[FINAL RERUN]
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Katie Marinello: [00:00:00] Hi guys. It's Katie hopping to let you know that we're taking this week off, uh, we're a little behind on our recording schedule, but also it is disability pride month. Which celebrates the history, achievements, and experiences of people with disabilities. And the 1990s signing of the American With Disabilities Act.

So we thought this would be a great opportunity to rerun this episode about leave yesterday behind, which we titled Let's Talk About Six. Carrie, um, of the movies we have watched so far that I haven't seen. This is probably my favorite and it's only really available on YouTube. So if you're looking for something to watch this weekend, long weekend highly recommend. And I really appreciated what it allowed Claire and I to discuss about disability rights, ableism, lots of other juicy stuff. So I hope you enjoy and we'll be back in two weeks with Happily Ever After.....

Claire Fisher: hello and welcome to Carried Far, far Away, a podcast project where we are watching and reading everything that Carrie Fisher did during her short life and storied career. I'm Claire Fisher. I'm Katie Marine, and today [00:01:00] we're talking about Leave Yesterday Behind. Yes. I am so excited to discuss this with you.

Katie Marinello: I've been looking forward to it for a week. Well, why don't you start by telling our audience what this movie is about. What is this movie about? Alright. You ready to time me? All right, go for it. Carrie Fisher plays Marni Clarkson, an accomplished harness racer. She lives on the next ranch over from Doc, the local doctor whose grandson Paul has come to stay with him.

After being paralyzed in a polo accident, Paul's resentful and irritable and unwilling to use his wheelchair or learn to navigate the world. One day he throws something through a window, which spooks the horse Marni is harnessed to. She gives him what for which her fiance and father praises her for, but she's embarrassed when she learns that Paul's injury.

Paul refuses to hear her apology, but they reconnect when he enlists her help to rescue doc during a flash flood. They begin spending time together and eventually share a kiss after she witnesses wins her harness race. She tells him she's fallen for him, but he's afraid to let her in because he is not sure if he'll ever be able to have sex.

She permit persists despite her father's strong and bigoted protestations. Her father is forced to [00:02:00] ask for Paul's veterinary expertise when Marnie's horse begins to fall. And after the three of them deliver the horse together, seems they're willing to give it a shot. Okay. Did I get that right? I actually couldn't remember how it ended.

Claire Fisher: Um, well, Marni goes to him and he gives a little speech about how the things he'll never be able to do. And he says, dance and she says, you won't do dance. Dance. Oh yeah, we're gonna go dance. Yeah. Okay. She says, you won't do me out of a dance. And she spins his wheelchair around. So I thought that was pretty cute 'cause I, the song saved, the last dance for me was written by a man who was a wheelchair user.

Watching his wife dance with all of their friends at parties. Mm-hmm. And he wrote the song Don't Home, you Gonna Be So Say the Last Dance for me. He actually had had polio anyway. Okay. Alright, cool. So I thought that was super cute. Last scene. Yes. Because I know the story of Doc Ps. Anyway, let us discuss [00:03:00] the times in which this was made.

Yeah. Briefly. It's apparently set in 1975, they mentioned that's the year at the Polo Tournament. Okay. But it aired May 14th, 1978 as an A B, C Sunday night movie. Mm-hmm. Which we remember from when we were kids. It was a regular program from 1964 to 1998. It would mainly air theatrical movies, which then declined in popularity 'cause HBO got invented eight.

However, the idea of the A BC Sunday night movie still technically exists. 'cause they still use that branding when they show the 10 Commandments on Easter and the Sound of Music just before Christmas every year. Oh. So A B, C still does this. Okay, so May 14th, 1978. The number one movie in America was one I have never even heard of.

Fist spelled out. F Oh period. I. Period. ST, period. Starring to Live Lester Stallone loosely based on the Jimmy Hoffa story. Have you ever heard of that? No. Okay. So if you didn't wanna go out and watch that at the movie theater, you [00:04:00] could stay home and watch. Leave Yesterday by, that was, sorry. The Now World famous Carrie Fisher and the then world famous John Ritter.

John Ritter, yeah. Was also, I don't know if you noticed, but like the commercial breaks during the a BBC Sunday night movie, were promoting three's company. So like, oh yeah, I noticed a BC was show was using him as much as they can. Actually, I made a note of this. What a lineup they were promoting. Yeah, it was Happy Days.

Katie Marinello: Laverne and Shirley, and then three's company. I was like, damn, that would've been a really cool hour and a half to be alive for back then. I guess it would have. We also saw John Ritter and Ringo, which I think also air on A, B, C. So I feel like they kind of were just like, oh, any person they had on the roster would be in the A, B, C Sunday night movie.

Claire Fisher: Right. But this falls into, unlike the theatrical movies that would be shown on a, B, C Sunday night, this falls into the uh, made for TV issue. Movie. Very special episode. Movie. Okay. 'cause this is a movie about disability. So I just wanted to briefly mention where in the timeline of disability rights we [00:05:00] land, and it's not great until 1974, there were still ugly laws in some cities that allowed police to arrest and jail people for being disfigured in public.

What the last one was repealed in Chicago in 1974. Oh my God. The first legislation guaranteeing an appropriate public education for children with disabilities was passed in 1975. So for that year. Cool. Yeah. Until year, the year that this takes place, you could be denied access to public school for having a disability of any kind.

There were, at this time, no employment protections for adults with disabilities, which meant there was precious little representation for them in public life. Judy Huon, a famous disability rights advocate, was denied a teaching license in New York State in 1970 because her wheelchair was a quote unquote fire hazard.

Katie Marinello: Jesus. She then became a successful activist and eventually served in Bill Clinton's Department of Education. It's a happy ending for her, but it goes [00:06:00] to show that in the seventies this perception was very negative. Specific to the year that this came out in July, 1978 was the first transit protest in Denver, Colorado.

Claire Fisher: 19 wheelchair users blocked buses with their wheelchairs, chanting we will ride to demonstrate the inaccessibility of public transportation. Their protests actually led to the founding of Americans with Disabilities for Accessible Public Transportation or Adapt, which was founded in 1983. And their advocacy is credited with a lot of what got written into the Americans with Disabilities Act of in 1991.

So at this time, you know, the plot involves Paul being injured when he's in college, pre-veterinary program. Mm-hmm. At the time, colleges did not legally have to accommodate. Right, any type of disability. It was only for children. I was thinking about that 'cause they don't really mention that. He just like chooses to take some time off, which I think is super understandable.

Katie Marinello: Mm-hmm. When you've had like a life changing injury like that. But yeah, they never really mentioned that. But I did think of that. There was no [00:07:00] law saying they had to accommodate. Absolutely not. It would've been entirely at their own discretion. Sandy Greenberg, who is kind of in Carrie Fisher's broader social circle, 'cause his college roommate and good friend Art Garfunkel was in a band with Paul Simon who married Carrie Fisher.

Yes. I don't know if they ever met, but like. Six Degrees, Kevin Beacon right there. Six Degrees of separation. Sandy Greenberg is now a very big name in the world of accessible tech for vision impairments. Mm-hmm. And blindness, and has funded a lot of research into the causes of blindness. Famously went blind as a sophomore at Columbia University and the advice he was given was, oh, well you'll have to drop out and go to a vocational program where you can learn to Cain chairs.

Claire Fisher: There's no chance you can finish at Columbia. Right. And Columbia, since they didn't have to accommodate him, they didn't see why they should. Right. And he only finished his education because Art Garfunkel thought that was bullshit. And read him the textbooks out loud and convinced their friends who owned typewriters to let him dictate his papers [00:08:00] and got tape recorders to record the lectures for him and all volunteer entirely amateur.

Accessibility plan formed only by his friends, right? Mm-hmm. Is what got him through Columbia. And then he went on to graduate from Harvard Law and invent some of the earliest text to speech algorithms and become a multimillionaire and actually pay for the studio time at which they recorded the sounds of silence.

Hello? Darkness.

