more real than what that trope was doing, um. So it was actually really kind of ahead of its time to um to play with that trope and really break it down. You know, I think that in a movie like Ruby Sparks is another good example of that. It's like this idealized woman that he writes into existence and then turns out. Actually you can't just keep the ideal going on. She needs to be a real human being at the end of the day, and I think that's what this film really succeeds at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's perfectly put because you know, I want to ask you something about that sort of end scene which I've seen sort of written about and floating through the Reddit sort of spheres as well. You know, the last time he physically interacts with Summer, you know Tom is sitting on that park bench but prior to that, the last time he actually saw her was that expectations versus reality scene. So there are some people out there that think that the the scene where he's on the bench, where he kind of gets that closure with her, was actually kind of fictionalized and uh, interpreted and made up in um in tom's head in order to help him move on through that space. So I was wondering what your thoughts are on that ben and what you think that sort of um, that that impact is in terms of that last sort of final conversation um, tom's not that smart tom.
Speaker 2:Tom's gone through a lot of change in that film and he has learned to look internally and he has looked, learned things about himself. But he hasn't learned enough about himself to fictionalize this whole situation with this person in order to allow him to move on. I don't think he's, because even you know there's a bit of narration where he's talking to autumn at the end, um, or just as he's walking away from autumn, where he's like the narration is sort of saying like, oh well, there isn't such a thing as destiny and and you know that things are a bit different than the way tom would see and then he's like actually maybe not quite, and so he goes back to talk to Autumn and like he's still got that passion and that romance and that love within him that does make him sort of jump into things quite quickly. So I can't imagine that he was sitting there and giving himself permission to move on, because he's, throughout the movie, never given himself permission to feel anything other than what has externally validated him. I just don't think at the end of the film he's at the kind of place emotionally I actually I'm of the opinion that actually autumn is the sequel.
Speaker 2:You know, like it's not that he learned all these lovely lessons from summer and then he met autumn and she ended up being the one.
Speaker 2:I'm of the opinion that she's the next lesson for him to deepen that understanding of himself, to think more about what he wants from relationships rather than just thinking I want a relationship. I always looked at that and I was like, okay, autumn's not going to be the one either, and I assume he's going to meet winter and spring at some point. Maybe spring's the one he gets married to. And actually, on that note, I did watch some videos from the uh, from the writer, and he said when he was writing it he hadn't met his wife. But by the time the film was released he had actually met his wife and married her, um, mainly because she was one of the people who helped um get the film made. Yeah, um, but like, even at that point of writing it he hadn't found his autumn. That was wishful thinking and yeah. So I think he's still got lessons to learn and I don't think he knows how to look internally as much as that theory suggests, at least.
Speaker 1:Oh, I really love that, Ben. I never even thought of it that way because to me, obviously being conditioned watching all of these romantic comedies before, I literally thought, you know, he ended up finding his happy ending. But that is really actually poignant to say he's still going on this learning journey and to think, you know, over those few days he's gone through those emotional changes to change habits that he's had his entire life as to how he's developed relationships, connected and fallen in love. Yeah, that's a really good take. I love good take. I love that. That's awesome. But yeah, all those people that think it was make-believe probably wasn't all right. So now I think we might. Um, did you have any more real deal stuff to go through? Otherwise we'll go through our mbts.
Speaker 2:No, I think uh, yeah, I think we've covered it all. Oh well, actually, I mean, I tell you what? Because I did actually want to talk about rachel. The character of rachel, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh god, like I mean, this was pre-kick-ass, that chloe Grace Moritz was cast in this she was 12. Wow, at the time of watching this film, and even in Kick-Ass and the film that she was in subsequently after that, up until the point where she gets into more adult age, blows my mind.
