I'm Your Buddy
A film and TV podcast hosted by best friends, Nick and William. Join us weekly as we watch imperfect but excellent works and discuss storytelling, friendship, and, in our current season, the film and tv scripts of Alex Garland!
I'm Your Buddy
Episode 220: Are We Leaving Normality
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This week we are joined by our great friend Joshua Jenkins (@thehandunseen)! We watch Episode Seven of Alex Garland's series Devs (2020) and discuss sound design, recalling memories, and if Katie is an asshole.
Hello and welcome to season 10 of I'm Your Buddy with Nick and William, a podcast where two best friends are watching and discussing the filmography of writer-director Alex Garland. I'm William who loves Alex Garland. And I'm Nick, who also loves Alex Garland. And today we're going to talk about episode seven of his series devs with our super awesome guest best friend Josh Schenkins.
SPEAKER_02Hey man.
SPEAKER_00Hi Josh Jenkins.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for joining us yet again. For well, did you come for any movies? I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_02God damn, you memory is fucking terrible. Like you talk about it, and I feel like we're really good recall and we're having conversations, but it's situations like this. Yeah, man. Uh sunshine. Okay, okay. See, once I've reminded of it, I granted I had to think about it for a second. Okay. So I think you're in the clear.
SPEAKER_00You know, watching it. I'm so glad you said that because I'm sitting here like fucking idiot Nick. And then we're all like, well, obviously he was here. I was like, yeah, obviously. I don't know what. I was like, he was here. I couldn't name the movie either. I was hoping someone was gonna say it so I could pile on Nick again. So I forgot to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. I do remember that now.
SPEAKER_02Watching you fuck up that intro multiple times reminded me. So I don't know if you know this, but one of my very first jobs uh when I was 18 was uh working in a news studio and doing live television. Yeah, and um it was always this phenomenon of watching anchors, like so you would do these promos, you do them before air, but you could do it live, but why would you want to do that? And they would go like consistently that's the and so that's the you know, when when I saw that yeah, that viral video, I'm like, yeah, that's how it works. Like they will jack it up over and over and over again until finally the director's like, hey, we don't have time, we got other stuff to do, we're just gonna do it live, and they nail it live every time.
SPEAKER_01They need that pressure, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's got a real phenomenon. Specifically with live news, I think. Yeah, because they're conditioned to do it like that or something.
SPEAKER_00It's it's the it in my head, it's the same like really good old school radio DJs can hit the post. Like you talk up and you vamp up into the song, and then the minute the verse hits, they're done. They're like, oh man, you know, fuck my face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that song, by the way. Yeah, it's a good one. It's a deep cut. B side. Good old S D. I don't like Steely Dan. And I I don't it's terrible. I feel like Is he a person or is it a band?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I don't know, but I don't know either.
SPEAKER_00I don't I don't need to know if it's a group or something of Steely Dan cousin of Hootie from Hootie and the Bullfish. Like, I feel like I'm bullying Steely because I think he's like a torpie guy because of what the music sounds like. So I feel bad saying I don't like Steely Dan. Sorry, Dave. I know. I know exactly what we'll have. Dave's got words for Steely Dan.
SPEAKER_01We'll have the expert on next week, yeah. Uh I'm sure he'll school. Yeah, it's two follow-up. Yeah. I'm curious to hear Steely Dan. I know he's gonna know. I know he's got opinions. Absolutely. I don't like Steely Dave. I don't know if I can name a song. That's a problem.
SPEAKER_00No, yeah. I mean, yeah, you've heard them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure I have, yeah.
SPEAKER_00On the radio or something. They sound like the Little River band. I don't know. It's all that like it's all that like What's my name? That like it's and I this is not a dig at Dave. This is unrelated. All this music is like old white guy type jazz rock. In my head. It's like light cling guitar, like noodling. I just is it in my head, that's what it is. Oh, okay. Watch where he's like, no, it's like speed metal, and I'm like way off. It's not. I'm right. I'm nailing it right now. But I don't like Steely Dance.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I don't know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, we'll we'll follow up. We'll Dave has an opinion. It undoubtedly your uh father-in-law looks like a guy that would love Steely Dan. Of course, just the look of him. I know it's amazing. He's like, oh yeah. It's amazing he's not a deadhead or an official guy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which I should ask him sometime.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, all that stuff's adjacent to that to me. It's like that without the drugs to enjoy it, just the boring personality. Okay. You know what I mean? Sure. I don't like it. Okay. I don't like it.
SPEAKER_01Nice.
SPEAKER_00Just have a random band that Josh brings up and then we go on a five-minute tangent about Williams. To be honest, I don't think Josh brought it up. I think I brought it up.
SPEAKER_02But I definitely commented on it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, gotcha. Uh so yes, how have you been, Josh, since episode two or three? Oh, you don't remember. I don't know. I have no idea. I think it's two or three.
SPEAKER_02I'm I'm good. I just finished a pitch deck. I've been working on a uh a script with the producer for a pilot for about eight months now, and it went on way longer than I thought it would. So I've been going through the pitch tech process with like a guy who very professionally has gotten many, many, many things greenlit. So we've had this person on the side that's friends with the uh producer that I'm working with, and it's like I make I make it and I'm done, and I'm like, fuck yeah, this is off my plate because I got four other things that I need to worry about, and then it boomerangs right back at me with notes of like Yeah. And the the unrelenting note is too much. And it's like he it came back and he goes, Cut all the copy in half. Like, okay, cool, no problem. You're a professional sure. It takes another week or so of diddling with it to to kind of get it to where it is, and I send it back, and then he sends it back again and he goes, Cut it in half again. He's like, Hey, you gotta understand, no one reads shit. Yeah, yeah. Nobody reads anything. Like, baffle them with beautiful pictures because just hook them. What I've realized, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's basically pictures with captions. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02What I what I really realized is that my job, honestly, is to just find ways to get into rooms with people who have access to money. That's it. That's it. And now you realize all the things that that are made in this world also involve the same process. It isn't because they were better, it wasn't because they were worse. Like when you look at things and you go, I can't believe that got greenlit, or like, thank god this got greenlit, whatever it is, like like devs, like we're gonna talk about. The the only barrier of entry is just getting into a series of rooms of people that will lead you into other rooms, just trying to get to people. The people in the rooms don't even have the money, they are just gatekeepers for said money, yeah. And and it then that's all it is. So it's like process one is getting this off to an actor that has access to like management, which has access to producers, which is like this is just a long, prolonged process. And every time you get into a room, you're just making the thing to just get access to that room.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because they're gonna come in and they're gonna go, Well, the first thing this actor is gonna say, I'm almost positive, is I'm not in this enough. Okay. So you spend eight months building this thing knowing it is going to iterate over, it's just gonna be a negotiated, like a different thing. So it's not even to make the best thing. So it's what's just to get into that room, yeah, to placate that person to get into the next room, to get in the next room, to get into the next room.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I know that might sound like hopeless and banal, but it just is the process. Yeah, yeah. I'm kind of here for it. Yeah. Honestly, but coming to that realization.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think I would hate that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's just iterate that. Because it's iteration on your idea, you know. Well, especially since, you know, it's also getting to a point where you get paid to do it. Because right now, this eight months is just free. Yeah, it's just a gamble. And the only reason I would do this is because the person I'm working with has access to these people. Yeah. If he didn't, I wouldn't do it. And I'm not at an age where I can just like make things and be like, maybe it'll be here. And it's like, no, no, no, you have access to money. What do you want?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, now let's work together to make something interesting that I like and and that is is worthy of it, to then have you use your access to get us further down the line. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's cool.
SPEAKER_02Just the pro but I for most of my life you go through going if if I'm just good enough, or if I could just make the thing, you know, people would see or wouldn't that's not how it works. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it might be, it is for some people, I guess. But on a long enough timeline, you're just trying to get into rooms with people with access to money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No matter what you're creating, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It all requires capital.
SPEAKER_01Donald Glever.
SPEAKER_00Donald Glover spoke about when he pitched and sold Atlanta. He now that it's over, he's like, Yeah, I lied. Like I a hundred percent did not tell them what this show was gonna be. I gave them every black stereotype about a rapper Atlanta show. He's like, That's the show I pitched. They wanted like my life as a show. And he's like, Yeah, I just you the the that idea is every time you go in the room and they're like, We want this. He's like, That's exactly what I'm giving you. And then when they gave him the money, he's like, Well, now yeah, Cav Williams has an alligator in the closet, you know, like it's yeah. We're here now, and people liked it, so then they're like, fine, just exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you have to actually make it good if that's the case, and you have to have some kind of star power like he did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and me and Marta just finished that season. We always have like kind of two shows running. One is like the 30-minute kind of like in and out show, yeah, which has been Rick and Morty for like a year now. Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_01I'm a couple seasons behind on that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And then um, and then we have like a long, more like thoughtful drama. And we're on to we're on to Ozark now. Oh wow. Because she was like, I want because we've been doing like eight, 10 episode shows, like our first season. I'm like, we're not gonna watch any more Drew Detective, we're just gonna watch season one of you know that kind of thing. And she's like, I want something that's more prolonged. And I went through and I looked at everything, and to be honest, there isn't a lot that like stick a landing. Yeah, like that's like a protracted show. And I I think I'll let you know, but I think Ozark actually is pretty good like all five seasons all the way through. Yeah, I've heard that it that it's it does well.
SPEAKER_00The end of the year. I was like, Yeah, I'd keep watching it, but I just never it was one of the I I forgot something else came up and I stuck with the other.
SPEAKER_02I love crime dramas. I love really everybody's an icky character that is, you know, that that only cares about themselves and or is a decent person that gets pulled into this like torrent of shit and gets compromised. And I mean that's really what that show is. I obviously also love shows where people are heroic and decent and do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, but I always do like to have a really icky noir you know, show where everybody is just fucked, yeah, and they're just doing their best to get out of a horrible situation they've put themselves in.
SPEAKER_00I like that that Netflix show Bloodlines with Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelssohn. That was that. Like that first season, I was like, I'm so excited of like we're okay people maybe, and we did a horrible thing. I was like, this is yeah, I want four seasons of this. Yeah, that yeah, I get excited for shows like that.
SPEAKER_01I saw some news with one of your past projects, and and as you always say, uh uh friend of the podcast, Ken Levine's, yes, uh, with the his video game Judas that he's working on that you know you may or may not have worked on uh NDA's uh I worked on it. Yeah, no, we can't talk about it. But uh, I guess today Take Two uh released, like they're like talking about like quarterly earnings, I think. And they were reinforcing, like, yep, uh GTA 6 is still coming out in November. I know we've delayed it a bunch. They were projecting out what you know 2027's gonna look like, what 2028's gonna look like, which franchises, not always names, but like, hey, we're gonna do a mobile game this quarter, we're gonna do a franchise game, new IP this quarter, blah, blah, blah. And both Judas and Bioshock 4 were still TBA. So interesting. So I read that and I was like, oh, it's so funny that Josh is coming on to the case. I swear it's coming out.
SPEAKER_02I swear at everybody who's watching this that gives a shit. It is a real thing. You would not believe how many people ask me when and where and what, and I can't tell anybody anything. No, exactly. So it's at least another year out, folks. Yeah, because they they still have to do that.
SPEAKER_00He's doing some interviews, so I I felt like uh the rollouts coming maybe soon because I've I saw him popping up a few places. Yeah, he this is interesting.
SPEAKER_02He pops up as little as he can. Like Ken is so is so articulate, he's so good at like even in writers' rooms, he is just so succinct. I'm shocked he isn't doing interviews like all the time or as a podcast because he does also hate that. Yeah, but he likes being comfortable, and in a writer's room, everybody works for him and stuff like that. I think he's a lot more comfortable than he is, but he's so adept at interviewing and and conveying information. He's just in a really interesting person. I've had hours and hours and hours of just like one-on-one bullshitting with my creative hero, yeah, you know, and for for better or worse, or worse than all, like just an interesting dude who's deeply curious about uh radicalization is just the thing that he is the most interested by. So, you know, when the world does weird, like he's drawn to it for better or worse, again, like whatever that is. Like when we would he always had like the news of the day in in writers' rooms, and he means like whatever was going on that was like whatever, whether it was Trump, regardless of like what but it it all revolved around like fanaticism. And he's just deeply like you can look at I don't think that's crazy. He's if you look at Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, you will just see exactly what he's the most interested by. Oh, and that's a smart which is like burning utopias, man.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, bring it in to the creative process. That's yeah, that's a yeah.
SPEAKER_02His first his first great love is like Logan's Run when he was a kid. Oh, like that is the first thing that he said was just like that makes sense, blew his fucking mind. Clicked, yeah, yeah. And and you look at all of his stuff and it all really, really inspired by Logan's Run, which is just a utopia that is on fire. Like when you show up, just like Rapture, just like Columbia. Like that's cool.
