Host: Emily Couch
Emily: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Emily Couch. And on this episode, [lines from the movies Star Wars, Citizen Kane and Chinatown] Yes, it's The Moth at the movies. The Oscars have got us thinking all about the magic of cinema, and we've got some stories on the power of film and the hold it has on people. So, whether your favorite movie of this year was I Saw the TV Glow, Challengers or The Substance, my favorite movie of 2024. Get your popcorn out and get ready to watch, well, listen to a story.
First, we have Frank Ortega, who told this at a New York City StorySLAM, where theme was Appropriately Enough, Movies. Here's Frank, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Frank: [00:00:48] I love movies. It's hard not to. I mean, you'd have to say, like, I don't love dreaming. I grew up watching them. One of my memories, a few times I was alone with my mom, we had time together was The Oscars. When they went really late, everyone else would go to bed, and she and I would sit up on the couch and watch it to the end. She would make these special snacks that she never made at any other time. And then, I got a Super 8 camera and a video camera, and I would do this stuff in high school and then in college. It was just so exciting.
And so, I graduated, and then I came to New York. I was just itching to make movies. It was like hitting a brick wall at 90 miles an hour, [audience laughter] because it's like, you need to work, you need rent, you need-- Both my parents were very sarcastic about that line of work. My mom would be like, “Well, I'm sure you could go to an employment agency and just say that you want to be a director.” [audience laughter] And that's expressing love, “Dear child,” and disapproval at the same time. [audience laughter] So, I got my second job-- All the jobs were horrible, the early jobs. And of course, I was sending out resumes everywhere. Film crew, anything, anything. Anything. Because I did a lot of film work and I'm fast on my feet, nothing. So, I ended up at the Yale Club.
This is a horrible job, the front desk. And one morning, I'd done the night shift. This is the early 1980s. And so, I come out at 08:00 in the morning after a whole night at that place, and I'm still wearing the hideous outfit. I hate that Yale Club outfit. You got to wear this blue polyester jacket, the gray polyester pants, the fake leather belt, the fake leather shoes and the Yale Club tie, which they give you. I'm walking up to my horrible tram ride to Roosevelt Island, which is like the island of death. [audience laughter] It was such a weird place back then.
I'm walking up and there on the street, almost to mock me, is that whole Hollywood setup. You know, the trucks, the lights, the gaffers, the rigs, the equipment, the craft table, the whole thing. It made me like, ugh. I walk past it, and I walk about a block and this thing rises up in me. This whole rebel yell comes up out of me. It's like my body without my mind turns around and starts walking right back to the hive of the activity. The set. It was a restaurant, and the whole thing was focused in there. While I'm walking, I'm then having this quick conversation, “What are we doing? We're going to-- We're going to-- We're going to get a job. We're going to do this.” “Well, what do you know? What are you good at?” “I'm good at-- Okay, I'm good at painting, and I'm good at building and I'm good at creating art.” “Okay, so not lighting, not electricity, not--" “Oh, okay. So, art. Art department. Art.”
“Where's your art director?” “Oh, he's inside, but you don't want to talk to him now.” I go, “Oh, no, no. no. I do. I do. What's his name?” “Well, it's James, of course.” “Yeah. Okay, well, I got to talk to him.” “No, no, he's in a really bad mood right now.” “Why?” “We're totally under budget. We're overstretched. It's a real disaster. He's really mad.” “Okay, thanks. Where is he?” “Over there.” I go, right over there. “Excuse me, where's James?” I go right up to. “Hey, James.” He goes, “What the-- who are you?”
“My name is Frank Ortega. I'm from Wisconsin. [audience laughter] I studied film and I'd love to work in movies. I want to work in movies.” “What the fuck. What are you doing here?” And I said, “No, no, no. I can work for you.” He goes, “No, the reason-- No, we're crazy right now. I don't have-- We're a mess right now. This is a disaster scene. Get the fuck out of here.” I go, “But no, no, I can work.” And my brain was flying and I go, “I can work for free.” [audience laughter] And he froze. He froze. He was really a nervous guy and he froze. He goes, “What?” [audience laughter] And I said, “I can work for free.” And he just goes, “Oh, let me go check with legal one second.” [audience laughter] He goes away and he comes back like a minute later, he goes, “If you just sign the waivers here, you can work for us. You can work for me, a production assistant for free.” And I said, “Yeah.” He really said, “And when can you start?”