Speaker 2:The acting quality and what I find really funny about this film is that it deliberately sets things slightly above reality. Because, um, in a, in a script structure sense, if there were, because this isn't really technically like a hero's journey story, but if there were to be a mentor character this 12 year old little sister is the mentor character and it's um. It's characterized perfectly by the point that he's talking to paul and mckenzie, his two best best friends, and then he's like ah, with all due respect, your last relationship was in the seventh grade and you've only been with one person since high school, so you know whatever. And then it like cuts to him, like he's like, oh, who am I going to talk to? Or he says something like that and then he and it cuts to him sat on the football bench with Rachel and she comes out with some corkers.
Speaker 2:She's wise beyond her years and I think Tom has such a childish view of relationships. Making the person who has such an adult relationship a child, while he himself is an adult and has these childish views of what a relationship should be, is a deliberate attempt to sort of show how, um, at some point, yeah, immature, but like how his emotional growth has stagnated at a certain age, like maybe 12, like maybe the same age that she is, whereas she's having all these relationships with boys for, like I don't know, like a week at a time or something like that, and she's like, oh, yeah, that's the same problem I had with sean and yeah, yeah, all of this kind of stuff like she's, like you know, in, yeah, that's the same problem I had with Sean and all of this kind of stuff Like she's, like you know, in her 50s or 60s. I thought that was just such a great choice and especially a great actress to play that character.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think she was a really she was a drawing character for me because looking at her, she did have those caulkers as you said. You know she says things like you should just ask her when he's talking about you know, are we on or are we off? He goes to her to ask her advice and he's just ask her just, and then he's just like I don't want to do that because you know you're labeling. And then she says you know, I think you don't want to ask her because it might highlight some realities about the past few days that you've been having or being having and you don't want to face that reality like I think he doesn't want to doesn't want to get the wrong answer he's like I'll just leave it in the in the ether, and she's like no, you need to know what's going on, because otherwise you'll turn up and she's sleeping with the gym instructor he's got bad
Speaker 1:pit space and jesus's abs yeah, that's it, that's a perfect quote as well. But yeah, I think that that that scene because you know, I think in his mind, in in tom's mind, he, he did know, he, because he he's grasping for these kinds of vows of attention and affection and he's looking for it in every act that summer does, and the fact that he's he's kind of not getting this labeled validation, he knows that there's something kind of not there and he doesn't want that reality sort of setting in and for for this character of rachel to sort of lay it out to him. And then, you know, previously, the very first scene is when she's there stopping him from smashing plates. She just really plays that mental role and I think she does. I didn't know she was 12, man, that is insane, yeah.
Speaker 2:I had to do the math because I was like she's 28 now, so that would have been 2015. She was, yeah, like seven, yeah, not six years off of that. No-transcript, that was a bunny quotes for everyone listening.
Speaker 1:No, I think that was awesome. Yeah, all right, let's go into our MVT section. All right, so MVT is most valuable takeaway, where we discuss the most important thing that we learned from the media that we watched. It could be something that extends our knowledge or something that we can apply to our life. It might be something like a piece of dialogue or a thematic moral lesson. Um, we kind of went through yours a little bit earlier in terms of the way that tom grew ben. Did you have any more that you wanted to share? Before I jump into mine?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, I mean I I think I think I wrote a little spiel about it. Just to sort of sum it up is that I think the movie isn't about like some bitch that you know broke my heart one day, and it's not about, um, you know, being loveless and and you know it's it's in the middle, but, um, I think making your life about finding the one like you're like Morpheus in the Matrix or something leaves you as a less interesting person. You know, if you learn about yourself, if you learn about your boundaries, if you learn about where your triggers are, your strengths, your weaknesses, what your values are, then you'll just meet the perfect person. Because of that, you'll be in the places that you were always meant to be, and though people will gravitate to you because you, you've developed a sense of self, and I think a sense of self is really what this film is is really about.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the message yeah, I love that so much because, um, I I sort of looked at this through the the lens of, like attachment styles and looking I'm not a psychologist or any kind of thing like that, but looking at attachment styles and looking, I'm not a psychologist or any kind of thing like that, but looking at attachment styles. It talks about how we can understand people's behavior and emotional incompatibility based on how their relationships were with their you know significant parents or others, and how you form connections. And it was just really apparent to me that these two characters were not connecting in the same way. So, looking at it, I kind of thought that um, like Tom was exhibiting like an anxious attachment where he kind of seeks closeness and fears abandonment. Yeah yeah, he like builds happiness around Summer. He even says at one point you know, she makes me happy.