SPEAKER_00You show up and you're like, what's happened here? Yeah, yeah. I think the the Top Gun Maverick guy at a point was gonna do Logan's Run remake. Oh, really? That sounds I think that was a thing for a bit.
SPEAKER_02Ken got into Hollywood writing a script for that. It was his, I believe, his like first screenplay. Wow. Um yeah, was adapting that. Obviously, it did not work out, and then he was like, Well, fuck it. Oh, hey, what's this game thing going on? Yeah. So he just stumbled into looking glass, and that kind of started his career. Yeah, I kind of tried to.
SPEAKER_01I wonder if that's online. I wonder. I'd love to read that. Yeah, right. Yeah, I'll have to look Google. Hey Siri, Google. Okay, sorry. I don't know. Just bringing back Williams hey Siri joke that he did like five times the last podcast. Uh-huh. I'm a one-time of Jamie. Yeah, Jamie, pull that down. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very true. It's easier to go Siri these days.
SPEAKER_00Well, because it oddly works. I know. He does my my voice activates Nick Siri. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So I have a couple like a Siri speaker or whatever in our living room. And yeah, it'll listen to William. It's weird. Yeah, so there's some there's some frequencies in our voice that we share.
SPEAKER_00Something like that. I I still think it's because it's programmed for Kira, but I don't know. I don't know if it is actually. That's the one. To be honest, I don't know if it is. Last time uh when uh we were watching his friend play Resident Evil. My go-to is always to have Siri play Torquelator by the City Girls. And then I was like, wait a second, I think it's actually playing, and we were all like, oh shit. I was like, oh, that's weird.
SPEAKER_01It's playing in the other room, yeah. I'm like, what the fuck? How are you doing today, William? How's the air conditioner? We we mentioned the air conditioner saga previously this whole season. Oh yeah. And so I wanted the audience to get updated because I'm sure they were worried about you sweating your balls off while you're sleeping.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this uh the the AC got fixed, got worked, and it works really well. My place is set up weird. There's not ductwork in the whole place. The upstairs is the living area, dining room, kitchen, it's open concept. So it's just one big vent in the middle, and that's just a straight line to the AC. Yeah. So there's no ductwork to the downstairs bedroom, bathroom, but because it's downstairs, it's cool enough and the fans work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you can crack a wood though.
SPEAKER_00So the the the layout of the house, I was worried, I was like, oh shit, I don't have ductwork, but it works perfectly fine. So yeah, it's working good, uh money well spent. I think it should hold up just fine when it gets really, really hot. Because so far it hasn't been. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's going good. It's comfy. I'm glad it worked out.
SPEAKER_02I had to I had to fix my AC and I it was just one of those things. I have no problem sweating my balls off even a little bit. I think it's because I'm from Florida. Yeah, I just am completely reptile fine. Yeah, yeah, in it. And in any even the most even if it's slightly cold, I'm like hoodied up, I'm like jacket on. I walk around all day with like a jacket on and everything. I'm just for whatever reason. But cold blooded. But I thought that uh I was gonna have to get a new AC unit, and I was just dreaming about that price. And when he came in and said, Hey, we got to fix this part, it's $400. I've never been more excited, yeah, never been more sexually aroused in my life to find out that I was only gonna pay $400 for something. Yeah. Seven, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's great. Yeah, I was gonna ask if you got yours fixed. I remember you were asking about that. Yeah, and did you go with those guys, whoever recommended? I don't even remember.
SPEAKER_02Possibly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or Mikey recommended something. No, Mikey recorded somebody and he was awesome. Oh, okay. Super professional and cool. And I was like, you know, for life, whoever the fuck you are for life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, that's good. That's awesome. But yeah, other than that, I'm I don't know. I'm fine. How are you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I'm fine. Yeah, feeling I think I'm feeling better than I was last week. Good. Not as scrumpy, kind of losing it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was losing it a little bit last week. Gravely disappointed to find out that for the last three episodes that I've been listening to and not being a part of, you guys have been very kind to one another. Yeah despite how I think you're just both in such a shitty, like tired mood that you don't even have the energy to fuck each other up.
SPEAKER_00There's something with Nick's narcissism brain where he goes, well, if anything bad happens to William, it's gonna be partially my fault. So I can't be too mean to him right now when he's a little when he's a little delicate. Yeah, gotta be nice. Yeah, exactly. I'll listen to his stupid, shitty rap albums. I know, I'll kind of keep him around. Pretend I like this crap.
SPEAKER_01Crap is right. Anytime you say crap, all I hear is your dad talking about rap and calling it crap. Seriously, I think of Bill just being like more like crap. Yeah, I don't know if he's ever said that before. I don't know if he hasn't, but you've done that in person. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's you know how Nick's being fake nice because a previous episode he actually said I was like, oh wow, you actually understand this. Like he was Bill like any hope.
SPEAKER_02Does he like any hip hop? Because I mean you and your brother both are big fans. And and Bill has not even like a beastie boys, like not even the crazy sleeper good taste. Yeah, so my dad mentioned about movies, but I'm curious.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my dad's big classic rock. Doors is like his thing, Led Zeppelin, uh CCR. That guy, I got him. I got them in my those are his, those are like his big three, but yeah, all that typical stuff. I don't know, he doesn't love the rap that we listen to, but I have this story of when we lived in Corpus Christi, Texas. My older brother is uh a half-brother. He's uh half like Afro-Puerto Rican, half Mexican, so he's dark. I hope Trump doesn't listen to this episode or he's gonna bite you outside. So he was dating a girl that lived in the trailer park uh two neighborhoods down. And I say that because it tells you the personality type of that girl and probably her family.
SPEAKER_01And he seeing all these things in my head, and his older brother likes uh likes the bigger gals, big, bigger white gals.
SPEAKER_00So this is this is uh a bigger trailer park gal, right? Okay, father didn't approve of my brother being a dark, full on fucking Mexican. So while they were hanging out and Carlo would take my dad's CD player, and his CDs like, oh, it's the doors and I don't know, make out or whatever people were doing in their teenage years that I wasn't. One time Carlo came home and he was like red in the face and like acting weird. Like, what's wrong? He goes, Well, uh, Jennifer's dad came home and kicked me out of the house, and he's being kind of a jerk. And my dad's like, Wait, hold on, where's my CD player? He goes, He kicked me out of the house, and he's he just told me, get the hell out, and he wouldn't give me my stuff back. And my dad's like, one, he's rude to my son, two, took my CD player, three, took my doors uh like disc three of their greatest hits. So my dad, so my dad, my old white, crusty ass dad, goes, get in the car, puts Carlo in the car, gets in the car, rolls all the windows down. And I don't know where this came from, but it was a cassette. He put it in, and I still to this day don't know what song or who it was, but in Spanish, the hardest rap I've ever heard, and the song, the the hook is just them over and over saying Mexican power, and then my dad drove, and for 40 minutes he's gone, and then he comes back with all his shit. Carlo, and I asked Carlo, I was like, Carlo, I was like, what the hell happened? And Carlos like, I shit you not. Dad said, Don't leave the car. He left it running, parked in the middle of the street, he went in the trailer by himself for like 30 minutes and came back with all the shit, and they didn't talk the whole time. So Carlo's like, I don't know what happened, but dad came back with all the stuff. Yeah, the loudest Mexican rap ever. That's amazing. He I don't know, but no, he hates Bone, he hated Biggie, he hated uh three. Because that's the best stuff.
SPEAKER_02Like, you're not gonna like 10 years later if you didn't if you weren't there for the inception, you're not gonna like anything that comes after it.
SPEAKER_00No, yeah. He heard it. Yeah, because he had to be 30 in the 90s, right? Or yeah, he was in his 30s at the time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so he was too old for that stuff. Interesting. But yeah, no, he didn't like any of the rap we were getting into.
SPEAKER_02I found hip hop in my late 20s. I didn't get it like all the way up until that point. Yeah. And then it just Wu Tang broke me. Or Del Deltron 3030, and then I was just like, oh, I I get it now. And then all of it unlocked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, yeah, you should have stepped in with a Florida rapper joke. I don't know enough about him, but it was right there for the Florida. I I might almost exist.
SPEAKER_02The the hip hop scene in the 90s in Florida was weird. Really? Fucking weird. I just know Riff Raff and Fred Durst. They looked like that. Yeah, yeah. Actually, more like Riff Raff. It was all like seeing that guy come back around like 20 years later. I was like, oh, like there he is. Like, not even Paul Wall, not you know, not any of those guys. It's that, it's mullets. It's and those fucking hot rod magazines with like the like the chicks with big tits on them. Like it was that whatever that fucking culture is mixed with hip-hop. We used to go over like the stoners that I go over to with all these like yo MTV raps and redneck. Yeah. It was I didn't get it. And it really turned me off from like any country and any hip-hop for a very long time. It wasn't until my second time in college that somebody finally was just like, hey, like, yeah, what was like really it's okay. That makes a that makes so much sense. It ruined me. Me and Nick are uh those are my bullies, those are the the the the Stephen King bullies of my my childhood.
SPEAKER_00Because me and me and Nick talk about all the time, we're such victims to the uh the idea of like the fan of something will turn us off. Like I've gone my entire life hating Alice and Chains, the band, just because the guys that wore the shirt in high school.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I couldn't name an Alice and Chains song, but if you asked me right now, I would say I hate Alice and Chains. All of that music, I just I know the t-shirts and who wore them. I was like, I I hate all you guys. Yeah, yeah. I hate their fans, therefore I I'm never getting into that music. So yeah, if that's the if that's the rap of the time and who's gonna be.
SPEAKER_01But that makes total sense. Yeah, why would you yeah, just yeah, it was a weird transition. Yeah, that's how I am about country music too. Not I mean, I I don't like the actual music and the lyrics and all that kind of stuff, but all the fans are just like, oh yeah, these guys are just I don't I'm I don't like redneck culture. So it's I could never get it.
SPEAKER_02But I found good country and like yeah, it exists like in my ear, I think early 30s. So it was just like uh you know, it was just being allowed to appreciate it. Yeah, because I just had that giant mental block like you were talking about. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, country has its uh place. I mean Wayland Jennings and like outlaw country pretty cool. Yeah, there's a cool edge.
SPEAKER_02If you know me, it wasn't Garth Brooks that I found, you know what I mean? It was like Ryan Adams and and uh like all these what was called y alternative at the time. Yeah, there's a this cool little um like vein of interesting country that was coming out of like punk rock, uh like shifting over into this going back to like older country kind of way, and which is great. I like I love that about Tony Sly and guys like that. I love that about music culture where it just gets these ebbs and flows, things will become so insanely popular, and then it'll just break, and then nobody everybody hates it, and then this kind of punk rock version of it'll come out of it at some point in time, and it always comes around, it's yeah, it's always it's like a fashion thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. But speaking of country music, my dad last time he came up here, I think he brought me like a vinyl record of like, oh, this was your grandfather's favorite artist. Because my grandfather, I met him when I was like a little baby, but he died.
SPEAKER_00David Allen Coe.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Johnny Rebel.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, they God, what a fucking beautiful inside joke that is. I have no idea. The the two people that get together.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm glad. Uh I'm happy for those people. But the the uh I I didn't know him. He died in the mid-90s. I was a little kid, right? So I was like, oh, this is kind of cool and whatever. I don't have my record player set up, but I looked at the album, I found it on Apple Music. I'm like, oh cool, I'll have this in my library and I'll try to listen to it. And then like yeah, a couple songs in, it kind of gets pretty sub where it's like talking about the Confederacy and shit. I'm like, you know, yeah. I think I'm I think I'm good. I I could look him up real quick, but I hate the Yankee Nation and everything that's not as I hate the Declaration of Independence, too. Yeah, it's not the stuff that William's into, but uh his name is It's not the Stormfront soundtrack, exactly. But his name's Johnny Horton. Okay, uh Johnny Rort. And yeah, there's Johnny Reb is a song. Uh Battle of New Orleans, uh Comanche, the Brave Horse, uh, and Johnny Freedom, which we can assume we know what that is. And The Mansion You Stole. Who knows what that is, but or whose mansion it was. But yeah, I was like, I got a couple songs into that greatest hits, and I was like, you know what? I don't think, yeah, I don't need to know my grandpa this much. No, no, exactly. Uh I'm good. Uh it was a a different time.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, the 1978. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's probably more true than we know. Yeah. Unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00Do you have any tattoos?
SPEAKER_01I do not.
SPEAKER_00Are you gonna get a tattoo?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think so. Eventually I'd like to. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00The footprint and then Leo's name.
SPEAKER_01No, no.
