Emily Couch (8:55)

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 Ortega (9:12)

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. And 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 Couch (9:46)

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 Sompali (9:55)

When I was about 9, 10 years old, the only source of entertainment we had in the village that I grew up in, southern India, was an open air theater where we could watch old Indian movies for Free. And 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 there, fancy theaters. And one of these bus rides. 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. And 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. But the magic was gone because we knew that real life there is no dishoom sound, there are no sound effects. It just a bunch of old guys trying to hit each other. And really the magic that we used to see on the silver screen was gone. It was sort of a coming of age story for us.

Emily Couch (11:36)

That was Bhaskar Sompali. If you've got a cinematic story and would like to pitch us, you can call our pitch line at 1-877-7799 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 main stages 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.

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Frank Ortega (14:18)

And the Oscar goes too on.

Emily Couch (14:21)

This episode, we're exploring the power of cinema. We watched a lot of old movies in my house. My mom took great pride in 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 nauseum. 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 the theme of the night was between words. Here's Britney live at the mall.

Brittney Cooper (15:10)

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. 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. 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. Imagine further explaining this to your family at Thanksgiving. 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. When Kimberly, Elisa'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. You're a professional unliker of everything. Or as they say in the hood, I'm getting a PhD play a hating degree. It occurs to me, though, that I like these movies. So I'm gonna keep going, but I'm just not gonna tell my feminist friends how much I like the movies, 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. And I'm also thinking, this feels a little bit like home. You know, 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, you know, watching one of these plays with my auntie and her laughing hysterically, and I'm sitting there going, like, the play look a little low budget, but Madea is a gun toting a pistol toting granny. And my granny was a pistol toting granny. So it kind of worked for Me. But I was also starting to see what my friends were saying because I went to see the Family that Prays. 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 finish 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. And 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 Feminists Collective. 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. 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, you know, some high profile feminists would be coming through and reading the blog. But like, 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. I think it's a joke, right? But I open the email, I call the number back, and it's not a joke. His assistant gets on the phone and she says, oh, he wants to talk to you. 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 gon do? And the consensus among the feminist cabal is finishing. They're like, we have been waiting our whole careers for this and you have been chosen, so you gotta do that shit. 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. And 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. So right on time, the phone rings. Ms. Cooper, this is Tyler Perry. Hi, Mr. Perry. Nope, call me Tyler. Okay. Call me Brittany. Brittany, 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 want to do this. All right, let's begin with the haves and 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. And 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 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. Like, 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. Brittany, 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. Like, 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 Brittany. 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. And we both screamed because it was like the realest moment in this conversation. 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. And 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 quote, unquote, made it, and we want to do the kind of work that always honors the places where we come from. And 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.

Emily Couch (27:34)

That was Brittney COOPER Brittney Cooper, PhD, 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.

Brittney Cooper (27:55)

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 Jelowski. This episode of the Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Dunes, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Mark Solinger. The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Kate Tellers, Marina Clouche, Suzanne Rust, Leanne Gulley and Patricia Urenia. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Rees 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.

Frank Ortega (28:41)

Org.