Speaker 2:Like that's like a red flag line all the time she makes life feel like it's worth living. I think it's something along the lines of what he says which living. I think it's something along the lines of what he says which is like whoa buddy, yeah, and this is what paul says. Even in that scene he goes oh, this isn't good that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:And when you look at that, when I first watched that scene I thought it was just a best friend going like, oh, he's falling head over heels. This is really bad. But when you kind of look at it more deeply, like it is a writing sort of perspective, it's almost like telling the audience this is not good. But, um, you know, I kind of the way that he looks at those ambiguous signals that Summer gives. You know it was good, like to mean something really bad has happened and you know the way that she sort of looks at him across the office means that she's falling more and more in love with him and whenever she would pull away he would cling even harder, like in the bar scene, for example. She had already significantly pulled away and there was a fracturing in the relationship. But then, you know, for him to prove that he loves her and wants that connection, he gets into the fight with somebody who then you know, damaged his ego by saying that he was her boyfriend and that wasn't exactly true. So you know it hit that trigger wound. But it was also like I'm standing up for your honor, I'm doing this to show you how much I care, and it was just a really sort of over the top act to prove something that really wasn't there in the first place. So he's definitely exhibiting that sort of anxious, attached style, whereas Summer very first line of the movie about Summer. It talks about how the one thing she knew about herself after her parents' divorce was that she really loved her long black hair and then she also knew that if she cut it off she didn't feel a thing. So that's like that avoidant sort of partner who you know enjoys the closeness of loving her hair, of loving a partner, but then if it goes away she's never fully committed in order to care about it going in the first place.
Speaker 1:And I think it was interesting to find throughout the movie that both of these characters came from families of like divorced parents and they both developed attachment styles that were completely different for each other. And I found it really nice that through the events of the story and you know, tom eventually realizing that you know the relationship wasn't for her, uh, zoe's character of summer moving on quite quickly and pulling away, and they both do go through that growth and it's through things like you just mentioned before about how you know you learn how to, how to stop reacting to things in a sort of visceral way. You sort of risk being authentic and direct with people. You learn to be assertive, you know, you heal your own shame, your self-esteem, you go through your own sort of passions and you you dive into yourself and you create that sense of self. And that's what I kind of got from this is that the characters are fluid, as attachment styles are fluid as well.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say. I'll throw in there that as an example of secure, you have Paul, who has a secure attachment style. He's very happy with this relationship, he loves her dearly. And you also have Clark Gregg, who I can't remember his name, but Tom's boss, but I can't remember his character name. But he is also someone who has quite a secure dance asset. So he has quite a secure attachment style and I think it's really important to pepper these different perspectives. Also, you have like the chronically lonely and probably a little bit too sex obsessed Mackenzie character. So it's like you've got the different sides of things not saying that Mackenzie is so it's like you've got the different sides of things Not saying that Mackenzie is a secure attachment style, just a loner, I guess. But yeah, it's really good to have those as a contrast so that it contextualizes the main storyline, which I thought was fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, I think, going and crediting what you said before about how you know Tom isn't fully out of the woods yet in terms of his emotional journey.
Speaker 1:It's very hard to sort of change those habits that you have, and it was very like thank you for sharing it, because it was very eye-opening and really sort of looking at the fact that the next journey he goes on with this person might be him more exploring more fully what it is for him to be in love with someone, or, you know, what is his sense of self, how does he kind of act in a relationship? So that growth is still apparent there as well, which is good to see, which that was. My sort of takeaway from this is that those attachment styles are fluid and they can change. It takes some work, but then also, you know, looking at those characters all together, he can definitely see examples of those sorts of things within the movie too. Yeah, I agree, absolutely yeah. So that was that. But before we end, we did promise you guys some growth and gratitude, so each week we usually share a personal growth or gratitude for the week that we are, you know, happy to share on the podcast.