SPEAKER_02But just Leo's face. Yeah, just Leo's just do an MM exactly. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, I I don't know. It'd probably be a Zelda thing or you know, some Triforce or something. No, it would be something more interesting. Yeah. What the Triforce? Yeah, just on my forehead. Yeah, Triforce. But uh no, I don't. I don't think I have the skin for it, honestly. I don't know what that means. I just have I You're a white man. I'm a translucent man, actually. Yeah, I my skin is I have very little pigment in my skin. No, for real. Like with my my older sister was doing makeup stuff for a few years, probably like five years ago. On you. Sure. And basically, she's going through and learning all these like different shades. I don't know what the fuck, you know, makeup people they they do it. I I don't know. Yeah. Uh or I have to act like I don't whatever Joe Boy is gonna make.
SPEAKER_00I was I I had turn, I was like blending, and I was like, I don't need to do this to myself either. But we can both pretend we don't know anything about makeup.
SPEAKER_01But I can't remember what the conversation was, but at one point she's like, Oh yeah, our skin tone is translucent. And I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Like, if I if you see my chest, all you see are the veins of my pectoral muscles. Like, seriously, you see, I don't have very little pigment. That's why my my uh cheeks are so red and all the shit, it's because you can see the blood vessels beneath my fucking skin. Yeah, so I am and I already have to go to the dermatologist once a year to get shit cut out of me for like skin cancer and stuff.
SPEAKER_00So I honestly don't think like Nick has to apply foundation to his arms, otherwise, we'll see his endocrine system.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's that's pretty good. Well, that's sound that's the most scientifically sounding thing you've ever said, I think. Yeah, that's that's pretty good. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know, yeah. Josh doesn't have any tattoos either, just the butthole one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh okay. They're just shitty, they're just shitty early 2000s tattoos I got in my Florida. Yeah, it's a pronouncement. Stick and poke tattoos. Um the Gators tattoo. Yeah, yeah. I was just kept thinking I would I'd just cover like I would have no problems getting sleeves, especially when I'm on like the back half of life. I'm not gonna wake up and be like, what have I done to my art? Like, I'm done. Like I'm I'm at that point where it's like, but if if I had access to a tattoo artist I really liked, um globally, yeah, I could I'd probably go Wolf Buckwild for sure. But I just don't care that much anymore. Like there was like a couple years back where I was like, Yeah, that'd be cool, man. I'm like, I don't kinda don't give a shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. But about you, why you begin to?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't have any. And the other day I was talking to someone that has a lot, and I was like, I feel uh the obvious and everyone says is I don't know what I want that I need like forever on me. But the other thing is like if it's for me, I wouldn't know where to put it because I'm gonna want to see it.
SPEAKER_01Well, what you you'd want to see the Elliot Smith chest wound?
SPEAKER_00That's that's what I'm saying, is like how do I just incur Elliot Smith on my like forearm? It would look weird. No, you can't stand it's it's the single T that he wrote on his misspelled name he wrote on his suicide letter. Like, I would do it with the one T. But I'm like But yeah, it's like I wouldn't even know where to put a thing because I feel like I I would want to see it. Sure, sure, and it would feel weird to like why'd I do it if I'm not seeing it? Sure. And then I'm like, well, if I see I nah, I'm thinking about it too much, therefore I shouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the other problem has is that I that I am an artist and I would think I'd want to kind of do my own stuff, but all at the same time I'm like, I kind of don't like it's it's a weird, weird place to be with that. But yeah, it all really comes down to the fact that I don't have access to somebody where I'm like, oh my god, I really love their work.
SPEAKER_01That would change everything if you had that would be a dramatic change on the yeah, because I definitely have ideas, but yeah, I haven't seen anybody locally that I'm like, oh yeah, they could pull it off or whatever. I don't have any money.
SPEAKER_00No one knows how to draw the master sword.
SPEAKER_01No one knows how to draw it straight.
SPEAKER_00I would love if you got the Brock Lesnar master sword on your back, like he has like a broadsword tattoo. It's his whole back, but yours is the master sword. That'd be pretty cool. No, I would like to have some ideas back.
SPEAKER_02Does Brock Lesnar have the actual master sword? No, or is it just a bass sword?
SPEAKER_00Nick did it as the master sword.
SPEAKER_02I was like, I kind of have a little more credibility for it.
SPEAKER_00No it's had a triforce on it, it's a different, uh weird like pinwheel thing, and Nick calls it the master race sword. I just had a pinwheel thing. I'm trying to say a swastika because it's like a pinwheel that's not moving. Oh yeah. Alright. Yep. Did I tell you my fun work uh my fun work thing I do sometimes? Oh. Like in the swastika. Hold on. I'm so excited. So during like a work meeting, like we're sitting next to each other and I have a little notebook to take notes, which obviously I never take notes. But what I will do is I'll move it a little forward so the person sitting next to me can see, and you draw an X, and then you start adding pieces that look like a swastika, but then you immediately turn it into the Bluetooth symbol. Do you do the line down the list so it looks like I'm gonna draw a swastika in the last minute? I just make it the Bluetooth uh little symbol.
SPEAKER_02Do people at work know you?
SPEAKER_00A little.
SPEAKER_02Not much. Okay. Not all of it. I have friends that are really specific personalities, and you realize, like, holy shit, no one at your like knows you. Yeah, yeah. That's uh so if you say it like people can't not know who I am. Everybody that's ever worked with me knows me. Yeah, D me. Every now and again there will be like like a leaked met or like something will hit discovery, like when like with Twitter or something like that, and everything. And there's always this like aghast pearl clutching of like, I can't believe they said this on their shut the fuck up. Yeah, exactly. I I have talked so much shit on on cross check because I am me and I don't have that plausible deniability. I'll just say or do the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I'm like, well, fuck you, I'll go somewhere else, like and be a legend. Yeah, yeah, I'll just go back to bomb disposal where everybody is way worse than me. Yeah, you know, where I'm the like the tame pussy libtard. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Or I'm beloved, yeah. So yeah, no, eat shit. I'm not gonna not be me. So but I've I've somehow managed to avoid that world, yeah, like in my whole life, thank Christ. I mean, I will enter that if you pay me enough. I know this for a fact. Sure. I'm a big fat whore. I will 100% if the money's there, why not? Yeah, if I if if Edios or you know, any one of these like major studios, Activision, whatever, calls me and they want me, I'm like, how much? Okay, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, plugged in, I'll wear a suit, whatever, I don't give a shit.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, yeah. And I'm sure it'll eventually happen, honestly. I wouldn't be surprised.
SPEAKER_02We'll see. Yeah, the industry's got pretty fucked. I mean, maybe you know, 10 years from now, maybe. I think it's coming back. I people have something I'd say another year or two for everyone to kind of figure out what the fuck people want. Yeah, that's the thing people don't like you can say it's the AI thing, and that's sure that's what's happening. The the inflection points will be, in my opinion, Judas. I'm very interested to see because Ken Lamina is one of the biggest names, and I'm curious if people will give a shit when Judas comes out. That's one inflection point, and then of course GTA 6.
SPEAKER_01Just are people gonna pay it's the savior of of the game industry.
SPEAKER_02But will it meet the projection?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like that is the the the real question. Gonna make a good million dollars, and if it doesn't meet projection, then they will shut that shit down.
SPEAKER_01But there's the GTA fans are psychotic. Yeah, I think it will. We'll see. I think they're rabbit.
SPEAKER_02But that will that will be but that will be a time where everyone goes, okay, now we can start putting money back into games. Because right now they're just trimming everything. The gaming culture has changed a lot. Something has flipped in this market.
SPEAKER_01Well, triple A games are costing so much money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, there is a belt tightening that's happening, and it's and it probably should. There was so much bloat. If you've ever watched um the the the thing I'm I always think about is um the Apocalypse Now documentary, Hearts of Darkness, yeah. Which is amazing, by the way. Anyone who's listening to this that hasn't seen it's fucking just watch that. Don't watch now, who cares? Um but it was at a time where VCs had all this money coming into the 80s, and they didn't know what to do with it. The V Kong had all this money, and they didn't know what to do with it, and they were just pumping in the movies, and nobody knew how movies were made. So you had all these people that were just giving this massive amount of budget to just figure it out. And that's why you have Scorsese, and that's why you have Your Boy, and that's why you have Spielberg, and these people, that's the only reason, is because this giant influx of money that came in just at this time. There probably was amazing directors four years before that, but they didn't get that influx of money and that ability to do it. And and for them to like kind of perfect their craft and do all that good stuff, and that's why we have like your boy specifically, like who can he can still get away with that. So I think that has just happened in games. Yeah, I think the past like two or three years, people went, wait a minute, no. Like it just happened. And there's gonna be this massive contraction, and everything is cratered, and tens of thousands of people not working for very prolonged periods of time because I know because I talk to them all the time. Yeah, and I'm one of them. And then when we go back to whatever we're to, shit is just gonna be different. And I'm here for it, to be honest. I've watched so much fucking waste over the studios that I have worked on, great stuff came out of it, but like the waste and the bloat of these things, like it all needs to be streamlined. This is a good thing. Yeah, even if I'm I agree, I'm not suffering, but and I'm continuing to stay busy, but it does suck. Yeah. But I think the fucking that whatever that thing is we had before, it's done.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my you know, I I think one of the things that my my favorite, the FromSoft guys are they're very well known for, is they're they're thrifty, they cut corners. It's the same door animation that they wrote in the Dark Souls 1. They're still using, you know, their same assets, and they they do that to keep costs down, and you know, they can churn these out a little quicker. I'm playing Ghost of Yote right now. I just finished Ghost of Tsushima.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00The difference graphically between the two from uh from far away, they look and play the exact same. But now I'm playing Yote, which came out a few years after. Not a ton of years, like a few.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's PlayStation 4 versus PlayStation 5, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So now like the grass moves, her fabric on her outfits relate and react to snow and which you water. It's cool. It's what I mean. Uh legitimately, my biggest gripe right now is there's not enough dolly dress-up. I don't have two outfits. I'm annoyed I don't have more outfits. But and I'm being serious, that is a gripe of mine. I love outfits, but I'm the same way. Them paying attention to these little details. Uh, you gotta you gotta stop at a certain point. But I think that's where the culture of gamers went, where like Red Dead 2 broke everyone's brain, GTA 5 broke everyone's brain, where they're like his flip-flops like stick to the ground and the water evaporates when he gets out of the pool.
SPEAKER_01Everyone's trying to chase that.
SPEAKER_02But notice everything you've we've been talking about as sequels, yeah. But just like in movies, this is my point. This is a return to the same. Yeah, like nobody wants to take chances.
SPEAKER_00And Bosa Yote is like so far what I can tell, it's a lesser story. Like, this is a pulpy action, six bad guys, they have a name. It's like a Tarantino thing. It's like, okay, you killed my family, I'm gonna hunt you down one by one.
SPEAKER_02He stole that. No, I know, but I know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're called the Yote Six, and it's like it's very stylized, but I'm like, yeah, the the it I'll take uh Red Dead and uh The Last of Us, those don't count because they're anomalies, but like you're focusing in the budget goes in the the grass and the leaves, not in the story, not in the character, not in anything that's gonna make this game last beyond people making videos showing these details. Gotcha. I do think GTA 6 will be a change in that because the last time a GTA game came out, we were quite literally a different world socially. Like we were making uh there's a whole chunk of that where we're making fun of tech bros with the vests and the startups, and we bombed their headquarters, and like we're making fun of uh Republicans and but also still making fun of gay people. Like we were doing so much irreverent stuff in GTA 5. This world's different. If they don't have the faggio as the scooter name, people are gonna say this game sucks. You know what I mean? Like uh culturally and politically, how divided we got. People are looking for this needs to be the red pill game, otherwise, they they're they're cuck snowflakes and they bent the knee and blah blah blah, and they're gonna shit on it.
SPEAKER_02Like it's on the credits that that pisses them off.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, too many women on the writing team of this game. If they see that, they're gonna say, This game sucks.
SPEAKER_01Well, so I mean that's that's the contingent of people. But that's what I'm saying. That's new now. That's that wasn't for two five, that's a thing now.
SPEAKER_00So like I think GTA 6 is coming in where they're not doing no one can do what they're about to do with their budget. You have to change. There like things have to change.
SPEAKER_02I gotta say, they're probably popping in at a pretty good time for them to be GTA. If they had showed up two years ago in a different ballgame, like even before GTA 5. Like GTA C is like culturally, you're walking into just an absolute minefield.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you know, it's I don't know. I I think everything changes once that game comes out because it should be like Josh was saying, it should be the nail going, you can't do this anymore. They're the last to do it. You're gonna have to change. You have to do a hard freaking pick. Well, and I think you have to.