I had just worked right the whole night through. I loved that moment, because it's true. I said, “Right now.” [audience laughter] So, I began working. It was this horrific disaster of a movie. It's not on Netflix. [audience laughter] No, no, but it had Elliott Gould, Shelley Winters, Carol Kane, Margaux Hemingway, Sid Caesar. I mean, it was Over the Brooklyn Bridge. And so, okay, it was this epic education in guerrilla filmmaking, because it was super low budget. What not to do, what to do. I got to meet everybody that was there. I worked on the sets. After a while, they put me on the payroll. They even gave me back pay to the day that I walked in and did that stunt. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it was $50 a day for 15-hour days. [audience laughter] Come on, come on. We're adults here, come on. And so, when I finally got hired, that moment I got hired, I was still. I didn't explain this part, but for five days until I really got hired, I worked both jobs. I did the night shift at the Yale Club. Seriously, I was 21. I did the nightclub and I told-- Because I didn't want to quit the Yale Club until I was sure I was going to get hired. I got hired. I worked that last shift at the Yale Club. I signed a note, really a vicious note, “Goodbye, no notice.” [audience laughter] But this is beautifully written. Beautifully written.
I went back to my building, it was 01:00 in the morning to the trash compactor chute, and I stood there and it goes down to the furnace. I took off that blue jacket, and I took off the white shirt, I took off that tie, I took off the gray slacks, I took off that leather belt, I took off the shoes, I took off those gray polyester socks, foom. I stood there in my underwear at 01:00 in the morning in my empty apartment building and I was ready to enter my life of movies.
[cheers and applause]
Emily: [00:07:01] That was Frank Ortega. Frank has been a writer and performer his entire life and knows no other way to live. He never writes fiction, because few even believe the amazing things that happen in real life if one pays attention. We asked Frank if he had any reflections on his movie experience, here's what he had to say.
Frank: [00:07:17] That film I worked on Over the Brooklyn Bridge was shot in just five weeks instead of the scheduled six and way under budget which made for some crazy times. I got to have a great talk with Sid Caesar about the old days in showbiz. I love dressing the sets down to the smallest details and realizing how any movie becomes a documentary of a time, a place and people as real as anything by Ken Burns.
Emily: [00:07:52] If you'd like to tell a story about cinema or anything else really, you can always send us in a pitch. Here's a pitch about growing up at the movies that we really enjoyed.
Bhaskar: [00:08:00] When I was about 9, 10 years old, the only source of entertainment we had in the village that I grew up, in the southern India, was an open-air theater where we could watch old Indian movies for free. It was a thrill to watch all these Indian movie stars in their shiny shirts and bell bottom pants, and David Bowie inspired hairstyles on the screen. But what we enjoyed the most was these fight scenes between the hero and the villain, and particularly the sound effects where the punches would land with the sound of dishoom. It was so popular that kids in the playground, we thought that's how real people fought. So, whenever we fought each other, we would just make the sounds ourselves.
Well, over time as we got older, we would go into town to watch movies in the theater, the fancy theaters. One of these bus rides-- Well, taking them was a rite of passage to adulthood, so we would go there and during one of these bus rides, a couple of drunk villagers started fighting each other. It was so funny to watch, because they were drunk, old, out of shape guys trying to punch each other and nothing would land. Instead, they ended up hitting all the handlebars and other passengers and they were kicked out mid ride. But we did go and watch that movie after that. The magic was gone, because we knew that in real life, there is no dishoom sound. There are no signs of sound effects. It's just a bunch of old guys trying to hit each other. The reel magic that we used to see on the silver screen was gone. It was sort of a coming-of-age story for us.
Emily: [00:09:41] That was Bhaskar Sompali. If you've got a cinematic story and would like to pitch us, you can call our pitch line at 1-877-799-MOTH, or just leave a pitch on the website, themoth.org. Be sure to take a look at the tips and tricks on our website about how to make a great pitch. Many of these pitches are developed for Moth Mainstages each year and we'd love to hear from you.
We'll be back in a second after a short intermission. Feel free to get some popcorn, soda and maybe even some gummy worms while you wait for the next story.
[applause]
Moderator: [00:10:14] And the Oscar Goes Too.
Emily: [00:10:16] On this episode, we're exploring the power of cinema. We watched a lot of old movies in my house. My mom took great pride introducing me to some of her favorites. The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins. We'd go to the library and rent the VHS’, in case you'd like to guess my age. I was a really obsessive kid and I'd end up falling in love with whatever movie she showed me and watching it on repeat ad nauseam. I think she ended up wanting to kill me and needing a massive break from her own favorites. Sorry, Mom.