I've come to talk with you again. It goes to show that at the time, only if people chose to be kind could disabled people have a life, really. Right. Can I make a quick side note? What last night when I was doing the people who aren't. Carrie Fisher Research, I, I had texted you that I was gonna do it and then I put on this temporary [00:09:00] tattoo that you have to keep on for an hour.

Katie Marinello: And so suddenly I found myself with only one hand. So I enabled my computer's voice to text feature. I didn't even make the connection at the time. But since you said that, that you were using accessible tech that mm-hmm. Was invented to help people with disabilities, but now makes the world easier for people who are multitasking, right.

Claire Fisher: Everybody. Yeah, exactly. Siri, yeah, right. Alexa, all of that stuff. Go Google a curb cut effect people. It's really important. Okay, so before we get too far into the analysis of the movie, obviously you are my sister. I have known you a very long time. This movie obviously resonated with me as your sister, and I know that you have some personal experience with this.

Katie Marinello: So if you wanna talk about back injuries during college, we'll talk about it as much or as little as you want to. Like Paul John Reuter's character in this movie. I had a spinal injury when I was 19 in the middle of college, albeit not one that required [00:10:00] me to start using a wheelchair on a permanent basis.

Claire Fisher: However, I recognized a lot of the reactions that Paul's friends and family have. The well-meaning babying, the unwarranted pity. Marnie's father asks him, oh, can they give you any hope? And I hate that question. Mm-hmm. Because what, is there ever gonna be hope that one day I'll wake up and not be disabled?

No. Right. Right. And Paul sort of get awkwardly has to say, well, there's always hope. That's all you can say as a disabled person. Mm-hmm. When people ask you that. Right. And you know, the day that the doctor told me my nerve damage was permanent, I was distraught. Mm-hmm. Just as Paul is initially quite angry and upset in this movie, that's very normal human reaction that I also had.

Katie Marinello: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, when you become disabled and a person can become disabled at any age and without any warning as I learned. Mm-hmm. Unless you're ready to like. Kill yourself. [00:11:00] Mm-hmm. You just have to learn to live with it. Mm-hmm. You do have to learn to do things differently and there will be things you just can't do.

Claire Fisher: When I was watching, there's a scene in this movie where John Ritter crawls across a river 'cause he can't get his wheelchair across it. I mean, I remember a day I couldn't run across the street quickly enough to move mom's car. Mom was moving you into a new apartment and the car was sort of parked in a sketchy place.

I needed to move the car, but I couldn't run across the street. I could only limp across the street. And so the police got there before I did and mom got the ticket. Right. You know, there are things that you will not be able to do or at least not do as fast as well as someone who doesn't have a spinal injury.

Mm-hmm. And those things never leave your mind. The things you won't do. Yeah. Before I was injured, I was a volunteer emergency medical technician. I was a swing dancer. I used to climb trees, I used to roughhouse with kids. I was babysitting. I used to carry boxes of sheet music up and down the million dollar staircase at Boston College 'cause I was a music librarian.

I will probably never again be able [00:12:00] to lift anything that is heavier than 35 pounds. Mm-hmm. I did lose my EMT license. I dance, but I don't flip anymore. Yeah. And I never will again. Yeah. And I know that this movie makes a really big deal of sex after disability, and I think in a somewhat dated way, which we can talk about in a minute, I'll spare the audience details, but my injury did affect my relationship.

My husband and I had only been dating for three months when I had my spinal injury. So my physical challenges did affect the entire dynamic of our relationship. For us, it's normal, but for other people it continues to be weird. Yeah. Like Brian gets comments from strangers on how great a guy he is. Right, right.

Like when they see him help me walk across uneven ground when he gets me to medical appointments, I mean, yesterday morning we had to be somewhere at 5 45 in the morning and it snowed and we made it and they were like, oh, your husband came. No, this is a random stranger. Thank you. Right. Well, you weren't allowed to leave without somebody to drive you home.

Katie Marinello: Right? [00:13:00] Exactly. So who was I? Well, they think he was gonna send you an Uber. Right? Exactly. Before we were married, I had signed paperwork that would let him be with me in the, the recovery room after operations. Mm-hmm. And there was a certain amount of your boyfriends here as if people don't have boyfriends, if they have spinal injuries.

Right. Like, like it was normal that my parents were there. Right. But why did I have a boyfriend? Right, right. The thing is, he is a great guy, but the comments that we get sometimes sort of, you can see that other people are seeing us not as partners, but as caregiver and patient. Right? Mm-hmm. And let me say for the record, being disabled doesn't mean that you don't have a relationship with an equal partner, right?

Claire Fisher: Mm-hmm. Even though he, there's an element of him having to take care of me, we are still partners, right? And I think that a huge part of the third act of this movie is that people. Including Paul, don't believe that Paul will ever have a normal relationship. Right. That's not true. And Marni does not have that.

Katie Marinello: Marni doesn't have that delusion. Marni is [00:14:00] correct in saying mm-hmm. That you, you still have a life. Yeah. You still have things to offer in a relationship. Yeah. That's why from a personal level, this movie was, it was difficult to watch. 'cause it was very familiar some of the conversations that I saw him have.

So let's get into it a little bit. I'll just briefly talk about actors who aren't. Carrie Fisher. Uh, there aren't many because it's a pretty small cast. John Ritter, we talked about last week, best known for three's company playing Jack Tripper, who was a chef who pretended to be gay in order to share an apartment with two attractive ladies.

We did not say that last week, and I just feel like I need to remind people that that is the plot of Three's company and it was on for like eight years and then he famously died during his comeback series. Eight Simple Rules, but interesting notes that I found for this production. So his parents were actually both in show business.

His dad was a legendary country singer and actor, text Ritter, and his mother was an actress. Her name was Dorothy Faye, and his older brother Tom, actually had Cere Cerebral Palsy. So I looked it up. It seems [00:15:00] now he is in a wheelchair, but there are pictures of him walking red carpets with John Ritter. So I don't believe that he was in a wheelchair at the time that this movie was made, but still it would've given John some context, right?

For. Physical disabilities. Mm. Buddy Epson, best known as Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies. Well listen to a story about a man named Jed Poor out near fair, kept Stanley Fed, and then one day he was shooting at some food and up through the ground comm bubble and CR oil that is black gold Texas tea oil.

That is so, but he took kind of a circuitous route to get there. He was actually a dancer in the late twenties on Broadway. And then this touch home for me because he formed a vaudeville act with his sister. Oh. And then they, they also took that to Broadway and then they both actually received MGM contracts, but then she retired and Louis B.

Mayer offered him [00:16:00] an exclusive contract in 1938. But he turned it down. And because nobody has ever told a story that's positive about Louis B. Mayer, he obviously threatened that he would never. Get a job in Hollywood again. But he was offered the role of, do you know the Tin Man or uh, originally the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

Right. And then he switched with Ray Bulger. The guy who was gonna play the Tin Man had a bad reaction to the makeup, right? No. Oh, he switched with Ray Bulger, who was cast as the Tin Man. Then he became ill from the aluminum makeup. Mm. And he was replaced by Jack Haley. So he was not in the Wizard of Oz.

So probably he thought that that was it. Right. Like he wasn't in this massive movie. He went back to the stage and he was only in like a couple of movies between then and Davy Crockett, king of the Wild Front Frontier, which was a movie that he was cast in. And then in 1962, so he was 54 when he started the Beverly Hillbillies.

I think it's a really nice [00:17:00] story of kinda late blooming or like thinking that your life is over and getting another chance. Right. And then he was also Barnaby Jones. Um, which was in 1973. Yeah. I think working in stage is pretty respectable though. I don't think he thought his life was over. Oh, absolutely.

Claire Fisher: You're right. You're right, you're right. But you know what I mean, like Yeah. It's a ni it's an interesting comeback story. And this movie then came out five years after Barnaby Jones had ended. Okay. Ed Nelson, who plays Marnie's father, Mr. Clarkson, he's best known as Dr. Michael Rossi in the television series, Peyton Place.

Katie Marinello: Um, apparently he went to college according to IMDB. Think he's gonna be a lawyer. But then he quote caught the acting bug. He left college after two years. He went to the New York School of Radio and Television. He appeared in episodes of many TV programs and more than 50 movies and hundreds of stays, protections.