SPEAKER_01I think they're gonna, you know, console makers are going to. I mean, they they have to make some changes. Xbox is making some changes, they gotta figure their shit out before they just become a fucking publisher like Sega. I mean, PlayStation is is shrinking down a little bit too. So I yeah, I think, but it could be good. Get rid of some of the blow. Which not not jobs like Josh's, but the excess spending and the like let's go as big as possible. No, let's let's make the the Dan thing that he always talks about with the movie business. Don't make a hundred million dollar movie, make ten million dollar movies.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's where it's going. Also, the way the industry and I hate it, but I will definitely be a part of it is the idea that it's most people, most gamers now of a certain age, they just play a game once. They will get on and they will play with their friends for like four to six hours, and you just put a game out on Steam, you have a six-month window, it's total slop, but it's super fun, and it's just one night. Like a bunch of your friends download the same game, spend about six bucks each, and have a fun experience, and they will never touch it again. Unless it's Roblox or Fortnite for the younger kids, right?
SPEAKER_00Unless it's that type of game.
SPEAKER_02It's just a different market that we're all trying to all of us old people are trying to figure out because I don't want to do that. Yeah, like, but I will make a game like that, like for some seed capital to do what I want to do, yeah, for sure. Sure. Again, it's all about being a big whore.
SPEAKER_00That and uh the big whore thing always sticks with me when we start talking about directors and writers and autors. Um, you know, we we kind of said that there, you Dave, there's a few people that felt like collateral was Michael Mann's. Like, what are you doing? Like Yeah, like what are you doing? Like Dave, you're not that guy. I think Dave, I think Dave has feelings like horror.
SPEAKER_01It's like he doesn't he's closer to you on the spectrum of it, I think, than us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I I always think about that. I always think about like this show's dense and it's weird, and the poster is a statue of a girl and a silhouette of a person, and my brain always goes to back in the day, the Hollywood reporter do they always do those Oscar roundtables, and they did one with uh Jason Reitman for Up in the Air, and I forget the guy's name because I hate his guts, but he did the butler, and he did uh the he did Precious Lee Daniels. Jason Reitman said he had to fight for the up in the air poster to be the silhouette of George Clooney, and it just says up in the air, and it wasn't him because it's George Clooney, because everyone, the the the companies were like the poster needs to be his fucking head.
SPEAKER_01That's George Clooney.
SPEAKER_00You need to tell all the women there's a new George Clooney movie. And Jason Reitman goes, I love that our poster isn't that, it's the airport and him looking out at the plane. And Lee Daniels called him out, and I loved it. He goes, if it was to guarantee you another 20 million, would you have done it and changed it? If it's a guaranteed extra 80 million, you put George Clooney on your poster, would you have done it? And Jason didn't want to answer. Because I think everybody, especially because it was a low budget movie and it didn't make a ton of money, everybody would go, is the poster that fucking important? Yeah, I should put his face on the poster, I should whore it out because I'm I'm gonna get more money to do the next thing. So, like this show's dense and Nick Offerman's a huge deal. You don't sell this, isn't the Nick Offerman show. This isn't. This isn't the girl from Scott Pilgrim show. This isn't even all the way the guy who wrote 28 Days Later show. This is the we're a fucking weird show. I think he purposely is like, I don't even want to promote it. I don't want you to know what the show's about by the poster. I don't want the trailer to tell you this is quantum, time travel, whatever. Like, I you all know there's a trailer for this show where it's just scenes of Kenton killing the Russian guy or sniping people with a gun.
SPEAKER_01Like you mean Josh's fan edit.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02That is because Kenton does go out like a bitch. I didn't clock on this episode where it's just like he's just becomes the butt of the joke of like Lily is the worst character ever. And I noticed in this episode she tricks him again. Like, and I'm like, is that your sole purpose of this character? With a window.
SPEAKER_01With a window.
SPEAKER_00There was there was a big part of my uh, you know, you you can't yeah, I can't escape my roots, but I was like, that's not how you clear a house. That is not how you room clear your ex CIA, you know better, young man. I was so mad at Kenton. Kenton really does like spiral. Yeah, oh let's let's start with the Kenton thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause he's done. Is he your favorite part of this show?
SPEAKER_02No, my favorite part of the show is is very is just what it is, in all honesty. I because again, watching this episode, I was like, boy, do I hate these main characters. Like, I just don't like Jamie and Lily. Every fucking time or every time he cuts to them, I'm just like Jamie and Lilly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the the soundscape of this movie is or the show is fucking awesome. The cinematography of the show is fucking awesome. There are these brilliant, poignant writing moments and things like that. I'm definitely gonna talk about that are my favorite things like ever. It's just those two main characters, honestly, that I just think are just bullshit.
SPEAKER_01But I think it's my no, but but I think it comes back to your original hypothesis. See, I remember this at least, about Alex Garland protagonists. Yeah, you have uncharismatic people, and this one I mean, she's kind of like Caleb is in Ex Machina, she's in over her head, she doesn't know what the fuck she's doing, but she is smart to a point. You know, I don't think she's as smart as you know in the previous episode when uh Katie and Forrest are talking about she's not smart in that in that way.
SPEAKER_02But this happens again in this where where the bum whose name I can't think of like looks her in the eye and is like, I just had to break all my fucking, you know, all my programming and everything because you're just so awesome. I'm like, I'm back in girls with Lena Dunham, where who's writing a show where she does a bunch of horrible shit and then her friends come in and go, Oh, we love you, you're so pretty. Yeah, like you just you're just so great and special. Like that's what I'm feeling the entire time this is happening. And again, it does not this is one of my favorite shows ever. I love this show. I am willing to overlook the main characters being uncharismatic and uninteresting. And and again, the show just comes back to life. Just the I mean, uh, because I want I I don't want to derail you for what you were talking about, but just yeah, yeah, go ahead, keep going. I'm I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00No, yeah, I was gonna say, but we can talk about Kenton because I know that meant a lot to you. And now that we watched this episode, I was like, now I know why you what you wanted to talk about the two you wanted to talk. Because uh good Kenton stuff, yeah, but also the one you came on for is she faked like she was gonna commit suicide and jump off the ledge of the building. And this one, she actually does uh Lyndon jumps off a dam. And I was like, Yeah, you're here for the the people jumping off of that.
SPEAKER_02The prospect of people jumping off of things. Uh uh the Linden, there's two there's this is the episode I really wanted to do. I should have done five. You were a hundred percent correct. There's more really, really good Kenton stuff in five than there is in three, but I wanted to come in early. Yeah, that whole sequence that he says about China um and about his time is so fucking interesting to me. That's the stuff I love. But again, I also love espionage, and he's kind of in that world, so I have a bit of a thing for for for that. Um, but yeah, I still I love Kenton and I I do like the way he goes out. The sounds, the can we yeah, can we just start with the the sound part of this? Before I go jump to the beginning, which is what I really want to talk about, but that his death scene, that grating noise that's going when he's strangling her, is so it brings back that original fucking because it's just horrible.
SPEAKER_01It's recalling when he's killing Sergei, right? Yeah, it's it's eliciting the same thing, using some of the same thing.
SPEAKER_02Like, I'm like, I want all death scenes to have this sound playing under him because it's like it is visceral. Yeah, it's not just him choking a little girl, like it that sound makes you feel it like infinitely more, which I'm just I'm so taken aback with. But yeah, let's talk about it. So good. What do you guys feel about the beginning soundscape? So if you don't know, I only know this song. I'm gonna call it a parentheses. Yeah, if anybody listening can hear my parentheses, yeah. Air quotes. My air quotes. I only know this from the MF Doom album Mad Villain. Okay, I know. This is sampled in there.
SPEAKER_00I didn't catch it.
SPEAKER_02Um I didn't put the two together. Come out, come out and show them. You gotta open up the open up the bruise to let the blood out. It it's a song, but it it's just literally it was from like a like a riot. There it was just a recording of this black guy in like a racial riot. And this guy, I want to say Stephen Reich or something, who's just kind of like an experimental guy, made a song that is just that oh interesting, like but being sampled. I think it was from like the 60s or 70s where this was a really big deal, you know, to like sample something. So there's just a track on the album of that guy just repeating and it's just grading. Jesus. And that's in the opening. Yeah, yeah. But I don't really know why. I'm willing, I'm willing to let it just be weird and not have a I'm sure that there's some internal logic. Yeah, I guess. We talked about that.
SPEAKER_01Like, what are why is he choosing these why is he choosing these songs to open and click on the side? But you know what I'm talking about, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, watching the kid, and and it's just this really strange oh yeah. I love it so much.
SPEAKER_00I I was gonna say the uh two of my absolute favorite things this show has done outside of all the fun, super cool, uh too smart for me talkie bits, is uh when we talked about watching the history and like the Joan of Arc burning and all of that, but it's it's this it's the cave. There's something about this cave so otherworldly. I don't in it it's the blended 30,000 years ago. Everyone's done this knowledge, but yeah, the fact that I'm looking, and I think it's the way it's framed, that it's kind of far back, and it's a little not grandiose, but a little matter of fact to show the cave people in how big of that cave with the sound, with the lyrics, with everything that's happening. This is that thing that it feels otherworldly, it feels like I'm looking at something I kind of shouldn't. It's the same thing I got hearing Jesus talk in the in the video. I was just like, I'm not you're not supposed to see that. That's crazy. This makes me feel that, and this is one of my favorite things in the show is that the opening to this.
SPEAKER_01Well, and the in the visual juxtaposition of later on in the episode when Forrest and Katie, yes, I can remember her name now, Mike Sanchez, who was giving me a hard time about me not remembering. And the only reason I can remember Katie is because I think of Kim from her character and Scott Pilgrim, and I think K, and then it's there it is Katie. So Johnny mnemonic vice device. But the visual juxtaposition of you have the girl staring into the fire, the flickering, she's watching something incomprehensible, and then you have Forrest and Katie watching it, and what's flickering on their face? The video of her, and they're the same light is flickering on their faces, and they are also watching something incomprehensible. Fucking good visual storytelling. I love that. It's amazing. I absolutely love that, and I love when they're watching the devs team themselves are watching basically like fucking sunrise on primordial earth. Oh, yeah. Which you're like, oh just the just the earth. You're like, oh, why are we in space? And then the sunrise happens, and you're like, oh, that's like fucking Pangea. That's not the continents as we know them right now, and that's such a fucking brilliant reveal. And then just them watching it being like, and what what's the Stuart's just like I mean, we'll talk about Stuart's poem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I won't I wouldn't dedicate a lot of time to Stuart actually.
SPEAKER_01But like just yeah, uh the other best character in the show. It's some of the it's I love how poetic it is. I mean, the you know, it's meant to be he's meant to be, I think. But yes, those those images that they are watching that feel forbidden, like the idea that they're like, okay, let's put the camera out in fucking space and let's watch a sunrise on primordial earth. No one should no one should see that. Yeah, you are not God or whatever, right? Like it, but I guess they are, but the whole point of this, right?
SPEAKER_02Exactly because it will it's the it's the biggest zoom out because you lose perspective. Yeah, and in that scene, he zooms them in. I was just about to say, oh, you think you're in the like you think you're outside of the box. Like we have it all. It's like no no no no, let's zoom all the way back into people again and freak you the fuck out. Yeah, so good. That's yeah, it's that scene, it's Linden's scene that are that my two the things that have burned into me. I've watched this, this is the third time I've watched it, and if I only watched it once, those are the two scenes that I would talk about specifically that really, really like sear into my mind or in this episode.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. A lot of stuff is coming to a head in this in terms of uh characterization and stuff, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02Did you guys do you remember the trailer for 28 years later?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, with the the poem. Yes, yes, it's it's still one of the best trailers in the last like four or five years.
SPEAKER_02And it reminded me so much watching this that I'm like, I can almost guarantee you that he chose that. Like, I think he just likes this like very harrowing poetry. Which by the way, uh special forces guys use that song to torture people. Interesting. Like when they just they just blast that for two, three days on them to because it's so like upsetting. It's unrelenting up and down again, up and down again, you know, boots, boots. Yeah, it just it's something, it's really it's so good. And you know, um let the blood out, you know, come out and show them is feel has that same strange thing. And I wonder if he's just doing this for vibes, if he just has a really good audiovisual sense of storytelling where he's just like it doesn't have to make sense, I just want it to be alarming, I want it to be unsettling, and which I think was what I was we'll talk about it more when we get to men, too. I think yeah. If it if it's just vibes, then I'm I'm super fine with it.