So, whether your favorite Julie Andrews movie is The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins or The Princess Diaries, we've all got strong opinions about film. And our final story is a favorite from the archive about what happened when one woman shared some of her opinions. Brittney Cooper told this at a Princeton Mainstage, where theme of the night was Between Worlds. Here's Brittney, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Brittney: [00:11:05] So, in the early 2000s, I became the first person in my family to graduate from college and to go on to pursue a PhD. [audience cheers and applause]
Now, when you go to med school, you become a doctor. And when you go to law school, you become a lawyer. But when you go to grad school in the humanities, you become a critic. [audience laughter] Imagine studying for six years for the express privilege of telling everybody who's ever written or said anything what is wrong with what they have said. [audience laughter] Imagine further explaining this to your family at Thanksgiving. [audience laughter] So, one of the ways that I would cope with this unfortunate turn of events, is that I would go to the movies, typically a matinee on a Wednesday. And my favorite filmmaker at the time was Tyler Perry.
When I went to see Diary of a Mad Black Woman, I thought to myself, here is a man who understands black women who have been done wrong. [audience laughter] When Kimberly Elise's character slaps the shit out of the husband that has been abusing her, I'm in the theater hooting and hollering with all the ladies in there. But at the same time, I'm also becoming a feminist. And you know, I'm down for smashing the patriarchy and everything, but nobody tells you that the first casualty of a feminist analysis is movies. You hate them, because you see the patriarchy absolutely everywhere. You become a feminist and suddenly, you can't like anything anymore. [audience laughter] You're a professional unliker of everything. Or, as they say in the hood, “I'm getting a PhD to play a hating degree.” [audience laughter]
It occurs to me though that I like these movies, so I'm going to keep going. But I'm just not going to tell my feminist friends how much I like the movies. [audience laughter] Because every time I talk to them, they're using language like tropes and representations and how problematic the films are. But what I'm thinking to myself is, but in Daddy's Little Girls, Gabrielle Union's character snags fine ass Idris Elba, and I don't know a straight black girl that don't want Idris. [audience laughter] And I'm also thinking, this feels a little bit like home. Tyler Perry built his career making these Madea stage plays, and there was like an underground economy of VHS dubs that you could get of these plays.
So, I remember watching one of these plays with my auntie and her laughing hysterically, and I'm sitting there going like, “The play looked a little low budget,” [audience laughter] but Madea is a gun-toting, a pistol-toting granny. And my granny was a pistol toting granny. So, it worked for me. But I was also starting to see what my friends were saying, because I went to see The Family That Preys. And the female character in that movie is so villainized that by the time her husband knocks the shit out of her, the women in the theater are hooting and hollering again. But this time, I'm not hollering with them. Because you know, I'm a feminist now and that's domestic violence. So, I'm starting to think, maybe me and Tyler might have to break up.
Fast forward. I finished my PhD. I get a job as a professor at a big state school in the deep south. Tyler and I have broken up, but his star has continued to ascend. I'm trying to figure out how to wear this big old title as both a PhD and a critic, even though I come from people that don't really have fancy titles. So, I call up my girls, who are mostly first -generation PhDs themselves, and we form a crew and a blog called the Crunk Feminist Collective. [audience cheers and applause]
So, around this time, Tyler puts out a show called The Haves and the Have Nots. And like a good feminist, I tune in to hate watch the show. [audience laughter] And as suspected, as expected, he gives me something to hate. So, the next day, I go to the Crunk Feminist Collective blog and I pin a post called Tyler Perry Hates Black Women. Now, let me say that some high-profile feminists would be coming through and reading the blog. But I didn't really think any famous-famous people were reading the blog. So, imagine my surprise the next day when I get an email. Subject line, Tyler Perry wants to talk to you. [audience laughter]
I think it's a joke, right? But I open the email, I call the number back. It's not a joke. His assistant gets on the phone and she says, “Oh, he wants to talk to you.” [audience laughter] So, we set up a time to talk like the next day. And the day in between, I spend my time calling all my homegirls, going, “What we going to do?” [audience laughter] The consensus among the feminist cabal is finishing. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
They're like, “We have been waiting our whole careers for this, and you have been chosen, so you got to do that shit.” [audience laughter] And I'm like, “But it's Tyler Perry though.” So, the next day. I've now moved to New Jersey. I'm a professor at a state school in New Jersey. I'm sitting in my one-bedroom apartment with peeling paint. The person that lives across the hall from me is a grad student, because it turns out the professor money doesn't go as far as you think it does when you don't come from generational wealth. I'm waiting on a famous millionaire filmmaker to call my phone, and I also have an intense need to pee, but I'm afraid to make a run for it. [audience laughter]
So, right on time, the phone rings. “Ms. Cooper, this is Tyler Perry.” “Hi, Mr. Perry.” “Nope, call me Tyler.” “Okay. Call me Brittney.” “Brittney, you wrote some things about me that I want to talk about.” “Well, Tyler, let me begin by saying that I've seen all of your films and I really respect.” “Nope. You said that I hate black women, and I don't understand how you came to that conclusion.” Deep breath. He really wanted to do this. “All right, let's begin with The Haves and the Have Nots. Why in the first three minutes of that show do we have a maid, a sex worker and a rich black bitch? These are tropes of black womanhood.”