And he was also a host on the morning talk show, the Ed Nelson Show. And another beautiful story of late blooming. He went back to school in 1999 and finished his bachelor's degree at the age of 71. Huh. [00:18:00] And then Carmen Zapata, who plays Connie the housekeeper, she is often referred to as quote, the First Lady of Hispanic Theater.

She's actually best known for starring as the Town Mayor for nine seasons on the PBS bilingual television show, Villa Agar, which started in 1973. So she started in movies, wasn't really getting the parts that she wanted for stereotypical reasons. Ended up actually pulling out of that for a while and being standup comedian for several years.

Okay. And she actually changed her name to Marge Cameron to encourage non-discriminatory employment. But in 1973, she co-founded the bilingual foundation of the arts, dedicated to bringing Hispanic experience and culture to the Southern California community. And she co-founded the Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Minority Committee as well.

So she ended up doing a lot of ag advocacy for Hispanic actors. And I think that [00:19:00] this. Part is actually, even though it's a Hispanic housekeeper, I thought it was a really interesting take on that, on that character. I don't feel like she is pigeonholed the same way that she might've been in other productions.

No, so, so yeah, those are kind of the main players. Let's get into it a little bit. All right, so Paul is a polo player in college. A California polo player, right? Yeah. Underdog of the polo players. He's on the uc, Davis Polo team, and he's competing in a tournament against Yale, Harvard, and Cornell. And in the last game against Yale, he falls off his horse and initially thinks he's okay.

Gets back on the horse, gets back on the horse. Which they tell you to do. Yeah. Gets back on his horse, wins the game, gets to the airport, gets on the airplane, passes out on the airplane. And this is told in flashback where present day, his whole team, plus his parents are in the hospital waiting room while his grandfather, a surgeon doc [00:20:00] is in with the surgical team.

Claire Fisher: And it turns out that he had a compression fracture of the second lumbar vertebrae with subsequent hemorrhaging. So in other words, he broke his back falling off the horse, but it was a mild enough fracture that he initially didn't notice it. Mm-hmm. And then there was internal bleeding and he's now permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Katie Marinello: Mm-hmm. And very interesting that these stories of disability or mixed ability relationships often have the implication of the sexual nature of the injury. Like I remember. And this is ridiculous. But when Glee was on, so 2009 ish, the guy who was in the wheelchair, he talked about, we weren't sure I was gonna be able to have sex.

And even that was like kind of surprising that they would be that blunt about it. Mm-hmm. But he just asked, he straight up asked his grandfather, well, what about sex? Yeah. And I like, oh, this was the Sunday night family movie, but it was the issue movie. Right, right, right. It, it's a very [00:21:00] interesting conversation and maybe we'll end up cutting it in.

Oh, come on.

Oh God, I'm, I'm only 21. Another helpless, cripple. Disabled, but not helpless. Not helpless. Yeah. Which is interesting 'cause the word disabled had only come into common use within the past 10 years when this movie was made. So you can tell that they're being very careful and specific to have the older character.

Claire Fisher: The medical doctor, be the one who says, no, you're not helpless. You can go back to school. You can learn to do your chores. You can have a normal life. And then when he says, I'm not going to con you, your life as you've lived, it has changed violently. Daily chores will be difficult. Difficult, but eventually you learn.

Go back to vet school. 'cause [00:22:00] you're young. You're alive. You can see, hear, laugh, love

God. Say it.

What about sex?

I don't know about how come, you know, I can go to the bathroom, but you don't know if I can have sex. I don't know yet. And your lingo All different tracks for different acts, which is such a seventies way to put it. But in other words, we're gonna have to wait and see. That's not good enough for his college girlfriend.

Claire Fisher: She dumps him immediately. Yeah. She can't handle this news. I did think it's interesting though, they don't make it that everybody is like that. 'cause his other friends, no, his friends from the polo team stick by him. They stand by him. They visit him. Um, they're [00:23:00] watching the Olympics together right in his bed.

Katie Marinello: Right. Once he's home and they even come out to visit him on the ranch. Yeah. I did appreciate that. They kind of made a reappearance because, you know, once he left. And went to his grandfather's ranch. It could have easily been that we just don't see those actors again. Right. Yeah. But they do. They all show up for him.

So I do appreciate that. Right. And I mean, the way they show up later, I was like sort of cringing, but also awing because yeah, they show up, they show up with their own wheelchairs and play a game of polo in the yard, wheelchair polo. Now the modern disability rights movement discourages use of aids by people who don't need them.

Claire Fisher: But I mean, I think that, that, that was intended to be sweet. I think it's a very like situational, like I think we know people who would think that was hilarious. Right. And we know people who would not find that funny. Right. So, and I'm not saying necessarily just wheelchair users, like any kind of assistant device.

Katie Marinello: Oh, some people would be all for it and some people would. So like knowing him and his sense of [00:24:00] humor, I think his friends kind of read the room on that one. Right? Yeah. He decides he needs a change of scenery. He, he asks his mom. Do you think. Grandpa would let me come stay on the ranch. And he goes, side note, I love that he calls his his grandpa doc because we called our grandmother by her first name sometimes because we worked with her, right?

Yeah. But then there's moments where he switches to grandpa and you can tell that the emotional difference there. So just a side note that I found interesting. Good side note on this ranch is a housekeeper. Connie Consuela. Connie. Connie. Connie. Connie is, and she says she never babies men. And she, she's not.

Claire Fisher: If you baby a man, he becomes a baby. Right? And she's not gonna baby Paul Paul's as her cousin. The philosopher says, I loved that as my cousin. The philosopher says, don't baby him. I don't baby men, including you. My cousin Manuel, the philosopher, he always said that if you baby men, men [00:25:00] become babies. Ah, Manuel, uh, the Canote Rockney of Senator Dominguez, Santo Domingo.

She is on Paul from the beginning. She's like, why don't you use the wheelchair? Why are you forcing yourself to crawl? And he says, no, the, the wheelchair's a prison. She, she's actually shown hiding the fact that she's crying when she sees him knocking over his breakfast onto himself, she actually cares about him.

And she wants him to, to toughen up and learn to use the mobility device and, and learn to have his life again. Right. And, and they actually have a very telling, repeated interaction where he says, don't push my wheelchair. And she says, I'm not pushing, I'm standing behind you. Right. Yeah. I'm not pushing, I'm just standing behind you.

Katie Marinello: Yeah. I like that. It goes to show she's trying to educate herself. 'cause of course you do never touch a wheelchair without the permission. Of the wheelchair user. Right. And oh my goodness, does that happen more than like you would imagine, oh lord, people think, oh, I'll just start pushing this person. Like, no, no, no, no, no.

Always ask people, a, a wheelchair is an extension of a [00:26:00] disabled person's body. You don't just watch it. Since you and I went through family vacations as sisters pushing our grandmother and her sister in their wheelchairs, yes. We learned the etiquette a lot younger than some folks do. Right. And of course, neither grandmother nor Aunt Margaret were like always at a wheelchair.

So it wasn't quite the same level of like autonomy, I guess. 'cause they weren't, they weren't gonna be able to push it themselves. Well, I mean, many wheelchair users are not in the wheelchair 24 7, 365. Right, right, right. That doesn't mean it wasn't a part of it. Right. But neither of them owned one is what I was kind of saying.

Claire Fisher: I just remember my first day as a hospital volunteer when I was 14 years old. They were training us on wheelchair etiquette and I was kinda like, I got this and like how you get a wheelchair on and off an elevator safely. And I was like, I got this. What is the rule on like. Running really fast and then letting them go down the paths of Muir Woods in California.

I was not running really fast. I merely, I merely forgot to put the brakes on at the top of the hill. No, we used to do it on purpose. I, but the Muir Woods [00:27:00] incident was an accident. Okay. Grandmother said, Claire, go read me the side and I forgot to put the brakes on. It's true. Yes. And she rolled backwards, downhill.

But all of the tourists successfully jumped out of the way and no one was interested. And we retrieved grandmother as soon as possible.