SPEAKER_00But I do feel like there is some internal logic in him of why he's chosen these things, but yeah, and I didn't in I didn't I didn't know that it came from a riot in I can be putting too much of my brain into it, but there there can be something of the rebellion of what they're doing because this is also when Stuart is like, guys, I hope you understand, like nothing's the same now. Yeah, yeah, everything is done. Like we kind of broke the world and reality as we know it as of right now, and so uh there's something there of that rebelliousness, but I do think he is going for you're watching it it's peaceful, it's not hard cuts, it's not handheld, it's it's a stagnant image of just cave people living, but it is disturbing and it is unsettling, and I think it comes from the sound design and it comes from the distance we are from them, and it gives us and the timing of the edits, it gives us time to sit with what we're actually looking at, yeah. Because this is the thing that um I don't want to make everything about uh Malik, just in case we ever actually talk about Malik. But if you're like we watch the sunrise on a primordial earth, we're not supposed to see that. He also did that. And in the Tree of Life, when he does that, the big joke everybody made is like, what's the difference between this and a nature documentary? And so when I look at the cave people, I'm like, what's the difference from this and a shitty PBS reenactment? It's the same techniques, he didn't invent something, but it's it's the disturbing, unsettling way he's doing it in a sci-fi show. That's the thing. To do this in a sci-fi show, there is a layer of this you're doing something you're not supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01Well, we already know that about the whole dev's program. So we're watching these images with the knowledge of the nefarious shit that's gone on and how the abuse of power and all.
SPEAKER_00There is an underlying sin, you know. I don't know a better word, but there is something a little grotesque of what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01You've stolen Prometheus' fire, or did Prometheus steal the fire?
SPEAKER_00Prometheus stole the fire. But yeah, it's there's something in all of these moments where it's not just the moment. I've seen a whole movie about Jesus getting his his shit rocked by Pontius and all of that. But to see him on the cross here fucked me up way more than what Matthew was the shit rocking could have ever dreamed of. Like this was way more disturbing.
SPEAKER_01They also just released today the first photos of the resurrection of the city. I haven't seen the photos yet.
SPEAKER_00Don't spoil this for me.
SPEAKER_01It's not geezal, it's just a guy that looks like James.
SPEAKER_00There's gonna be battles of eight.
SPEAKER_01No, the sequel. This is after the resurrection, the resurrection of Christ, and it's gonna be two parts. I have no idea what he does.
SPEAKER_00Is he it is written directed, baby? Yeah. Oh, thank god. One of the most successful indie filmmakers of all time, Mel Gas.
SPEAKER_01Six hundred million dollars. Yeah, that movie grossed. Oh, oh, yeah. It's the most successful independently finance movie.
SPEAKER_00Suck it, Kevin Smith. You'd think you're a Catholic. Nice try, buddy. We all saw dogma that is different. But this is it is disturbing. It is, and I think the weird sound choices just add so much to it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, I that's the thing I really walk away from with this. I genuinely love the audiovisual components of this more so than anything. I like the silences, I like the strange cinematography, I love the set design, everything about this, but the main character which again is just so lame. She gets she gets some great. There's another world where I'm like, is he sleeping with her? Is that what's going on here? Like I don't know him, it's not true. I don't know how I don't believe that. It's just like, is this Temple of Doom again? What are we doing here? Well, I know. Wow, that's a good one. Good poll.
SPEAKER_01Uh, but I think it's she's easy to work with, and she's a nice person. That's how it is with a lot of director-actor relationships. It's like, I like working with this person, I like what they do.
SPEAKER_02But again, he traded her up for Lyndon.
SPEAKER_01And now that's his well, and like his muse. And speaking of uh Sanchez giving me a hard time, he also says that you're psychotic for thinking that it would work if those two characters are switched.
SPEAKER_00How's that psychotic?
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Kaylee Spending is a legit really good actress. She can play this all stuff. She would she would be a good one.
SPEAKER_01She's too young to play, probably Lily in this with. I mean, they'd have to age down the boyfriends too, but um is that what he means?
SPEAKER_02The logistics he's talking about. I don't know about just the like that's just what he said. All it is is you're trading out one good actress for a bad one, yeah, is what it is. But I don't even know if that's true because again, I don't know how you fix this problem. Because again, the real problem is that he wants it always. He wants her to be uncharismatic, but he wants everyone to love her like at the same time.
SPEAKER_01She's a cardinal, she's not too clever, but she also is the clueless one who's walking into something she doesn't have to be.
SPEAKER_00When I said switch the actors, it fixes everything. Nick did remind me and made the point to say is like it ain't just the acting, some of the writing, when they're like, I like her, she's so smart. He's like, That's that's also a problem. It's not. Not just them, it is what he's writing. Yeah. I do agree.
SPEAKER_01Which that's a good way to put it. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too. How many sayings can I get wrong in this episode?
SPEAKER_00No, you got that. But there is something to the idea that he's trying to. He might be trying to do a little weird cosmic universe chosen one, your super important thing. You could do that better with a better actress like Kaylee, where there's a vulnerability where I want to root for you, where even the and I don't care if this sounds creepy, but it is what it is. Even the fact that she's smaller and petite and looks younger, I, as the viewer, would want to protect her and like coddle her, maybe. And that leans more into she is in a dangerous situation going to forest. She is brave for doing that. She did stand up to Kenton. Just the size changes that where I would be more inclined to go, you know what? This little five foot-nothing girl is brave. You know what? She is smart, she is this or that. It would lean in if the actress better fit that instead of a weird stoicism that I think this actress is doing with Lily. Because that's the problem that I'm always brushing against is you're not giving me anything. I'm just watching things happen to you.
SPEAKER_02There's just a woodenness to her, and even in Civil War, she's in it for like five seconds, and you're um pulled out again. I don't remember her by her. I don't even remember her in Civil War. She shows up as one of the one of the reporters there, and you'll see her immediate. And Jamie's in there too.
SPEAKER_01He's the sniper.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Which who is awesome, by the way. Like screen is great.
SPEAKER_01So watching this with Kira, Kira watched this one. I think she missed the uh episode five, maybe, but yeah, watching this with her, as soon as Jamie gets murked, she's like, This is the only thing I've remembered from this TV show. That's so funny. She's like, I thought he got shot like when they're sitting in the bed or something like that.
SPEAKER_02It's really distressing. It is, it is because he is a puppy dog. And it's one of those things where Kenton breaks his fingers and goes, You're a little bitch. Yeah, and I need to make sure that you are, and you're you're gonna like leave this alone. And he immediately does not. So what makes that such a great, like and horribly tragic event is that he looks at him and he sees him and he knows he's just like should have listened. Now I'm dead. Like, just absolutely, and he's just like, dude, what did we talk about? I told you, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I have carte blanche to do this because you didn't listen. Yeah, yeah. You could have just walked away and it would have been fine.
SPEAKER_00I do like Jamie. I don't have a problem with Jamie. I like his character. I think the guy's a good actor.
SPEAKER_02He's fine, he's just obvious. And he is a good actor. But he's meant to again be a character that bounces off of her to you know to like facilitate our liking her or feeling that she's whatever that she is. She cannot do it on her own. You need a bunch of people around her being like, you're so awesome.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And yeah, yeah, it's just so uninteresting in the scheme of all the other amazing things that are happening in the show. I'm so I'm so curious.
SPEAKER_01Again, I know what happens at the end of the show. I don't want to spoil it because we're not spoiling. Because I don't know, but no, but I know half of it. I know half of it. And or I remember half of it. And I really am curious how it plays out. By curious. And to see if her anti-charismaticness actually fits in with the theme of what happens. Because I have a I have a theory, you know, and I mentioned it last episode. I'm like, okay, it's kind of my my writer's brain is kind of piecing it together a little bit in this whatever where I think it could go, and I can't remember if it does go here, because I do remember being confused by the end. 2020 was a fucking weird time. Uh which is when the show came out. What happened?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. So best year of my life.
SPEAKER_00So it wasn't bad for me either.
SPEAKER_02So we'll only by the year that came after it where it got even better. So we'll traffic was amazing.
SPEAKER_01So I I'm curious, I genuinely want want to know, and I think it could tie in her just uh this thing and and and my theory on it. So I'll I'll talk about it next time a little bit more. But it could make sense narratively to me. But I don't know if I'm making excuses for the show or if if it's let go and it doesn't exist and I'm just creating it.
SPEAKER_02But I'm perfectly I I feel perfectly fine to talk about how awesome the show is, despite this one deficit that's in it that everybody picks up immediately when they watch it. I I asked you guys, I go, what do you think my worst part of this show is? And without me giving you any context whatsoever, you knew exactly what it was, which I mean if like that's a bullseye. Yeah. So but I I want to talk about the the the one second projection thing. I think I mentioned this, and I might have been thinking about this, or if it was about, but when we talked about sunshine, I made the point of saying that I've been able to have all kinds of great, very, very toxic discussions with people and kept it very, very civil. But when I tell people that they have no free will and all of their decisions on rails, they want to punch me in the fucking face. Yeah, I'm talking politics, religion, absolutely everything. This one very, very specifically. And so, and I don't know how I built that into um sunshine, but I don't know if he's been toying with this theme throughout his his other stuff, and here it's just the most obtuse version of it. But yeah, it for me, this is just like God, this makes me feel so good. This really validates like my feelings, which is I just think free will is bullshit. Yeah, and I have no problem with it whatsoever. And clearly Stuart is okay with the concept of it, but everyone else in that room just starts losing their goddamn minds. And you know what's interesting about that discussion in particular? When I pose this to people, I mean almost consistently the first subject they bring up is accountability because it immediately undermines everybody's idea. Well, then we should just let all people out. It always says demonstration. It goes immediately to that thing. And I'm like, look, I don't like that's not what we were talking about, but you know, that's such a broader, more interesting part of it. But just the fact that everybody jumps to the idea is, oh, so nothing's anybody's fault anymore. So then what do we do? Just let all the jails out like they jump to it instantly, they become Republicans, yeah. It starts to just and and there you go, and that's the existential horror that clicks in. This idea, nobody wants to have this conversation because it opens the door to just the entire unraveling of society, and that is taking place in that room. All those people are going, oh my god, not only are all my decisions mean absolutely nothing, this computer can predict me with perfect fidelity, like whatsoever, it it destroys them. And Stuart's just sitting there being like, He's such an interesting character, because I don't know if he always seems like he he wants this pursuit, but he's kind of aware of where it goes. I think it's because of what he says about understanding the past. His narrative is just being fulfilled in that moment, and everyone else it's it's breaking them. And to him, he goes, I know. Yeah, I knew it was gonna happen this whole time. And now that it's happened, I don't feel great about it. I just it's not surprised.
SPEAKER_00It's confirmed what he's believed, and which I'm not a hundred percent sure what he believes in if he represents a bit of nihilism. I think I don't know for sure.
SPEAKER_01To be honest, I think he's a bit of the audience proxy, right? So, and I mentioned this a few episodes ago. Lily's not the audience proxy because we know more than Lily, so we are not along the ride with her. I think Stuart is the closest that we get to someone who we can relate to because I think Stuart knows and believes that Forrest and Katie are pieces of shit human beings. Yeah. And which I think the audience knows, especially in this episode. And I think coming with morals and all these kind of things, uh bringing up those moral implications, and and we know that these two characters have looked into the future, they have seen the events of this day back and forth.
SPEAKER_00I don't think they're pieces of shit in this episode.
SPEAKER_01I think they are. I don't feel like I absolutely do.
SPEAKER_02You're talking about Katie and Forrest?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Katie watching Linden fall.
SPEAKER_00I think she's a piece of shit. I think I think I think it's a I think everything Katie said is real, though. What do you mean? So elaborate on that. She's not manipulating Lyndon, she is being honest of like your consciousness of not falling is only in the worlds where you don't fall. That is real. We are in the world where many worlds is accurate, determinism is accurate. She goes, So do that, and if you don't fall, then we're in the world where you don't fall. And if you fall, what do you want me to say?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but that's real. So yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't say that as an asshole thing.
SPEAKER_02I think they are, and I'll I'll tell you why I think this is that once again, I think I've said this before, this is a cult. So to me, this is true existential horror. When people talk about Lovecraft, the the the it's the most superficial idea, which is just like you have a bunch of people, they summon a creature, they all go crazy. You don't really think about that. But what he is trying to express in his books is that you see something that does not comport with your reality, yeah, and it breaks you. And that is precisely what is happening here. They have summoned Cthulhu into the world, they've summoned a monster, and it has completely contorted and twisted like their logic. They don't have to think anymore. All the fucking all the rules are gone now, or we they've just become more aware of what the rules are, and it's terrifying, like regardless. But here's the thing is that these people are cultists, and they are per worshiping this machine that's telling them what to think, what to say, what to do, and they are assuming that it is the way it has to be because the machine is projecting it. Exactly. So she is just going along with this because she feels like God told her to.
SPEAKER_01She chooses not to grab Lyndon's hand. She makes the choice.
SPEAKER_00Okay, hold so okay. Do it, do it. Let me take a breath and go slow. She did not make a choice because no one's making choices, because determinism is real, and there is no free will, which we opened with watching the videos. That's what they believe. That is what everybody is now believing because mathematically they proved it so. This is not a map. So is God telling them kind of sort of, or is this, yeah, this is not magic. This is the closest.