And he stops me, he says, “Tropes? Let me explain something to you. You're talking to a man with a 12th grade education. So, I don't know anything about tropes. But when I was growing up, the person that lived next door to me was a maid and her daughter was a sex worker and they were like the nicest people ever.” And so, then I realized, like, “Oh, wow. Yeah, he's Tyler Perry and he's rich and I'm not rich, but I have a PhD and he has a 12th grade education.” And so, all of a sudden, maybe the playing field is not so disparate as I thought. I also think to myself, like, my mother was a single mother with a 12th grade education and my uncle, who Tyler Perry is starting to sound like on the phone, also had a 12th grade education. So, I realized, like, these are the people that raised me and let me switch my tack up a little bit.
So, I say, “Tyler, you know, you and I have a lot in common. We're both from Louisiana. We were both raised in the church, right? We both had pistol toting grannies. We both had an abusive parent.” And he said, “Oh, wow, I didn't know that about you, but I just knew you were sharp. And now that I do know this about you, I don't understand why you don't understand why what I'm trying to do in my movies.” And so, I say to him, “Okay, here's really my question. Why are the educated black girls in your movies such bitches to everybody?” And he says, “Well, because there was a whole branch of my family growing up. They all went to college and they all treated everybody like trash.”
And I realized, damn, that's exactly the thing that I feared that having all of this education might make me unrecognizable to the people that raised me. Because the thing that I loved about Tyler Perry's movies, is that he rides hard for working class black girls, the girls that work behind the counter at Waffle House, the church ladies, right? The grannies that press $20 into your hand when you come home from school. Those are the kind of folks that raised me, and I wanted to be recognizable to them. So, I'm thinking about all this, and Tyler breaks in, “Brittney, something urgent just came up. Can I call you back? I'll call you back in 20 minutes.” And I'm like, “Okay.”
So we get off the phone, I run to pee and then I'm sitting in my house going, “Damn, he not going to call me back.” Because I was blowing this conversation and maybe being a little bit of a jerk. But like he said, 20 minutes later, the phone rings. “Tyler, this is Brittney. Where were we?” So, with my 20 minutes of hindsight and hastily gained wisdom, I say, “Here's the thing I'm really trying to say Tyler. Is it possible for you to uplift working class black girls in your films without throwing the educated sisters under the bus? Because educated girls love your movies too.”
And he says, “You know what? That's profound. Can I uplift one group without demonizing another group. I'mma think about that.” And so, then I said to him, “Now, if you want to keep talking about this, I'm a professional critic and I'm happy to offer these.” “Nope,” he says, “I'm never calling your ass again.” [audience laughter] We both screamed, because it was like the realest moment in this conversation. [audience laughter] But he said, “I always like to talk to my critics. I learn a lot from them.” And I said, “Fair enough,” and we hung up. I was left thinking that the thing that connects Tyler Perry and me, is that we're both working class Southern folks who in our respective fields have “made it.” And we want to do the kind of work that always honors the places where we come from.
I realized that his work called up for me the fear that maybe I would be losing touch with the folks that meant the most to me. But what I also thought was that I'm used to men dismissing me, because I have loud opinions and I'm brash and unapologetic and I'm a feminist. But when this millionaire filmmaker read the little old blog of a not even thousandaire professor and heard me say that the way he represented girls like me in his movies essentially hurt my feelings, he didn't ignore me or act like he hadn't seen it or heard it. He picked up the phone and called me. And then, he listened and called back and listened again until he could find something useful to make his art better. I had been so swift and sure to proclaim that Tyler Perry hates black women. And I was left to consider, maybe listening is what love looks like after all. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Emily: [00:23:30] That was Brittney Cooper. Brittney Cooper, Ph.D., is professor of Gender Studies at Rutgers, co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Eloquent Rage.
That's it for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, we hope that the next movie you watch is spectacular. Roll credits.
Marc: [00:23:51] Emily Couch is a producer on The Moth artistic team. She loves to work behind the scenes to spread the beauty of true personal stories to listeners around the world.
Brittney Cooper's story was directed by Michelle Jalowski. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger.
The rest of The Moth’s leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jenifer Hixson, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Lee Ann Gullie and Patricia Ureña. The Moth Podcast is presented by Audacy. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reis-Dennis.
All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.