Anyway, Paul is having some trouble getting. To a point of accepting Yes. And everybody is in his corner, but they're giving him some tough love, like grandpa says. Mm-hmm. You were a competitive, you beat Yale in that polo thing. Like, you know, you need to beat yourself, don't be dead. Set on rotting away here.

Right, right. So his grandpa's making him work out with barbells to strengthen his pecs so he can propel the wheelchair with his arms and his his back, and he gets upset and throws a dumbbell out the window and it spooks a horse. Yes. So Marni really balls him out. Well, so we see her before this, right?

Katie Marinello: Mm-hmm. We see her kind of [00:28:00] interacting with her father and her fiance boyfriend thingy, who is like, why don't we just go get married right now? And she's like, yeah, she, she says, I want some time to figure out if this is more than just sex. So, that's true. You know, that's the counter because he says like, oh, let's get married now.

Let's go into the HA loft. She's like, we've agreed that I would finish school, which we've seen that theme again, right? I wanna finish school first, and. Yeah. Is it just physical? So, but this's Paul's, but this is the first time we've seen them to interact. Yes. Yeah. And she flips out. And one of the things that she says is, you can't even get off your lazy ass and come down here and help me chase after the horse idiot of all the dumb things to do.

If Danny had broken her leg and we had to shoot her, you know what I'd do to you? I've been training that horse for six months, now I'm gonna have to start all over again. Why did you get off your big doff and come down here and have me chase my horse? If you had [00:29:00] any Scots, you come down here so I could punch you in the face.

I dare you. At this point, she doesn't realize he's using, she doesn't realize who he is, right? Yeah. And so she flips out, and then later she's having lunch with her father and fiance, and her father notably says, that is how I raised you right. Not to take any guff from anyone. And then she finds out who it was and she feels awful, but.

Katie Marinello: I just wanna say, it's interesting to me that her father says, I raised you not to take any guff, because later in the movie, it's he'll be the one stereotype of, I raised the strong independent woman, but now she's being strong and independent towards me. Yeah. How dare she. Right? Yeah. How dare she. Yeah.

Claire Fisher: But I did think it's interesting, Paul smiles the biggest, you've seen him smile when she's yelling at him, because I think nobody, she's treating him as just a person. Right? Just as a person. And you know, honestly, that does count for a lot if you have, yeah. I mean, I think if you want to tell the story of the time you made the, the head of the [00:30:00] Wildlife Conservation Society, apologize to us for the terrible time we had at the Prospect Park suit.

That was so rough. Oh my God. Do you want me to tell? Okay. So Claire had just had back surgery and then right after that she was in a car accident and then. We were going to the Prospect Park Zoo in New York City in Brooklyn. She requested a wheelchair at the front as one does. And the guy who brought it out was like, oh, you're just being lazy.

Katie Marinello: You don't really need this. Which was so, it was so random and just like there was no interaction prior to this. He just saw you and was like, oh, you're being lazy. Yeah. He saw me and thought I didn't look disabled enough. Right. And that is far from the only time that has happened. No, of course. It's an invisible disability.

Yours in particular, because you do not have a wheelchair and you don't walk with a cane or whatever to, and the scars are under my clothes. Right. Tends to be seen as an invisible disability. Right. Which is pure nonsense. My point is that then when I am not in a wheelchair, I don't look disabled enough.

Claire Fisher: Mm-hmm. And then as [00:31:00] soon as I was in the wheelchair, the whole rest of the day, everywhere we went, I got stared at. Right. And we were ushered to the front of the line, which I understand they want the wheelchair to go first so other people aren't tripping. But I very much was getting these mixed reactions from people, either 'cause I was in a chair or because I didn't look sick enough to be in a chair.

That day kind of stands out in my memory as a day. I was not treated like a person. I was treated like a problem. Right. And then you got the head of the Wildlife Conservation Society to apologize us. Oh, I rotate. Very nasty. Well not nasty, but a very strongly worded email to the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Prospect Park Zoo, the Central Park Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, the New York Aquaquarium, this guy guy's kind Island Zoo.

Katie Marinello: I think this guy's kind of a big deal. And he personally apologized. He did back to this movie. Mm-hmm. Paul is happy that Marni is treating him like anyone else. And then when she comes back to apologize, he doesn't want the apology. He has no interest. Yeah. Because he doesn't want her sympathy. She actually sneaks in with the window repairman [00:32:00] to get to see him again.

Yeah. She puts on the window repair uniform. And he throws her out and she complains to the boyfriend David, like, oh, he thinks being in a wheelchair just gives him an excuse. And David calls her a bleeding heart. Mm. Right. For wanting to still treat Paul like a human being. Right. Which is what she specifically says.

Claire Fisher: He's still a human being and no one's gonna put him down. 'cause they talk about how horses, if they can't use their legs anymore. You, you maybe put them down, right? Right. But she says, no, no one's gonna put this guy down. Right. Yeah. Right. So that's the start of that relationship. But that's not the only focus of this movie.

And I find this interesting. Not, not by a long stretch. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the scene that I referenced in my recap, which is his, his grandfather gets him a van that is accessible, right. So he can get in and out on, in the wheelchair, but it's not a van that is accessible for him to drive. Right. It's just one that he can get his wheelchair in and get into the passenger seat.

And I, they spent a lot of time showing you how the hydraulic lift worked. Right. So I looked this up. They [00:33:00] had, those had been custom built only until 1973. The first commercially available. Okay. Wheelchair accessible vans would've been 1973 within the past five years. So this is probably one of those scenes that they wrote in specifically so that the audience watching the IBC Sunday night movie would realize, could see it, oh, we have this technology now we have this technology.

Katie Marinello: Yes. Doc is a country doctor. Mm-hmm. Right. And he's the only doctor around for miles and miles. And so he has to go out on this call in the pouring rain, and Paul decides he wants to go with him. This is a genuinely scary scene. Mm-hmm. Like genuinely, I was like breathless watching it, so it's raining. So first of all, the sound of rain on a car, pounding rain has always kind of bothered me.

Right. So he's, yeah, because we once got flooded out in a van because we once got stuck in a flood in a van. So there's a down tree, so they can't get the van through. So the dock says, I'm just gonna walk up the hill if I'm not back in 20 minutes or whatever. [00:34:00] You know, something's gone wrong. And so then Paul is just in this van with the pounding rain, so he's like, cool, I'm gonna take a nap.

Understandable. And when he wakes up, I was not back. And he sees him lying in the road or he sees his rain jacket and that's when. I saw the switch between doc and grandpa. Yeah. And he climbs out and he says, doc, doc, grandpa. And I just thought that was really interesting. So he tries to roll his wheelchair towards it, but the water's rushing across the road and he falls outta the wheelchair and he army crawls on his stomach and he gets to grandpa, but he can't get the thing off of him.

He can't get a branch off of him. The closest house is half a mile straight uphill. He's never gonna army crawl that house. He's like, well that does that. Yeah. So he drags himself back to the van and finds a branch on the way, drags himself onto the hydraulic lift, gets himself into the driver's seat and uses the branch to operate the pedals to drive and get help.

And it's really scary. It really, he is going kind of [00:35:00] straight 'cause he can't really control how hard he's p pressing, right? Mm-hmm. So he's really speeding again in pouring rain on your roads, flash flooding, country roads, and just like leaning on the horn. Yeah. The whole time. And he crashes. Yeah. He actually crashes, but Marni hears the, the horn and comes out to get him and she says, enough, dear God.

Claire Fisher: Enough. You know, nowadays there are adaptations that allow wheelchair users to drive cars. Right? Of course. Yeah. They amount to a stick that attaches to the right pedals, but a much fancier stick and a little more secure. Yeah. When you have a little more control over. Yeah. And also I, friend of mine who, who demonstrated this to me, who is a wheelchair user, he rolls the wheelchair up next to the driver's seat, puts himself into the driver's seat, then folds up his own wheelchair and chucks it in the back, which he can do.

'cause his wheelchair is an aluminum alloy. Right, right. Wheelchairs used to be solid steel. Right. Right. So like in the, were having era, in the era that Paul is struggling to do this, [00:36:00] the reason there weren't adaptations for wheelchair users to drive a car is because they didn't think wheelchair users could get into a car.