SPEAKER_02This is math. It's really fucking important to keep saying this. And I said this about LLMs when they first came out. This is a prediction model, a prediction. So it's predicting it. It's not magic, it's not telling you what the future is. It has generated the most probable scenario, and therefore that it has to be real. No, it fucking doesn't.
SPEAKER_01And this is and this is a separate conversation from free will. These are two different things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, completely 100%. Yes. But instigated this situation, not because it is or that it's determined, but because the machine told her it would happen. And they went, well, the machine's right. And this is the whole tech thing in a new one.
SPEAKER_00Which I did because uh we are we are doing the the tech is God, which is uh totally comes up next episode. Let's not spoil it now. But you said you don't believe in free will, it's a different conversation.
SPEAKER_02Completely different conversation.
SPEAKER_01William doesn't understand how they're separate.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01Well And I don't mean that in a yes and no. No, you are right.
SPEAKER_00I they sound like we're they're they're part of the exact same thing. But this computer If there's no road, if there's no machine, does this happen?
SPEAKER_02Does this exact same scenario with Linden happen if there is no machine? I because there's an infinite amount of universes where this machine isn't built.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So every scenario does exist.
SPEAKER_00Every scenario exists.
SPEAKER_02They're just obsessed with this one.
SPEAKER_00This because the machine exists, she's seen the day play out, so she's not scared when Lyndon's in the backseat. She knows where to stop, they have the conversation. All of that is built on the fact that the machine exists and she's seen this day play out.
SPEAKER_02The machine could be what if it's 0.001% off? It's just making analysis based on, and that's what that that really fucking cool scene in, I think it was the last episode or the episode before, where it's just modeling everything. It's like everything down to like the nanometer of absolutely every single thing. This is, and this is a separate conversation as well. It's the idea that Lily just goes, Well, I'm just gonna stay home, but Lily hasn't mapped Lyndon or um hasn't mapped uh Kenton, right? The machine has. Yeah, but drive her into the system.
SPEAKER_00On the dam, it's not a bridge, it's a dam. I think I was saying bridge too much. On the dam, there's a world where Katie grabs her hand. There's a world where they don't get to the dam. There's all every variable is there. She's living in the variable that she saw, which is I let you do the thing. And if you fall, you fall because that's what this world is. If you make it, then it's the world where you make it.
SPEAKER_02I think I can explain this better. The reason why you start to see these multiple scenarios is because they have entered the multiple worlds projection into the system, yeah, which is not Forrest's version of it. So they are just playing out the new equation that they've put into it, which is like the many worlds. Yeah, and I agree with the many worlds theory. Again, I agree with you.
SPEAKER_00This is a never made the system, then they're not following like they never meet because she was never kicked out because they didn't have the blah blah blah. But I'm following you, and I agree. I'm saying the computer's god, they are cultish, she's the highest level, she's above force, she is the most hardest, I believe this, to a tease. She is that, she's a zealot, for sure. I just still don't think she's choosing not to grab her hoping, or choosing not to grab Linden hoping Lyndon dies. She's in full belief that this is what is meant to be.
SPEAKER_01Correct. So that that version of herself, the one that we see in this parallel world, she chooses not to save. She makes that choice there because she gives to a prediction model. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So she doesn't have free will. This version of herself was driven to this point where she doesn't grab her hand.
SPEAKER_00Without free will, she doesn't grab her hand.
SPEAKER_01Not really. Because yeah, free will free will is different. Free will is different. And and the the way that he's talking about it is, like they kind of talk about it in the show of like you are the consequence of all the choices that you've made. Yeah. So this specific one, correct, that we are watching, she's not making a choice either way, right? She was just not even destined. But everything, all the all the sequences happen to where she becomes the person, the type of Katie that doesn't grab the channel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's the tragedy of this because you, you know, when you when you look at the is it Everett, the the the theory that that proposes many worlds, when it starts out, you see every different permutation, even ones where Forrest's family lives. You see the car not get hit, you know. You you see everything when Katie goes out, sometimes she doesn't visit Forrest. Lyndon falls every time. It's really specific about it. So every iteration is the same.
SPEAKER_00Does Katie have free will or not in the world we're watching in this show? No, no free will, correct.
SPEAKER_02No, because she makes the machine.
SPEAKER_00Did not choose to grab or not grab because there is no choice. It was destined in this world that we're watching.
SPEAKER_02She's because the prediction model told her she did. This doesn't happen if there's no prediction model or they don't insert. Sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00I'm just saying there is no free will, so there was no choice to not save somebody.
SPEAKER_01But just because there isn't, and that's a that's a thing, this brings in the oddness of morality as a concept.
SPEAKER_00And that's where I'm feeling like we're saying she's an asshole because we're forcing the morality of you gotta grab the person.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but at the same time, even if free will does not exist, if you're not thinking about free will, yeah, and you see a person not grab a person's hand when they're falling backwards, what is your immediate judgment of them?
SPEAKER_00My immediate judgment is you're an asshole.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00In this world where God's a prediction machine and God just proved to me without a doubt that we're on rails and what's meant to happen is not of any choice. And I come to a point where it goes, you're gonna stand. You're it's not your fault you fall, and it's not my fault you fall, because there's another world where you don't fall. So I'm just living in the world where the wind and the pressure and your feet and your calf muscles, everything lined up where you accidentally fall. I'm accepting the world I'm in, Sergei got suffocated, the Russian dude this or that, his daughter Amaya died. Like all of these things, they they happened, and there's no moral complexity to them because in the world that I'm in today, that's just what happens. I've removed morality the day I removed free will.
SPEAKER_02Here's here's what happens like on a on a human level. Lyndon thinks she can get her job back, and she is pleading with her, and she is willing to go out on a limb with the assumption that Katie will not will will would not keep this from happening. We have this faith in people that they that they're not horrible in in some capacity whatsoever. What Katie does is elicits what I would call a linguistic DDoS attack.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02She basically gets into her head, but what's really happening there is that Linda doesn't think that Katie won't like let bad things happen to her. Surely somebody would grab me if I was gonna do this. I don't think that's at all. So I'm going to do what is a test of faith, but she's just trying to get her job back. That is her sole purpose. She's not enraptured by what Katie is explaining to her kids.
SPEAKER_00She's so excited and elated of how, in her words, elegant this concept in this moment is because she is in full belief of the system and the many worlds and the Everett of it all. She's the one that brought this in. So she goes, You're so fucking right. She just got um indoctrinated. She said this is her baptism. She just goes, Holy shit, I you're right. We did find God.
SPEAKER_02But there's no way that Lyndon thinks that one, she's going to fall, and then two that Katie would lose.
SPEAKER_00No, Lyndon's saying, if I if I fall, it's because in this world I I have to fall. There's so many where I fall. I don't get my job back. I only get my job back in the world where I don't fall. And do we have the same conversation about asshole immorality if Lyndon went on the ledge and doesn't fall? Because if she doesn't fall, Katie goes, see? And Linda goes, oh holy shit. And then Katie's like, well, come back to devs. Promise is a promise. You didn't fall, you believe in the system, it does work. In this world, you're meant to be back at devs. Yeah, but she does go back to devs.
SPEAKER_01But but she didn't see that happen in the machine, so therefore it's not going to happen because she's not going to change or deviate.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's because of how the projection God machine works is I'm showing you this one, and this is the variables that we're watching, because this is on Rails in this universe. But this is she can't make it.
SPEAKER_02So this is also this again really goes back to the the religious faith thing where it's like these nobody the minute you tell me I believe thoroughly in God and God is infallible, then everything that happens happens for a reason. That's the the fucking circle of logic that goes on here. Nobody is going, what if God is 0.001% incorrect? Nobody makes that assumption, and nobody is making that about this machine that they built. Yeah. Like, of course. Like the fact that there aren't that that there aren't errors in it, these people don't even question it. They just go, well, I built it and it's God, and it so it has to work.
SPEAKER_00Because it cracked your fucking brain. This is Cthulhu.
SPEAKER_02It broke that your brain. The fact that it has done a series of tricks to convince you that it knows everything is not guaranteed. Again, what is the margin of the margin of it? The 1% where the machine is incorrect. They haven't made that assessment. But that's where the faith and the religion and all the bullshit that science is replaced.
SPEAKER_00But you also, who are you or me, or anybody, to say there is a 0.01% error? Katie, in that one moment when she should have grabbed Lyndon. Like, that's the moment and now we're back to morality. It's bad she didn't save some. Someone's life, and that's how we know the machine is bad because the machine is putting you in a world where to go forward you have to be immoral. Therefore, the God God is bad because it kills children. That's everybody not everybody, but that's so many people's go. I couldn't believe in God. They give a kid cancer, therefore, the whole thing's gone. We're personifying with morality when you're also saying morality tethered to free will. We got rid of free will. So why are we still holding on nitpicking because our brains are still connected here? We're still humans, we're still saying I would hold this person. I don't think that's how this works.
SPEAKER_02I always tell people I don't think through free will is real, but I don't live my life like that because it's more fun to play the game. It's more interesting and engaging. And this is by the way, what Lyndon tells Katie. And I love this scene too, where she goes, you know, uh, where she was like, you know, you could you she oh, so you cheated. You looked into the future and you saw this, and she's like, Yeah. And she goes, Why didn't you you could have too at any time, why didn't you? And she goes, Why ask a question that you already know the answer to? She already understands this thing, like Katie doesn't even cross Katie and Forrest's mind to not look into the future, like, and ruin everything, ruin all their lives, ruin everything they have, because they have to know like the hubris of the tech gods, the hubris of the tech gods, but the lack of free will be a problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's cosmic subjugation. Like you are like, okay, I'm a slave to something beyond me, and I have to do it.
SPEAKER_02We have debated so many cool band names, like in this five minutes.
SPEAKER_00So it's so quick and easy to lead down the like literally what is the point of existence? True. Why would I go through any suffering if my decisions won't get me in or out of it? You lose your sense of self. This is the whole incomprehensible. You lose your sense of self when you look at a second future projection doing what you're about to do, and you're not even thinking of what you're doing because you go, I'm just emotionally reacting. And that thing knows my emotional reaction by the second that breaks your brain. So there are people that go, I can't see that.
SPEAKER_02Here's the other thing that no one is considering. So they know that there is an endpoint, yeah, and they're just accepting that too. Like without any second thought whatsoever. They're like, I guess this is where the world ends. Yeah, which and that's the thing, which is exactly what you hear in apocalypse cults all the time.
SPEAKER_01Where they're just so raptured in this. And in this, I think not just the obvious thing, which I we'll talk about next week.
SPEAKER_00This is the tech world of could not should. It's like there it's the atom, it's the it could ignite the environment, and they're like, The greater good. Yeah, but still, like we could be ruining reality, and they're like, Yeah, but still, yeah, but still, it's like, yeah, but my Amaya, though, I might be able to like throw a frisbee with a six-year-old. I don't get it, I don't have kids, but like they're talking about breaking reality, right? They're going for it. No, that them being her, Katie, not forrest, being a full-on religious zealot. I'm all here for it. That machine is the closest to God will ever get and to understand and to assume it's making a mistake because we can't comprehend a perfect process. It's the same conversation of we couldn't understand God, and we couldn't understand a bad immoral thing would happen, and it is nothing tethered to morality, it is just existence. We can't comprehend that. I don't think she's an asshole. She's for sure a zealot, and she's trying to get someone to drink that Kool-Aid at that dam. But I fully believe if Katie, if Lyndon makes it, they do go back to devs. There is a world where that happens, and that's where Katie goes, There's no moral play here. Because if I grab her and save her, that's the world I grab her and save her. But that doesn't prove all the other stuff. If she falls, she was gonna fall 30 years ago. You it was all set in motion then, right? So it she took herself out because she feels she transcended religiously with the God computer.
SPEAKER_02So there's a version of this where Lyndon f falls back and just goes, I knew this was going to happen, or this is just the way it is, but she did, she doesn't. Yeah. Every expression we see on her face is one of terror and like, oh shit, what did I just fucking do? Yeah, and oh yeah, this bitch that I thought was my friend is not doing a fucking thing about it.
SPEAKER_00And it's it's also the this isn't about me. I die in this world. This I'm not the main fucking character. They go on. Katie's gonna just drive to the fucking computer and he's gonna play frisbee with his daughter, and I'm gonna die in 0.6 seconds. Like, all of that going through their head of like, I think I found God, I think everything's for a reason, there is no nut, blah blah blah blah, and then you're following, you're like, fuck that, I didn't get to god damn it. Like, yeah, I like root beer, I like hand jobs, I like shitting and taking a shower after without wiping, and she's like, all of that's gone, just wiped off, never to be done again.
