The Bitter Kitten Movie Club: "9 to 5"

Tom & Lorenzo’s Pop Style Opinionfest

Hosts Tom and Lorenzo conduct a deep dive into the 1980 classic '9 to 5' to celebrate Dolly Parton Day. They explore the film's intersection

Key takeaways

• The film was directed and partially written by Colin Higgins, a gay man, contributing to a subtle queer aesthetic.
• Costume designer Anne Roth utilized 1940s-style glamour to create a timeless look for the characters.

Main topics

• 9 to 5 movie analysis
• Dolly Parton Day

Notable quotes

I can only speak as a homosexual.

Conclusion

The episode provides a nostalgic yet critical appreciation of how '9 t

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:22) We're Speaker 1 (0:23) Tom and Lorenzo. And Speaker 2 (0:24) this is the Bitter Kitten Movie Club. Hello, kittens. Welcome back to another edition of the BKMC, a supplemental edition of the Pop Style Opinion Fest podcast, where we take a look at one movie per week and... I always want to say rip it apart, but that's not what we do. We dive Speaker 1 (0:38) deep into it. We unpack it. We unwrap it gracefully. Although Speaker 2 (0:41) I Speaker 1 (0:41) use those Speaker 2 (0:42) words too much. Anyway, happy Dolly Day. It's 925. I know. And Speaker 1 (0:47) for Speaker 2 (0:47) that reason, we are doing 9 to 5 today. This will be the oldest. Is it? Yes, it's the oldest film we've done so far in the BKMC. And I Speaker 1 (0:55) did not know why it's September 25th, because it's 9 to 5. Oh, well, you're... Yeah, I'm firing out all cylinders. How Speaker 2 (1:02) long Speaker 1 (1:02) did it take you to figure Speaker 2 (1:03) that out? Speaker 1 (1:05) You Speaker 2 (1:05) call me a bitch anyway. Speaker 1 (1:11) Anyway, anyway, Speaker 2 (1:13) nine to five is just held in high esteem in our hearts. I mean, long. First off, I mean. Rest in peace, Dolly. We did a whole podcast after Dolly passed away earlier this month. But even before that, this film just, I don't know, it sat amongst my... My cultural references, I guess. It was built into... And I... Go ahead. Speaker 1 (1:42) No, I can only speak as a homosexual. That's what I was getting at. I have to tell a little story here that when I was very young, I had several homosexual friends, and we're kind of in the closet. We're not completely open to the family and friends. So we used to get together, the homosexuals, to watch TV, watch a movie, and talk about it, you know, and appreciate every moment of every queer... thing we saw or, you know, you know how it is. And 9 to 5 was one of those movies that we watched over and over again. We would, you know, repeat the lines and talk about the costumes and, you know, appreciate these women because they are amazing women. Speaker 2 (2:21) All of them. All three of them. And all three of them in different ways have pretty devoted gay followings. Probably Jane Fonda less than the other two, but... And it should be noted, and I don't know how many people know this, but I think it's pretty obvious to any gay man who's watching the movie. The movie was directed by and partially written by a gay man named Colin Higgins, who unfortunately, less than a decade after this film, died from AIDS complications. That is sad. He also later directed... Dolly in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Oh, wow. Yeah, so, um, he had a history with Dolly. What a great Speaker 1 (2:58) movie for a queer guy to direct. Exactly. And both Speaker 2 (3:00) of these movies have a queer sensibility to them that is so subtle, I wonder how many non-queer people even pick up on it. Right, right. Um, and I really did last night. I was sitting there watching it, and I was like, you know, I have literally seen this movie. I know. How many times? Speaker 2 (3:49) I guess what I'm trying to say is if this movie was made in 2026, the gay part of it would be so much more obvious. And I don't know if that would be to the film's benefit. I don't necessarily think it would be. But in a lot of ways, it reminded me, looking at it from that perspective, it reminded me of a lot of classic Hollywood films, usually musicals, but often women's films, which this would fall under that. Speaker 2 (4:16) also having a huge gay sensibility because there were gay men behind the scenes doing the costumes, doing the directing, doing... But not actually putting anybody gay on screen. And that's what I was like, this feels like a 1940s movie to Speaker 1 (4:29) me. Speaker 2 (4:29) I was just about Speaker 1 (4:29) to say, if you look at the costumes of the 40s and 50s, a lot of the costume designers were gay. Uh, gay men. And so, and you see it... A lot of the directors were gay. Yeah, and you see it on screen. That's their... contribution yeah Speaker 2 (4:42) and and um i feel like if you if you can look at nine to five through that lens and you can see it you can see not only first off all three of the women are um Pretty insanely glamorous for office jobs. There's an entire post attached to this podcast. Yay! Where we're doing a deep dive on the costumes. Instead of doing anything else, we're just doing a mad-style deep dive on the costumes because the legendary Anne Roth was the costume designer for the film, and boy, did she make some smart, smart, smart choices. However, what I want to note is... Speaker 2 (5:20) how glamorous those women were. Pretty much by 1980 standards, which is when the film came out, I don't think any of them are un-stylish, but there's a certain elevated stylishness to them, as well as a certain attempt to give them a timeless look. So, you know, Jane Fonda's wearing these button, these skirt suits, these very tailored skirt suits, which weren't really the style in 1980. Speaker 2 (5:49) And, um, you know, of course, there's Dora Lee Rhodes, plays by... She's got sequins in every scene. Her nails are like... She's a country singer. Yeah, I mean, she's very glamorous in the film, and very subtly