Right. Without assistance. Right. This is a situation where the hall is helpless, not because he lacks anything, but because. The technology is lacking, right. To support him. Right. And he has to find a way around it. Weird. Like unique situation. Right? Right. But I mean it could have been any situation, right?

He, it could have been his grandpa had appendicitis and they had to get to the hospital a stroke or Yeah. It could have been any reason. And I think the point is that point that he's trapped until he finds his own way. And that's, and the interesting thing about the rest, for the rest of the movie, his grandfather is a little bit disabled 'cause he breaks his leg, right?

Katie Marinello: So like he's kind, laid up in bed and like. This is very annoying. You know, not, not as like, mean about it, but definitely like Connie and she, even when she's cooking him his breakfast, she breaks the yolks and his eggs because he's [00:37:00] yelling so much. Right. She's annoyed. Yeah. I don't baby anybody. Right, right.

So it's an interesting, you know, he's the one saying, well, you can do anything, you know, or you can overcome this. And then he's. And it's not movie magic where he's lying in the next scene. He remains in a cast for the rest of the movie. Yeah. So I did think it was funny though. The next morning Connie is answering the phone doc Stallings clinic and driving school.

Claire Fisher: And by the way, I, I would also thought watching this of the, uh, on my wedding day when we had told the limo company a thousand times, we needed a wheelchair compatible van. 'cause one of my groomsmen is a wheelchair user. They showed up without a wheelchair compatible van. And on my wedding day, the only way for us to get the wedding on the road was literally that the best man had to carry the groomsmen.

Katie Marinello: Right? Because when that accessible tick. Tech is not available. Well then tough titties for you. Mm-hmm. Unless you happen to have a best man who can bench [00:38:00] press your groomsmen. I, I was so furious at that company. But yeah, we've let it go. But still, I mean, it goes to show the social model of disability, which had only just been invented in the seventies, is that disability is not in your body.

Claire Fisher: Disability is in the lack of support around you. This is that he had all the smarts he needed to save the day. Mm-hmm. But they didn't have a drivable car for him. Right. And God bless him, he did save the day. So yeah, he still found a way, and I mean mm-hmm. Disabled people are really good at finding their own solutions.

Right. Because that is true. Society and medical fields fail us a lot. Yes. So anyway, Paul's moment of heroism. Kind of thaws the relationship between him and Marni and it's time for a romantic montage. We need a montage. They take care of horses montage. It's very weird. I was like, okay, alright. You are yada, yada, yada.

Katie Marinello: Over a couple of things here, because not only, yes, they're taking care of horses together. He [00:39:00] gets himself into the horse carriage at some point. Yeah, the the harness thingy, they have the picnic. I was like, that escalated quickly because you're having romantic picnics with this guy. You are engaged. So yeah.

Claire Fisher: David, the fiance is watching them. Jealous. Gee, I wonder where this is going. Yeah. By the way, the music in the background is the titular Leave Yesterday Behind Leave Yesterday by the Carpenter Behind. Yeah. Which was written for this movie. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I wondered which one was first. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, he meets Marnie's father who compliments his spunk.

For those of you who aren't aware of the phrase inspiration porn, a lot of people tell. Disabled people, how inspirational they are and how cool they are. And one that someone said to me was, I'm so happy you haven't let it make you bitter. And I was like, well, first of all, for all you know, this is me bitter.

Katie Marinello: Right. And second of all, if people needed an excuse to be bitter, the world would be a very different place. And third of all, if everybody who had an excuse got [00:40:00] bitter, the world would be a very different place. Right, right. Um, yeah. His dad is just a walking microaggression. Yeah. Right. Which I guess probably wasn't a term that anyone would've used back then.

No. But he uses all the little buzzwords that would kind of trigger the, oh, this guy doesn't really see me as a person. Right, right. Absolutely. The spunk at first and then later in the movie he's like, oh, you know, I got this belt made by like one of the kids downtown. Like a disabled native guy or something.

Yeah. It, it's like, oh, again, like trade school. Right. Like, oh, maybe they could help you down there. And he was pre-vet. Yeah. And he hasn't lost his ability to do that. Right. At least intellectually. So, yeah. Well, I mean, I didn't lose the knowledge. I had gained studying to be an emergency medical technician, but I did lose my license 'cause I could no longer lift a person in a stretcher.

And to be fair, your, your spike comes from lots of things, not just not, not bitterness, but you do survive outta spite sometimes. Spike can be a powerful motivator. [00:41:00] It's like faith. Anyway.

Claire Fisher: Okay. So Marni and Paul eventually work up to going swimming together. Yes. And she wears a red bikini predating the famous gold bikini by a solid five years. Oh, can we just talk about her smile in this movie? Oh. 'cause I kept writing down. Damn that smile. You see it at the end of Star Wars. It's just every time you see it, I'm just like, oh, that woman had a smile that could light up the movie projector.

Katie Marinello: Like damn. Mm-hmm. Even if she weren't Debbie Reynolds' daughter, that smile would've made her movie star. It's quite a smile. Yeah. And she uses it a lot in this movie. Marni is a happy person lot. She's a happy person and she, she's funny, does not find anything like yet. She's very funny and she will not let him get out of swimming.

Now this, I wasn't super clear on whether she knew that he even could go swimming. Yeah. Or that he worked up to that because, I mean, obviously. Wheelchair users mostly usually can swim, but you, you have to strengthen the rest of your body. And he may not have been [00:42:00] there. They're going in a swimming pool that's like the size of a living room.

Claire Fisher: It's not like she's taking in the ocean. And, and she also mentions she has a Red Cross lifeguard. She does say that. So that's true. I think she's thinking even if it's his first time, she can get him through it and she immediately is like, Hey, is it because you don't want me to see your legs? Yeah. She cracks it immediately usually because she has some empathy for him as a person.

Yes. She's not seeing him as a collection of his needs, but as a person who has concerns. Mm-hmm. And when she says it doesn't matter to her. She's kind of teasingly, starts trying to wrestle his sweatpants off to put his swim trunks on. Yes. They nearly kiss, they don't kiss, but she says, if you're not at the pool in 10 minutes, I'll be back with scissors to cut the pants off.

Right. I love this. They, they're, because he was shown having a really good sense of humor in the early scenes before he got hurt. Mm-hmm. And so like this is him regaining that sense of humor that he have. She brings it back. Yeah. This playful relationship that he's joking with Connie that he is able to [00:43:00] joke about the driving incident, right?

Mm-hmm. They actually do kiss in the pool. Mm-hmm. Dun, dun, dun David. I was like, dang. She is just always cheating.

Alright, so let's talk about this, 'cause we talked about in comeback little Sheba. Mm-hmm. In the forties it was normal to date multiple people. Right. By the seventies, that was becoming less common, at least to be engaged to someone and be dating around. Right. Because certainly there was like free love and all that stuff happening in the seventies, but it's been established that they had the summer before, decided they were going to get married.

Katie Marinello: So that, I don't think she had a ring. As soon as she finished her. As soon as she finished school, they were gonna get married. Right, right. But she's not wearing a ring. They don't have a date set. I think what they're trying to say is that he expects something different from this relationship than she expects from it.

Right. Which could be understandable. They're supposed to be quite young. Right. You know college students. Yeah, they're both, they're all undergrads, right? Right. Like all three of them? Yeah. [00:44:00] Um, or is he in law school? I can't remember. The fiance, they say it when she introduces him to Paul, she says, this is David.

And she says like second year, I think it was Harvard law and my dad's farm hand or whatever, and he's like, and your fella. Right. Yeah. He kind of supplies that part. Yeah. But she does demure when he says, is he your fellas? She says, well, I've known him a long time. He's practically one of the family. So it's possible that, you know, it's kind of a situation where the family expects that relationship.

Claire Fisher: She thought she was okay with it. I mean, she says it later. She says, when I told you I loved you last year, I thought I did. Yeah. So I, you know, maybe I just was hoping that I did or something like that. So yes. However, she does not tell him she's not going to marry him before she's kissing Paul in the pool, however you slice it, that's maybe not so nice to David.