SPEAKER_01Just like the shit down the drain.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And so, like, I totally get that because that goes back to that religious thing of like it's so easy to follow when one, you're in power, Katie, and two, it's going kind of good for you. No one's all that religious when it just feels like it's like I think God hates me. That's kind of when people start blaspheming and damning and cursing, going, none of this fucking matters.
SPEAKER_02They go in the other, they go in the comp the pendulum swings all the way in the other direction, and it's just like, wait a minute, weed's not gonna kill me.
SPEAKER_00Let's try meth.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And that's that that is her folly, going, I didn't even try meth. Yeah, I didn't even like lie, I didn't do heroin and try and write a good song once. Like, I could have been our Jimi Hendricks.
SPEAKER_02And she is the she's the youngest of that group, she is the most impressionable, and therefore she is the most likely to accept this weird bargain. And who's seen the oldest motion?
SPEAKER_00Stuart seems older than Forrest. Yeah, there's something there too, just like we're talking with the impressionable. This is a guy that's like, I think we're ending the world with a bunch of people that don't even understand the world.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So there is a kind of leap out of this. This is my favorite thing, and I it's extremely rare when I see this. There's only been a few times in fiction where I've really like bought this. I think is really important. The the the thing I brought about like linguistic DDoS attack where you you fuck somebody up, yeah. And you know, just with your words. Yeah, you some software. Believably, yeah, you know, because in most movies and people say things to other people and like whatever, that kind of thing. But the ones that kind of pop into my mind, Alan Moore wrote this Wildcats story back in the day. There's a character in it that goes into sleeper. I don't know if you ever read uh Brubaker's sleeper. No, it's this villain, and um he gets out, he's supposed to be this like super genius that they kind of have locked away, and he steps out and he immediately just starts fucking all these people up. And one of the people he does is this kind of like heavy, polk-like character and just starts talking to him and being like, think about not thinking about this for a second now. And he just starts saying things, and you just see this guy's brain just starts to kind of like clinch up because of contradictions and and things like that. The other one is um Silence of the Lambs is Hannibal Lecter convincing multiple meeks to swallow his own tongue, which it's like if you ever want to like test a badass, like you know, like a brilliant kind of mastermind, like the fact that he just suggested to him, just was whispering to him all night and convinced him it was like it's just so interesting. And uh, I know you guys talked about this last time, but a Joker, like a Joker too-faced scene, that conversation where he just fully converts him, you know, in a most in a really believable way of being like, Yeah, it wasn't me. Hey, look, I'll pull the trigger on myself. Like, yeah, I'm a I'm a firm believer, like you have to be a zealot, you know, and and part of writing a zealot is really fucking hard, and it's very, very rare. And he pulls that off in this moment. I believe this sequence, I believe that Lyndon gets out on on on the like does the dumbest thing humanly possible purely based on he's excited to get on that ledge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like it like yeah, no, it's it's what this is obviously. I fucking love this so much. I don't agree with it, it's not my worldview. I still don't know what it would mean to not have free will and what you do with that information. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02You just keep going about your life again. The the same we we've had this conversation now multiple times on this, so I won't reiterate it, but it's the idea that like I sit around and I play board games with people at least once a week and they all act like their lives are on the line. It's like you you just it's just rules, you just strip everything away. People still want to win, and that is how human beings operate, even though they know it's a game, they still want to win the game. That's why this is not so crazy to me. Just because free will isn't real, or what if this is a simulation or whatever? I'm like, oh, I'm still gonna play it like this. Well, I guess like it's a real fucking.
SPEAKER_00I guess in my head that's just more that would count as free will. Like, I'm I'm making a conscious decision to believe or disbelieve. Like there's there's decisions being made.
SPEAKER_01That's that are based upon everything that opportunities in your life before those moments.
SPEAKER_00And that's exactly what I was gonna say is like the that's enough for me. If you said there's greater math at play for me to make those decisions, I'm still in my head going, I'm okay at least feeling like I'm making a decision. Yeah, exactly. And that's I think what you're saying with the game thing is like yeah, I'm I'm fine if you're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02Even though you know it's a movie, you're still crying. You know what I mean? Like you know it's two-dimensional image, you know, like all those things because we just love to fucking engage with illusions because you have to fucking you don't. Most people a lot of people don't. They they they step out. But I'm telling you, me, from my perspective, even though it doesn't bother me that everything I'm saying and everything I'm doing is predetermined and a machine could predict all of it and everything like that, I still want to play the fucking game. Yeah, like uh, I still by illusions, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that's and I think that's where uh the more we talk it out, the more of like I'm very comfortable as long as I feel well, no, but um, I feel very comfortable as long as I feel like I'm making choices. Right. Even if I know the mechanics under it go, yeah ain't. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, but I feel it. As long as I feel it, I'm like, oh yeah, well then we'll just get it. That's how I feel. It's like I don't give a shit.
SPEAKER_01I don't care how it fucking works.
SPEAKER_00Do you guys want to talk about Stuart's super cool, uh, enjoyable, uplifting poem he's reading?
SPEAKER_02So my interpretation of that without doing any research whatsoever, he's talking about the inevitability of death, right? Is that what we're getting out of this? That's right. Yeah. I see you were on your phone. Did you do some research?
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's okay. It's a poem by Philip Larkin, and he kind of takes the the most kind of poignant chunks out of it. It's not the whole thing, verbatim. Stuart's winging it. It's pretty fucking great. And it's called Aubade. A what does that mean? It's a real word? Uh yes, it's a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning. Oh wow. So I think it's about someone waking someone waking up in the morning and just thinking about the inevitability of death. Because that's the only thing that is inevitable.
SPEAKER_02I tend to hate so fucking I tend to hate poetry as a medium. Yeah. I genuinely I roll my eyes at it. Um But every now and again somebody will drop something on me. I'm like, god damn, that's so fucking funny.
SPEAKER_00I can get into certain types.
SPEAKER_01I it's the music thing of hating the fans.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But it's more tied with the creators.
SPEAKER_02There's a pretentiousness about it that like a wafting pretentiousness that I kind of can't I know it's beautiful. I know there's I know it's a perfect. There's a rhythm to it, blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_01I don't but I don't give a fuck. And I think the hit rate is so fucking low. There you go. But the 0.5% of poetry that is good is incredible.
SPEAKER_02And this is one of them. And that's for sure. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I definitely heard it before. I highly recommend checking it out. Yeah, it's great. I'll text it to you guys because I'm gonna go to the case.
SPEAKER_02Because I thought I didn't know if he quoted if he quoted earlier like the the more famous one. I can't remember if it's Keats or whoever, but it's the center will not hold, which we've probably seen in a gang of like a gang of movies or in fiction and stuff like that. I think he doesn't he talk about the Falconer does not return to the Falcon. Something like that. Center does not hold. Yeah. And that one's very famous. This one I had never heard before.
SPEAKER_01No, I've never heard this. Never heard of it. I love that it's also commenting on Forest, where he's like, Oh yeah, it must be some Shakespeare or something. Yeah, he doesn't even know. He's watching Caveman from 30,000 years ago, and he can't even I he saw that day. He couldn't he saw Stuart rip recite that poem, and he still couldn't go out of his way to fucking see what it was.
SPEAKER_00Like there's there's the hubris again, it's kind of yeah, it's uh how focused he is on his own narcissism.
SPEAKER_02Well, I just think that he doesn't think the past is important. And also anybody who has any kind of real tragedy, they don't like looking backwards. Yeah, they are true true. True, true. They actively are have a complete lack of introspection, they are just thinking forward. And what comes next? I don't know what happened prior.
SPEAKER_01Know what you're talking about, Josh. Is that why my memory is so bad?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. Nick has, which again, he wouldn't remember saying this, but Nick has stated on this podcast, he goes, There's like a good maybe like year and a half I don't remember. He's like, There's moments in my life, like ages, he's like, I have no memory of it. I think I've just lost it. I was so traumatized or like stressed, like compounding anxiety. He's like, There was a whole summer, and he's like, I I don't know any of it. It happens, dude.
SPEAKER_01When I seriously, when I read people's memoirs or see whatever people recounting their lives, I'm like, I can't do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, or you're like, I think they made all that up.
SPEAKER_01Well, and they could, yeah. A lot of times they do, but still, like specific memories. I know where I was, I know what I was doing generally, but like in terms of yeah, telling it back, and I'm a fucking writer.
SPEAKER_02I'm like, I don't I have a I have a really specific way in which I interface with the past, and it isn't some people they can just go backwards. Yeah. And to me, I'm like, I don't know what year that was, but I know it happened. I'll I I remember I retain the stories, but I don't retain when or where or any of the kind of context that's uninteresting to telling a story because that's where all my value is. That's the thing that I like the most. I'm not a math guy, I'm not you know what I mean. Like I'm not the guy that thinks about the summer of fucking 73 or whatever. Like it was what was the neat thing that happened that time that I can then mine and put into something that's useful. Yeah, like that's all I care about the past for. Like that's it. It's just a mine for interesting ideas or perspectives or things like that that I can then put into something now and like and document. Yeah, that's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00I had memories from two years old. Wow, when my friends are when my parents, yeah. When my parents came down for Easter, we were talking and I referenced them, they're like, What are you talking about? I was like, Yeah. Shut up, you ugly. Well, because moving so much, I can relate to where we were living. Yeah, I was like, it was this house. I remember this because it was in this house. And then like when I was a cute kid. That was Buffalo.
SPEAKER_02I I remember pain. And I don't say that to be fucking edgelord. I mean, those are the moments I remember almost cutting my toe off with an axe. Uh yeah. I remember almost burn I remember burning my hand on a furnace. I it's like my dog having to be chained up because it killed a bunch of cats, you know what I mean? And like watching it freak the fuck out because it was an outdoor dog. You know, like I remember that is like I think that's normal, right?
SPEAKER_00No, I was gonna say it is most of my when I go back, I'm like, yeah, most of them were shame or chaos. But it's crazy that there's an edge, right?
SPEAKER_02Because I remember this, but then if it's too bad, your brain just goes, Oh, we don't need that shit. And like that's what I'm always scared of.
SPEAKER_00There's a line. I'm always scared of because I know what I remember. What the hell is that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what do you not remember?
SPEAKER_00So if those are memories that I can still recall, what's the thing my brain said, we're just gonna delete this. I'm like, I don't know. Imagine what that is.
SPEAKER_02So I'll tell you something fun story. Um, and this actually really blew me away. So uh I was 18 and I was hanging out with a friend of mine. We just moved out and we're drinking and we're getting like absolutely shit faced, and he tells me about this time that was two years ago where he humiliated me in front of a bunch of people, and I look at him and I go, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I go, wait, what happened? And he's like, hey man, like he's trying to like unload and he feels so bad about it, and I'm probing him for questions, yeah, which sound like I'm torturing him at the time. But realize it for me, it is gone. Absolutely, and it was two years prior at a time where your brain is like fully formed. Yeah, yeah. It must have been so bad. He's like, You were just gone for a month, and then you just strolled back in, and we started playing video games and hanging out again. And I'm like, I and I'm just looking at him going like this is fascinating. And he's like, Whoa, dude, man, like yeah, interesting, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You're your brain's very protective. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, I know it's the only like time that I can think of where that that happened, but that is you know, so you know your brain's capable of that. No, my brain is capable of just chucking something it doesn't like like completely, and it kind of freaks me out. Yeah, I know, of course. Like it's a little it's a little freaky, but also that's way more fascinating to me than the disassociation I was talking about, which I don't want to remember. Yeah, absolutely. I do, exactly. It's the worst feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's awful, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I do I do want to say um the Pete reveal so fucking good. I can't believe it's right in your face. Kenton looks down at him and he says, Yeah, such a good scene now. Yes, and you still don't like I don't know about you guys, but I just did not see him being a Russian sleeper agent. Yeah, that is so obvious.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, just him saying I'm not afraid of you, man. He's just like, I can see that.
SPEAKER_02But also just the fact that you as you know, if you've ever seen a television show, which I know you guys have, you know that that's something you know that that is there's a reason why he's sticking around. Check there. But literally, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what happens to be is literally the most obvious thing. And when it happens, I was still really surprised where Kent's death is terrifying. The way he chokes him and his eyes and and the the like his red face or whatever, yeah. Like it's a really just fabulous visual, and and Lily is like just like seeing somebody die. I is like watching the lights go out, is uh is is great.
SPEAKER_01And the shot of her when she's going in to you know get her stuff, get her passport when she thinks she's gonna go to Hong Kong and we see Hong Kong Kenton's fucking face under halfway under the blankets and stuff, and his eyes just still open and all that shit. Uh it's so fucking gross.
SPEAKER_02Well, he has to don't fucking do it.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna tell your fucking dumbass joke. Alright, do it, just do it to Josh.