Speaker 2:So I'd like you to to start first, if you wanted to ben otherwise I can yeah, absolutely I'm grateful for or something you feel like you need to grow from um, well, or uh, maybe I'll leave some of that for my therapist, but, uh, I guess I'm grateful for my therapist, but I mean I'm I'm grateful for my partner.
Speaker 2:Um, we met during a polyamorous kind of situation and it really like in the same way that this film kind of shows you different attachment styles and relationship types. Being polyamorous means that you can kind of see the things that you really want from a relationship and you realize the things that you kind of don't. And that was a big thing for me when I met my partner, because they have a really good communication style and they also really quite actively wanted me to feel better about a lot of things, where they could see that I wasn't feeling good about things and I simultaneously I didn't want to like rely on that in the way that Tom does, as the sort of external validation feed me quickly and I, you know I, I was we just had this kind of symbiotic, um, help for each other. You know, like we were just naturally giving each other what we kind of wanted and I guess that kind of comes down to was that the love languages that people say, which I think is more complex than you know words and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but um but I've with me.
Speaker 1:I love them very much, so that's definitely my gratitude. Thank you so much for sharing that. I I appreciate that and mine's very similar to yours as well, after watching this movie and even before that. Obviously, I'm very grateful to my my partner, carly. I've talked about her on the podcast before.
Speaker 1:Um, she has helped me grow in numerous kinds of ways. You know, previously in relationships I've been very sort of pig-headed and she's kind of the first lady that's like called me out of my shit basically, and it's refreshing and it's awesome. And you know she doesn't like let me get away with anything in that sort of regard, which is good. It makes me introspective and reflect and I'm really thankful for her for seeing and caring and nurturing that sort of side of me and allowing me to reflect and grow through that as well. So I'm also very thankful for my partner. It's awesome to have experienced lots of different kinds of love in lots of different areas and still, you know, have time to find that sense of self within a relationship, which is awesome. So very thankful for that, very grateful for that as well. So thank you so much for sharing Ben. I appreciate that the gratitude and growth parts isn't always easy, but yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. My therapist is trying to get me to do it every night. Yeah, I've done it for today. That's fine, I couldn't. I've got the recording. I'll show it later very good, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:All right, so we are going to sign off now, guys. Uh, thank you so much for joining us. We really encourage you guys to jump onto our socials, whether it be instagram threads or or now, reddit that we have. We usually post an interaction sort of poll every week when an episode is coming out or when I'm recording something, just so we can get some audience feedback not just, you know, talking in an echo chamber. So we really do appreciate it gives us context and we also love to hear what different perspectives are out there for us to really navigate these fandoms. And talked about the films, because the best part about movies is everybody can take a different sort of take from it, which is great. So we are available on Letterboxd as well, if you wanted to join us there, and also Ben's Letterboxd will be in the show notes below. He is Hot Takes Film Club. Is there any way that you want us to shout out or anything you wanted to plug, ben, before we wish our goodbyes?
Speaker 2:No, I think no, it's just if you want to follow me or if you're interested in the kind of things I have to say, then Hot Text Film Club all one word on Instagram Started a year ago and, trucking along, do some deep dives, some current reviews, and also I've got my what I call color the map, which is where I'm trying to watch one film from every country. So there's a variety of new and old and foreign and recent films on there to go through. And if you're interested in Daddio, I did a big deep dive recently on Daddio because, yeah, I'm quite passionate on the writing side of things, so I'd love you to read that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Ben. I really do appreciate your time and thanks for being on the show. I'd be happy to have you on again because this conversation has been really valuable for me and I love watching movies that I would never have watched in the first place. I'd be happy to Thank you so much. Yeah, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate your time and we'll see you next time, guys. Thank you.