This comes to a head when she wins at a a harness race. A picnic race. Mm-hmm. And David and Paul are [00:45:00] both in the crowd cheering for her. So is her father both trying to get through. Right. And it's harder for Paul to get through. Obviously David walks right up and kisses her while she's holding the trophy.

And then Paul starts to leave, but Marty chases him and says, oh, don't you have a kiss for the winner? You didn't miss a kiss. And she goes to sit on his lap and she find, she finds something he's made for her a wire horse. Yeah. And that leads to the whole condescending conversation between her father and him with the, oh, why don't you go down to the community center or whatever.

Katie Marinello: Yeah. Learn to craft or whatever. So her father sees them kissing and immediately goes in and says, oh, you know, maybe you should go to the rehabilitation center in town and learn handcrafts. Mm-hmm. Just like Sandy Greenberg was told, go learn to Cain chairs. Right, right. And Paul rushes off and Marnie yells at her father.

Claire Fisher: She says, you did that on purpose, but he's too much of a man to let you get to him. Mm-hmm. And her father says, well, you deliberately teased him into falling in love with you. And then he slaps her and says, don't let this cripple come between us. [00:46:00] Yeah. That again, like, wow. There's no indication prior to this that this father who says he's raised this spunky girl, has ever slapped her in the face.

Katie Marinello: Right. Like, there's not like a. A fear between them. We don't see a ton of their relationship, but we do see them indirect several times throughout the movie. And there's never this overtone to it. So that slap is like a slap in the face, if you will, to the audience as well as to her. We're looking at it with 2020 eyes in, in the sixties and seventies, to be occasionally slapped by a parent, uh, for misbehavior was not a shocking thing.

Claire Fisher: Right. No, but when you're 19, 20 years old, that's probably more surprising. They were pushing the limits a little. Yeah. Yeah. But then I think it's interesting that her reaction is not to continue arguing with her father, but to go after Paul. Mm-hmm. And to ask Paul why he didn't just tell her father to stick it right.

And she says she won't apologize for her father's behavior, which is correct. Don't apologize for someone else's [00:47:00] microaggression, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, but instead she tries to buck him up. She tries to say, that accident didn't make you any less, you're more of a man than any man I know and in love with you.

And he still. I, I wasn't sure if I could read this as he thinks she's sort of fetishizing him or if he just is still not really embracing himself. But he says, I keep waiting for the day. The joke will be O over and everything will be like it was. But every day the sun comes up and I keep wondering how I'll make it through the day, or why I should even try.

Congratulations. You just met the real Paul Stallings full of self pity and self hate. Mm. I really liked this actually, because in a lot of movies about disability, I think he would have overcome it, become the more playful version of himself and never go back into that self-loathing and self pity. And that is for anyone, any human who's been through anything, but certainly for the DISA disabled community.

Katie Marinello: There's gonna be tough days, right? There's gonna be days where you're like, gee, I [00:48:00] really wish this hadn't happened to me. Absolutely. You could argue that her timing was perhaps not the best in that moment, because if he's like just suffered this kind of like emotional blow, it might not be the time to tell him you're in love with him.

I understand why she did. Another thing I like about this is in some movies, she would respond by saying, oh, don't be that way. Right? But she doesn't, no, she doesn't validate his feelings at all. She says, but why are you rejecting me? I haven't even asked you to love me. So she's trying to say, let's just have an honest relationship.

Claire Fisher: Even if you feel that way about yourself again, she consistently treats him like a person, whereas other people in the movie are not, you know, people say, oh, you can't love someone till you love yourself. And then there's a whole kind of. Counter to that. But no, everybody deserves love. Whether you have the most self-confidence or not, you shouldn't rely on a partner to give you that self-confidence.

Yeah. 'cause I was gonna say there, there's two ways that this would be played as a [00:49:00] cliche. One would be that he just gets over it and never goes back. Another would be that the love of a good woman pulls him out of it. Right? And neither of those is true. Here. Here it's like, yes, okay, you've been through a trauma, he's had this horrible thing, he's still finding a way to cope.

And she still wants, she wants the relationship with him as one human to another, as a person, as a, as a person, right? And. This is when though it does veer off because he says, I can't even have sex. And she says, I don't believe that. And I'm like, okay. Well, he, yeah, he'd be the one who'd know. Right? Right.

Katie Marinello: Yeah. This, it does get a little strange here because then he goes and talks to his grandpa about it, and his grandpa also doesn't really believe him. I've had people, including doctors, not believe me when I said that certain aspects of my body didn't function the way you might expect. And they've said, I don't believe that.

Claire Fisher: And I've been like, well, this isn't a, a thing that you can fact check me on. I am telling you I have pain. It's, this is my body now. Right. I'm telling [00:50:00] you that this has happened. I'm telling you that I have pain. Right. And nobody at any point says, which I wish, I can't imagine that this would've been a point of thought necessarily in the seventies, but that there are other ways to have sex.

Katie Marinello: Right. Like it's not, yes. Okay. So this was the family Sunday night movie on a, b, C in 1978. Right. The fact that they mentioned sex at all is kind of amazing. So nobody's gonna bring up strap on. Nobody's gonna break. That's not what I would say. Well, that's a thing that people who are impotent use sometimes.

Claire Fisher: Right? Fair, fair. I was thinking like Conal Lingus, but sure. Okay. Well nobody's gonna mention Conal Lingus. Nobody's going to talk about is penetration important to you or not? Nobody's gonna bring that up, right? Mm-hmm. Like that wasn't something they were gonna do on network television. Stimulating his prostate.

In some people who have lower body paralysis, their nerves remap and they find pleasure in other types of stimulation on the upper body, that's probably not a conversation they wanted to have on the A, b, C Sunday night movie. Right. I appreciate that. They did not go into it the way they [00:51:00] went into the hydraulic band.

Katie Marinello: Right. And, and probably it's just not necessary. Mm-hmm. However, let me just say, the medical interventions for male impotence already existed in the seventies. Medical interventions for female sexual dysfunction very much were only invented in the nineties. So actually at the time a doctor like his grandpa should have been able to say, well, if you can't do X, have you considered Y or, mm-hmm.

Claire Fisher: Or maybe we should consult with, you know, a specialist, a urologist, or Yeah. There's at least some things they could have done. But you know, it's a two hour made for TV movie. They probably didn't wanna go into the medical details. Right. His uh, grandfather is, I mean, he's a surgeon, but he is a country doctor.

Katie Marinello: Right, right. So he might not have known every intervention that was possible as Paul says. You said different tracks for different what is, and he says the gate's closed or something like that. Different tracks or different acts. But the road is closed for me. Yeah. I guess it's the closest they could come to saying that he has tried this unpartnered [00:52:00] and is aware that he is impotent.

His grandfather says that a lot of the time that's mental. Which again, that's a dated medical take. Yeah. Yeah. It could be true. Certainly many people who have lower body paralysis are not permanently sexually affected, but Right. And this sometimes they are. I don't think anyone in this movie ever mentions like it, this like just happens.

I think the whole thing happens over the course of a summer break. It's maybe two, three months since he's been paralyzed and nobody's like, Hey, well, A, it's okay if you never do B. It may be a mental thing. C, it may just be your body healing. Right? Like there's none of, none of those are really no brought up.

Claire Fisher: No. They resolved this plot not by actually resolving the. Sex thing. Sex thing. I was wondering, yeah. How, okay. A, B, C. All right, Walt Disney, how are you gonna get out of this line? They [00:53:00] resolve it by focusing on what he can do. Mm-hmm. Not on what he's afraid he can't do. Right, right. So throughout the entire movie, there's this horse that Marni has that is expecting a full, and he mentioned he's had internships with vets every summer break.

Mm-hmm. He was pursuing this as a career. But what happens is she's going to drive David back to the airport to go back to school. Mm-hmm. And that's when she tells them, I thought I loved you. And he says. You're in love with a wheelchair. And she says, no, I'm in love with Paul. Mm-hmm. And he says, he won't have me.