so is Lily Tomlin's Violet Newstead. Her costumes are all very, very well coordinated. There's always these little whimsical touches. She wears that little kimono robe throughout the office. There's so Speaker 1 (6:13) many things. And I'm not going to spoil it because I want people to come to the site. And no, I mean, in terms of our costumes, you know, analysis, I want people to come to the site and read the post. But I have to say, I give you a lot of credit here because 80 % of the stuff we're mentioning, I did not see at all in terms of costumes. Amazing. Oh, okay. Oh, Speaker 2 (6:35) my God. Well, there's a bunch of stuff. Speaker 1 (6:37) Well, let's Speaker 2 (6:38) let's show the costume design because like I said, there's a whole, you know, 1500 word post that we're attaching to this podcast. But I did want to address that the film does feel like a throwback. And I had this suspicion last night watching or I had this sense watching it last night. And then I did some research on the film last night and this morning. And it turns out that Jane Fonda, who was an executive producer and really did. develop this film. She was very much behind it from the beginning. And she gave some really interesting interviews and sound bites about the development of the film over the years. One of which she said was that she really wanted to do a 1940s-style woman's picture. And you can see that. You can actually see that in the final product. You could see a film like this with, like, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford and, you know... Catherine Hepburn or something playing office workers. And Speaker 1 (7:35) it makes sense because her character is coming back to work, you know, like she hasn't worked in a long time. So she dresses like that. She thinks that's the way to dress for an office. Because if you look every woman around her, they're not dressed like her at all. Speaker 2 (7:48) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:51) Something else that Jane Fonda said in the development of the film was that the original scripts of the film were very, very serious. Because apparently she went into this with the idea, I want to do a labor film. I want to do a film about the workplace. What a Speaker 1 (8:06) surprise. Speaker 2 (8:07) Yeah. So the liberal bona fides of this film were established before it even... was conceptualized. You had Jane Fonda bringing politics into the very, very concept of the film. Speaker 1 (8:19) And Speaker 2 (8:20) then ultimately hiring a gay film director who wound up rewriting the original script. The original script was much more... Right. ...serious and dramatic, and she didn't think that was the way to go. She said she felt the film, the original film was very preachy. Speaker 1 (8:37) Right. Well, the thing is that just to tell the story here, she came up with the idea for the movie because her friend had a project called 9 to 5. And it was about, you know, researching, doing research and, you know, I don't know, developing some project about women working from 9 to 5. And especially divorced women and people, women who had to go back to work because they needed the money. her friend was developing this project which was also called nine to five and then she thought about the movie and i think that's why it's i think that's why it's so serious um because i think that's the original idea you know it was it was a project with the survey right away so and i think that's fascinating because in Speaker 2 (9:20) the end i think they made one of the great feminist qualities of all time one of the great labor comedies of all time um and just one of the best comedies in the 1980s but I can see how starting a film off like this could lead you down some rather depressing roads. Right, Speaker 1 (9:36) right. Speaker 2 (9:37) And there is... Perhaps you could make a criticism of the film is that it takes rather serious issues and then develops a fairly broad comedy around them. Like, there's not a lot about this story that's particularly believable or logical. And Speaker 1 (9:52) there Speaker 2 (9:52) were Speaker 1 (9:52) some criticism at the time. And I think that's why. I think... Speaker 2 (9:56) I think the film was met with some ambivalence by critics at the time because, I mean, we were still in second wave feminism. We were not post-second wave. And there was this idea that you don't treat these topics with such frivolousness and you certainly don't make the women in them look glamorous. So I think there was a bit of a pushback against that at the time. But in the end, everybody involved in the decision making to make the film what it was... I think they were proven right because it's timeless. Like, we're not looking at Norma Rae or Silkwood, which are other women's films that were labor-oriented and very freaking serious, both of which came out right around the same time. And I think that's what people wanted from this film, and they didn't expect it to be this silly, broad comedy. Speaker 1 (10:43) Right. I do like the idea where... That's the approach here, but I mean it's like working girl for example, you know, it's kind of like six Speaker 2 (10:50) or seven years Yeah, it was Speaker 1 (10:51) kind of a comedy in a way too, but it's also a serious movie about right Speaker 2 (10:55) career woman, right? Speaker 1 (10:57) So women career women, so I I do think that that's there's a way to do it without being serious all the time It's Speaker 2 (11:04) interesting that you bring up working girl because I really don't think there would have been a working girl without nine-to-five No, I doubt it very much. It would have been one of those depressing labor films, you know, but instead they've That's the brilliance of that script and that direction is that it found a way to unpack very serious topics in a very, very overtly political way. Speaker 2 (11:25) sort of slip it in under the door that the audience