SPEAKER_00No, it's not even a dumb joke. I'm just saying the thing about Hong Kong that I was reading in the the same when they were talking about the genetic shutting it off. Is I was reading a thing in Hong Kong, King Kong played ping pong with his ding dong. I just I read that the other day.
SPEAKER_01I love tying it in with the side. Okay, but uh it's so special. That's just for me, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00Anytime I say Hong Kong every um time in my entire life, anybody says Hong Kong, I always act like, oh, that reminds me.
SPEAKER_02So you were lying about reading it yesterday? Is that what you're telling me right now?
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly. Um but Lily, yes, uh swinging back to me saying she gets a good uh moment of visual storytelling when she is in that place and we get to see all the literally the fucking detritus of her life. That's what we're fucking seeing in her apartment. We got these fucking dead bodies. The man that she chose who was stuck by her side is now fucking dead. Just like he was he was gone, he was out of your life.
SPEAKER_02You brought him back in so there's some survival guilt there, which is what leads her to then be like, no, now I am going to depth.
SPEAKER_01Well, and exactly. So we have that moment, she's standing over the gun, we know she's gonna pick it up, at least that's the tension, right? And she picks it up, and we cut to her face, and it's a shot of her just basically like starting to scowl, and we immediately cut, and it's darkness, and it's her face, same angle in the rear viewer mirror, but it's that cutting from the light, yeah, bright.
SPEAKER_02I also do love it in I do love it in in movies where somebody is very, very frank with a person. Because again, in in his writing is full of this, where it's like, okay, you know, you're thinking about what I'm thinking about. And you're building the the scene. He's sitting there actively going, okay, the audience is gonna think this. So I have to get ahead of them. I'm not going to be lazy. He's a very, very unlazy writer. It's hard to not be lazy in writing. You just go, oh god, it's just it's so convenient. I just need these two things to line up. I don't care about the reality of it. And he really spends a lot of time going, if I was watching this, I'd be bored. If I was watching this and I'm predicting what people are doing, that's not good fucking storytelling. I'm gonna go two levels deeper and try to get that. Fuck the fans. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Preach, brother, preach. Yeah, and I and I love the little like it's a tiny character building moment where so the what what what Pete? Is that his name? Pete, the the homeless guy, he saves her life. We don't know why, but we know that he's cared about her. He knows that he we have seen him be suspicious of Kenton and doing you know the fucking silly home homeless man act of like fucking doing the shit of the fake pointy gun shit.
SPEAKER_02A very real enactment of a homeless man, I can guarantee you that if you've been in anywhere, you've been in Albuquerque or been in LA, you see these guys dancing and doing this shit all the time. Exactly. It is a very good like interpretation.
SPEAKER_01It's extremely accurate, but we know that he cares for Lily, and we get this little moment of humanity after he's he's gonna be frank with her and be like, Alright, your life is over, you have to go to where he pulls up the chair, he sees her look at his hand, which is covered in blood.
SPEAKER_02And he's like, Oh shit. And he turns around and covers up Kenton, he pulls him away.
SPEAKER_01Like he's trying to set the scenario, he does care about her, and yeah, all that is really expressed in exactly just these tiny little his his actions, and then he gets to business of like, I'm gonna be fine. This is the way it is, your life as you know it is literally over. Yeah, and I think it's in that moment when he says that that it's like to me, that's where she's like, Alright, fuck it, let's go to devs.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I thought it was when he says you should go live with your mom again. She's like, I'd rather die. She's I'm not living with her again. Yeah, that phone call sucked so much. She does have like a little kind of twitch or something. There is a little bit of go back to Hong Kong, live with your mom. She's like, let's check out this dying thing you were talking about. I like that, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, let's go out swinging. Yep. Um, but yeah, it's this is a fucking great episode. Yeah. Do we have any random stuff that we haven't hit?
SPEAKER_00If we want to check out, I don't know if I have any random stuff. I do want to say this is the biggest cliffhanger ending, I feel, and I'm in love with it. I almost just kept going and watching the concept of of course we're ending with her walking into the room. That's so cool. Ah, fuck. I was um I can't wait for the next episode.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I do I do think that uh the discussion that Stuart has with Forrest. I feel like when you're writing about tech bros and you're writing about this stuff, you almost have to have this conversation. It's a little too obvious to me, but I love the way he presents it. He knows he has to have this conversation where somebody goes, You don't know the past, why are you in control of the future? Like it's a very rote hacky kind of thing to say about like it comes up constantly and stuff. He knows he has to build this in, and he does it as well as anybody could possibly could have. Yeah, it's also unclear. When he says, Yeah, when when he says, It doesn't bother me that you don't know, you don't even question why you don't know. Yeah, yeah. He takes it one level deeper, and that's again what makes him such a great writer.
SPEAKER_00I do have a random thing. Okay, I just check my notes, and I forgot about this, and it means so much to me for no particular reason. Sure. She was mad at him when he called on the phone. He's being silly, and she goes, Why are you fucking calling me? I'm coming home. He's like, Yeah, just you know, I just like and then she dies.
SPEAKER_01You know, I don't like talking on the phone while I'm driving. That's right.
SPEAKER_02So we didn't get that information earlier. Okay, so we see her side of it. That's way fucking right. Yeah, that she was annoyed with him calling. Yeah. We need to keep being reminded of Forrest's motivation for this show to work. Yep. To realize how fucking bad that is in saying it. And it is technology that has done this like and he just goes deeper into it. Ooh, and it's also about that. That's great.
SPEAKER_00Leans into again, didn't even think about that. No, not to fully into I'm choosing to, and you've already told me not to. I'm going beyond your recommendation, and I'm choosing to do something. It goes into that too, of like, God, yeah, that fucked me up when she's like, When you see her in the car seat, like playing with her feet, like it's a really little girl.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you know she just gets mangled. It's absolutely yeah, giving you a little more perspective into his motivation for making all of this bullshit. Yeah, but again, yeah, he has doubled down on technology, and it was technology that really did like Yeah, that's yeah, I didn't I didn't think about that.
SPEAKER_01I love that, that's great. And yeah, the again, I'm just I'm gonna comment on it next week. But when Stewart's saying like the box contains everything, yeah, it contains us, and inside the box, there's another box ad infinitum ad nauseum, and he goes, uh-oh. Yeah, it's so funny to me. Like it clicks in my head of like, okay, I think I can make sense of the end because of this line. But again, I don't I only half remember it, so I I just wanted to bring that up just so I'm remembering to talk about it next time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's another thing that I'm listening back to these stories. He's also remember he's also really good at the the blathering. Like, there's a again, there's a way for characters that are saying psychedelic shit to just be nothing or just be overtly philosophical in a way that is you just go, oh god, what are we really doing here? I and I feel like um I feel like True Detective rides this line really well too, or all the insane babbling that he's saying is kind of awesome.
SPEAKER_01Well, and poetic when you have about it, you have horse to be like saying that shit.
SPEAKER_02Shut shut this town's a forgotten dream. I remember watching that episode of particularly like the flat circle thing, and I was so sucked into it, and my ex-wife was watching it, and she goes, I don't know what the fuck these people are saying, and I go, Wow, really? There's like you can just like zone out of this. Like this is just looks like complete babbling to people that are not engaged, yeah, like whatsoever. And I can like part, but you can take advantage of people by people just being like, the circle's not real, man. Or like what there's a way, there's a terrible way to do this, and he's so selective and sensitive. I think he genuinely is just like, there's a line you can cross here of babbling where it doesn't fucking work, and I'm gonna really ride that line and work this script to get it on that line.
SPEAKER_00I also think he deserves a ton of credit giving it to the actor that plays Stuart. He's giving those lines of gravity and almost like uh they're almost a little throwaway where he's not pontificating. I think if the actors, if it was um Nick Offerman, I don't think Nick Offerman can get those lines off the same way. It will come off pretentious pontificating of the hippie stuff, but that actor, because he casted him for those lines, I'm like, that's there's a talent there to know who's doing what's gonna be.
SPEAKER_01It made me be like, oh yeah, they didn't use him enough of Dune as Stuke or whatever. For real. Which he's a living computer, that's what those character is in that. He's yeah, so it's like he was underutilized in that. But I love this episode, man. It's great. It's so funny.
SPEAKER_00There's so much to think about, there's so much that is weird to me.
SPEAKER_02I'm so glad I've surrounded myself with people that can have this conversation without it getting annoying as well, without it not turning into like mental masturbation, yeah, or anything like if we were wanting oh my god, I did it all just mentally jerking off constantly. Yeah, and I think I'm awesome while I'm doing it. It's us being at the ages we are.
SPEAKER_00The ages we are one, we uh we punch ourselves out. It's probably worse than halfway when we were talking. Anyone listening to me. Halfway when we were talking, Nick literally just shut down and stopped talking. I don't know if it's because you you saw the same thing that you always see of like William's wrong, he just doesn't know it, so we're just gonna let him punch him somewhere. No, I just think that's entire.
SPEAKER_01Because when I was like, oh, William doesn't get it, I was like, that sounded so rude. I was like, I didn't mean it like that. No, and I didn't take it. I was just like, oh, he's complaining these two things that I think are separate. But it's also So I felt I was feeling guilty, that's why it was quiet.
SPEAKER_00And it's okay, because it's also the other part is like because of our age, we're never having this talk to go, I'm smarter than you. Yeah, yeah. I'm fully comfortable, I'm more comfortable going, I'm dumb, this is what it means to my dumb brain. And I'm not reading and I'm not gonna publish what I'm saying. It's only to my dumb brain does this, this is how I'm computing.
SPEAKER_02Generally, in these conversations, the way it feels is that I hold my own, I have a very specific opinion of what it is, and it isn't until a day later, because then the the digestion process happens. I may agree with you, but it will be a day later, it will be two days later, it will be five days later when it sticks in my head. I'm like, you know, that's anything. But in the time, yeah, I'm like, I'm here not to spar, but to like bounce off those those things. That's the difference between me now and me as a kid that just wants to be right all the time and wants to seem so smart.
SPEAKER_00I don't want someone to see me be right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And now I'm just I just want to I just want to get as much information out of my smart friends as possible to then somewhere down the line, because there's like a cue in my brain, like I'm just ingesting a bunch of stuff, yeah, and then a day later I'm like, and another thing like just pops into my fucking head. Yeah. Um and the conversation lives on and showers, yeah, and then I'm supposed to be doing more important things.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's why some of these episodes literally open up with me going, so when I was editing the podcast, Nick, you said this thing, and I disagree. We gotta circle back to that. Oh, yeah. Because like, I yeah, or ruminations uh very real.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah, we're very good at that.
SPEAKER_00We're good at that. We are dumb. This is over my head. The computer is God, and that makes total sense to me.
SPEAKER_01I know. We're yeah, we're we none of us go, shut the fuck up.
SPEAKER_02Like, what do we do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're lucky to have found a good group of of smart people. So lucky, yeah, yeah. It's it's yeah, I found like five people like when I moved.
SPEAKER_02I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm just gonna have to keep coming back here because I've been all over this country, and it's real hard to get a good conversation with people that I can bounce off of. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I've I've I've talked about I forgot that you just were visiting for a long time. Yeah, yeah. This is why this is why I'm here, because I met like five people.
SPEAKER_02I was like, you guys are all into comics and you're all into that's so funny. That's all it takes. Like, yeah, I'm telling you, been all been all over this country. Like, you just don't meet people that that kind of engage with you in the way that you want to be engaged with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've I've stopped hanging out with people because of how they do or don't engage with art. Right. Where like it me and Nick have talked about is like there's been certain movies where there's just like, no, and in my head, I'm like, I guess this is the end. We just gotta it's not it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Exactly. Well, this is no coming back from this part of it, so this is done.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So, yeah, well, uh, thank you for joining us, Josh. I don't know if you want to come back for some. We have we're actually pretty stacked.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right now we're stacked big ass tids.
SPEAKER_01We we have the next three episodes, we have guests. We have Dave Jordan for Dev's finale finale, episode eight. Presumably, we're gonna have Antonio for men. And I think I convinced John Morgan to watch and join us for Civil War. Yeah, I saw you do that. So I think that's gonna happen. So after that, we have 28 years later, one and two? Well, when do we have warfare before that? Or warfare, which I haven't seen. So yeah, Josh will be back at some point, uh, maybe some either that or some 28 years. I'd be curious about 28 years stuff. I think maybe you said big dongs one. But but yeah, if any kind of big dongs, Josh is always asking us. Like, all right, we we get it. You want to be on all the big donging episodes.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Uh, but that's why he wants us to do the filmography of Harvey Kaitel. All the short he's slaying. Yeah. Harvey Kaitel.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, we'll be back next week uh with Dave Jordan and Dev's episode eight. I love you guys. Love you too.
SPEAKER_03Bye.