And David says, no, he can't have you. At least he's honest. Yeah. And so probably a very quiet ride to the airport after that conversation. Right. I can't believe she still drove open. Well, she had to to get him out of there. Right. She said to Paul, well, can't you stay until after the FO is born? And he is like, there's no way to know that.

Katie Marinello: Which is true. Yeah. Not wrong. So as she's leaving to take David to the airport, her father says he's sorry for slapping her, but I'm not gonna let you throw your life away on half a man while she's driving David to the [00:54:00] airport. No doubt. In stony silence. Yeah. Disaster strikes because Marnie's father gets bitten by the horse, miss Ruby.

Claire Fisher: Mm-hmm. Which means his hand is bleeding. And she needs assistance that will involve mm-hmm. Putting him, inserting his hand into her vagina, but he's bleeding so he can't do that. Mm-hmm. He calls Paul because the veterinarian is out on another call and he can't get expert help and someone's gotta do it.

So Paul crawls into the stall, crawls through the hay, Mr. Clarkson talks him through what to do, and they bond over saving this horse in the foing barn. Mar Marni comes in halfway through and watches it all happen. Marni Marni comes in while they are pulling on a rope that they've tied to the FO's ankles and are like working together.

Paul is using his upper body strength, Mr. Clarkson's throwing his full weight behind it. And of course, this is how they come to an understanding that Mr. Clarkson is forced to eat some crow here. Paul is not half a man, right? Mm-hmm. And, and he doesn't make a big speech or apologize or go full [00:55:00] end of guess who's coming with to dinner or anything like that.

It's just a, a moment where they work together. Right? Yeah. Another thing that I liked, I know this. Podcast that we often listen to gayest episode ever. They will often say they prefer a character who is bigoted, who stays bigoted. Yeah. Because it is more true to life. And if you're in a 1970s episode, right.

Katie Marinello: They do a lot of very special episodes where they have, there's like a gay character that shows up one time in these like seventies and eighties sitcoms. If everybody's cool with it, that's not authentic to the time period. Right. And so I, again, I like that he apologized for hitting her. Doesn't apologize for what he said.

And there's not really any firm resolution between him and Paul. They don't wrap things up in a bow, but they do end on a hopeful note because Marni thanks him for saving the horse. And then she says, you're gonna have to save me from loving a man who hates himself. Mm. And he admits he doesn't really hate himself, but he's afraid of how to face the rest of [00:56:00] his life like this.

Mm-hmm. And she says, well, we can work together. Sure. We'll have problems. And that's when he says. I don't know if I can deal with never dancing and I wanna dance with you. Mm-hmm. So she like spins his wheelchair and sits on his lap while twirling her arms. And that's the end of the movie. Right. Leave yesterday behind Darling.

Claire Fisher: Save the Last Dance for me. It's actually very sweet and it's not tied up with a bow. It's not love will fix everything that's wrong with your life. It's not, you know? Yeah. We don't even know if they'll end up together. Right. We don't even know if they'll choose to be boyfriend and girlfriend. We just know that they're dancing.

We dunno how he's gonna deal with her father in the future. We don't know It very much is just the story of their summer break. Right. And we don't know if he's ever gonna be able to have sex. It's just not Well, there's more than one way to have sex, Katie. Exactly. You know what I, okay. Sorry. We don't know for sure that he's going to be able to have penis sex.

Katie Marinello: Okay. We definitely are gonna have to use the explicit tag on this [00:57:00] one. We don't know if he'll be able to have sexual intercourse. Let's use the medical term here. Sure. We do end at a point where he probably will go back to vet school. Yeah. He may have a career. He is open to opening his heart and having another relationship.

Claire Fisher: It's reached a point where his life's not over. Yeah. Right. So, absolutely. Well, I'm glad you liked it because I wasn't sure I really enjoyed it. Mm-hmm. I really enjoyed it and I was like, I hope that I'm not missing a bunch of microaggressions or dated references or things that would make it hard for you to watch.

Well, there are things that are dated, but uh, there's a lot of things that are still very, very real. I mean, there's a lot of ableism in the world and I mean, there's a lot of overt, no, you can't have a wheelchair 'cause you look too healthy. But there's also a lot of covert. I mean, when I got the standing desk that I'm actually recording this podcast at, when I got a standing desk at a job, there [00:58:00] was a lot of people walking up to me saying like, what did you say?

To get a standing desk? Mm-hmm. I want one too. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. There's a certain amount of perception that disabled people get some sort of special treatment, and so mm-hmm. I'm going to use that too. We saw this during the pandemic where people tried to abuse HIPAA laws to be like, you can't ask me why I'm not wearing a mask.

There's people who assume that you've done something wrong if you're disabled. Mm-hmm. I once posted something about how my injury happened, and it was, I literally leaned forward one day and threw out my back, and I posted that somewhere and someone said, well, were you overweight at the time? I did not know that.

Katie Marinello: So we could go into a whole fat phobia. Yeah. Discussion as well. I mean, but this has happened so many times. We once had a neighbor die of complications of a C-section, and when I told someone that her response was, oh, well, she must not have followed the doctor's instructions. Yeah, because obviously no surgery has ever had a bad outcome without it being the patient's fault, [00:59:00] right?

Mm-hmm. Again, talking about COVID, and every time somebody died of COVID, well, there must've been some pre-existing condition, right? Yeah. Did they have a comorbidity? I'm like, were they over 65? I'm like, were they overweight? Were they a smoker? Well, does it matter? Because they didn't deserve to die, right.

From a preventable disease that if everybody would just wear a damn mask, we could squash. I bring this up because I was happy that that wasn't something that people said to Paul in this movie, why did you get back on the horse? Right. That is, of course, he was gonna get back on the horse. He's a polo player.

He's in the middle of a game of polo. Right. You know, and I mean, as who's winning, when I was an EMT, I had a lot of education on the chances that you could have fractured your spine and not know it until you hours later, because since the seventies, our understanding of that has evolved, as you mentioned earlier.

Claire Fisher: One time I had surgery, and then very shortly after was rear ended in my car, and I knew enough to say to the responding ambulance, you need to [01:00:00] backboard me. Mm-hmm. Because I cannot guarantee to you that I don't have a fracture right now telling first responders just go ahead and strap me to the backboard.

Katie Marinello: Yeah. I know I'm not gonna be able to convince you that I'm fine and I don't wanna try to convince you that I'm fine and then have it be that I'm wrong. Right, right. It could be a lethal mistake. Right. Absolutely. I mean, you could have what Paul had if you had a compression fracture in your neck and then you turn your head, you will cut off the connection between your brain and your lungs and you will die.

Claire Fisher: When I described the plot of this movie, Brian asked me if it was inspired by Christopher Reeve's accident, and I was like, okay, Christopher, which happened after Christopher Reeve wasn't in that accident until 17 years later, so No. Right. But it goes to show, this does happen and all the time. I think that what I'm, when I hear from somebody, oh, were you overweight or did you not, did you not follow the doctor's instructions?

Did you ignore symptoms before you went to the doctor? I get a lot of these questions, believe you me, what I'm hearing is people don't want to believe that you can become disabled unexpectedly. Mm-hmm. But [01:01:00] you can, that is the number one way that people become disabled. Mm-hmm. Actually. Mm-hmm. Um, I think you said, you said this to me years ago, I think, or maybe I heard it somewhere else, but I I, it is always stuck with me that we're all just one minute away from being in the disability rights movement.

Katie Marinello: Right. Because even just like natural aging can Yeah. Will, if you are blessed enough to live long enough, you're likely gonna have some mobility issues. Right. Right. So, like everybody eventually becomes part of it, but we all just wanna pretend it's not there. Right. I leaned forward in the shower and herniated di disc in my spine and that did permanent nerve damage.

Claire Fisher: I am now a person with a mobility. A spinal issue for life. I was 19. Right. Right. People get, and that's not even going into like mental health. Yeah. Which is a whole, you know, they say depression can be as, as debilitating as being a quadriplegic. Right. In some cases. Cases. And you can, it can happen to literally anyone.

It can happen at literally any point. I mean, you fall off a horse when you were, what? Nine [01:02:00] mom screamed and I got back on, mom screamed. 'cause she thought for sure you had just broken your back. Mm-hmm. And you hadn't thank the Lord. But it could be No. And I got back on the horse and that could have been a real big problem.

That could have been a bad idea. Yeah. Um, and then I also just wanna mention talking about disability. Right. Well first of all, I looked up the, the crawl on the capitol right after this movie. 'cause I was like, huh, I saw a documentary on that and I swear it was all in black and white. Yeah. That happened in 1990.

Katie Marinello: Yeah, it did. Like, oh dear Lord, that was a full 12 years after this. And the other thing is talking about disability and love. And the fact that if you are in a relationship where both partners are on disability, it's like the last fashion of marriage inequality. Right. 'cause they find that they can't get married because then they will lose their benefits.

Yeah. And you, and you in some cases will lose your Medicaid if you marry someone who has benefits through an employer. Because the Americans with Disabilities Act was written [01:03:00] under the assumption that most disabled people will be single because disabled people in sexual relationships Ha ha ha ha ha.

Claire Fisher: Yeah. And you know that the person who caught the bouquet at my wedding is fully blind. And people were like, oh, she participated. Right. Just like. Like, yeah. She's a single woman. Right, right. Who wasn't a long-term relationship at the time. Yeah. I mean, in her, oh my God. Her boyfriend was not with her at the wedding, but we had someone else be her partner so that I wouldn't back her in the face with it.

Katie Marinello: Yep. I thought that this was, even though some parts of it are dated, like nowadays, the demonstration of the hydraulic lift seems unrealistic. The idea that disabled people maybe, but you know what? Not everybody has your groomsmen in their life. Sure. So not everybody's seen one. Work that way. I mean, granted the technology has evolved, but the basics are there.

Yeah. So I don't think that's super dated. And certainly there are many things today that are inaccessible and for no good reason. When I was looking for a wedding venue, I kept [01:04:00] saying, we have elderly relatives. We have a groomsman who's wheelchair user, the bride limps, so we want the accessible tour of your facility.

Claire Fisher: Mm-hmm. And we heard so many, oh well this is this historic home. Right? Or oh, grandfather in, he could come into the ground floor, but we don't have an elevator. We heard so many, and I mean, I'm not the only bride who limps, I'm not the only person who's grandmother has had double knee replacement. Like, like everybody, you're fairly young to have this particular kind of disability.

Katie Marinello: Everybody has a grandmother. Right. So it's just mind blowing to me. Some of the venues were like, oh, our minimum guest number is 150 people. And I was like, in 150 people, you don't have anyone who has a mobility issue. Right, right. That's actually not. Plausible. How have you not thought this through? Yeah, and so we only booked the venue that immediately was like, oh, of course.

Claire Fisher: Let us show you how we would get people from the front door to the reception space at the cocktail area without anyone needing to go up or downstairs. The venue we booked was the one [01:05:00] that said, yes. Okay. We understand. Even earlier today, I went to brunch and I was coming from the back parking lot, and the closest entrance was up the ramp, couldn't get the damn door open.

Katie Marinello: I thought it was locked, and then I was told, well, you just have to push really hard 'cause it sticks. This is your accessible entrance. Well, you know, you can ram it with your wheelchair. Like, well, I can walk down the ramp and go around and take the stairs, but not everybody can. Right. What are you doing?

Mm-hmm. Then what they're doing is they're not thinking it through, they're checking the box. Right. Like, well, we have it, we have a wheelchair ramp, so it's fine. So anyway, we're wandering away from the point of the movie. Mm-hmm. But I thought that the movie was a very realistic and nuanced take on it.

Claire Fisher: Obviously a little old fashioned, 'cause it's from the seventies, but Right. These problems still exist the but way more nuanced and thoughtful than I would necessarily expect from a made for TV Sunday night movie by Walt Disney. You know? Yeah. Uh, I didn't look up who [01:06:00] wrote it, but I assume they did do some research to, to do this, right.

Katie Marinello: Yeah, for sure. There was definitely, I don't know if there were disabled consultants. Yeah. But they, like you said, they clearly did some research. The only entry under trivia for IFDB was that, uh, John Ritter and Buddy Epson, who play grandson and grandfather and are 40 years apart, died within two months of each other.

Claire Fisher: In 2003, I. I saw that Buddy Epson of old age and John Ritter, of course of an aortic dissection. Mm-hmm. Which is another example of the fact that literally bad things can happen for no reason and without warning because mm-hmm. He felt fine until he didn't and then he died. Right. And, and his brother, who probably was expected to die first because he has cerebral palsy, he's still alive.

Mm-hmm. He does have an IM DB page, but his IM DB page is all him in documentaries about John Ritter. Aw. So you just never know. You never know. You never know. Shall we rate the huts flare? [01:07:00] Yes. I love this character. And it's really nice after the last couple where she's just been like kind of not there.

Katie Marinello: Oh yeah. Like this is way more present, right? Like Ringo and then like in Sheba, she's there, but she's mostly a product of everybody's delusions about her. She's really present in this film. Absolutely. I I would say definitely a solid four out of five huts layers. Um, yeah. You know, I'm gonna give her a five.

Claire Fisher: She's present and she's not the manic, pixie dream girl. And she's not just the girlfriend. Yeah. Okay. Five is fair. She's bucking against her fiance, her father, society. I mean, she's, and just doing it in such a way that's like, and she calls Paul out on his nonsense and his self loving. Yeah. She's not willing to take.

Katie Marinello: Guff from anybody. Nobody's putting her in a gold bikini. Yeah. It's the red bikini. She put herself in that bikini and, and towards the end when her father tries to protect her, [01:08:00] 'cause he thinks the mare might die. Right. He even tries to kick her out of the stall. He says, don't come in. You don't wanna see this.

Claire Fisher: And she says, I've been in Foing barn since I was 10. So like, she actually, well even that was, I found that very strange, but yeah. Yeah. Well if you think someone's animal might die, you somehow send them outta the room. Yeah. But the horse didn't die. The horse lived giving her a five out five. This is our first five out of five, I believe.

Katie Marinello: All right. Five out of five huts layers. Um, excellent. All right. And speaking of the slaying of huts, what are we watching next week? Katie? The Star Wars holiday special. Oh, I am sure a few huts go down in that one. I don't think so. But

Claire Fisher: spoilers, this might be one of the like five movies on this list that I've seen before. So the Six Star Wars movies. Star Wars Holiday special, and when Harry Met Sally. Can that really be all of them? Possibly not. [01:09:00] I haven't really looked. All right. Well, until we return with the famous Star Wars holiday special.

Katie Marinello: Your favorite? Just remember in the immortal words of Carrie Fisher. If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true. And that's, and that's unacceptable. Thanks for listening to another episode of Carried Far, far Away. This podcast is hosted, produced, edited, reedited, obsessed over and loved by Katie Marinello and Claire Fisher.

You can follow the show on Facebook and Instagram at Carried Away Pod. You can email us at away carried pod@gmail.com. You can follow Claire at Dead fictional girlfriends and Katie, Katie away. All clips used in this podcast are done so under the protection of fair use. Have a wonderful week and may the force be with you and now our space Grandma, wisdom of the Week.

When you get older, you're a celebrity. Everything just calms down and you just feel good about yourself and confident all the time. That's why people wanna be celebrities. Okay? That's not true. 

Hi [01:10:00] guys. It's Katie hopping to let you know that we're taking this week off, uh, we're a little behind on our recording schedule, but also it is disability pride month. Which celebrates the history, achievements, and experiences of people with disabilities. And the 1990s signing of the American With Disabilities Act.

So we thought this would be a great opportunity to rerun this episode about leave yesterday behind, which we titled Let's Talk About Six. Carrie, um, of the movies we have watched so far that I haven't seen. This is probably my favorite and it's only really available on YouTube. So if you're looking for something to watch this weekend, long weekend highly recommend. And I really appreciated what it allowed Claire and I to discuss about disability rights, ableism, lots of other juicy stuff. So I hope you enjoy and we'll be back in two weeks with Happily Ever After.