Oneshot - Leave the World Behind (2003)

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for The Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in The Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our Dragonfire Hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:11] Hatchimal Super! Welcome to The Lorehounds One-Shots, where the lorehounds are your guides to the end of the world as we know it. I'm David. And I'm Brandon. And this is our coverage of the Sam S. Male original Netflix film, Leave the World Behind.

[00:01:42] In this podcast, we're going to discuss our spoiler-free hot takes and cover a few production details before taking a break, after which we're going to get into spoilers and discuss the film, its plot, characters, themes in detail.

[00:01:55] Be sure to stick around to the end of the podcast for programming notes about our podcasting schedule for the rest of the year, including notes on our end of the year top 10 lists and community survey, which will be out for public release on December 25th.

[00:02:08] Patreon subscribers will, of course, get early access to that. Yeah, we just did some data analytics of it. It's looking good. It's going to be a fun list. I'm super excited to talk about it. It's the first year we've done this.

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[00:02:59] And we can include your audio right in the show, which I've done and it's nice. We also have a fun and active community over on our Discord. So check us out there. Links for all of those will be in the show notes.

[00:03:10] Brandon, good to see you. How you been? I have been grand. Just hanging out, shivering when I go outside. Yep. But yeah, everything's been pretty good. Just in hardcore dad mode, playing games when I can, watching things when I can and feeding and burping and changing.

[00:03:30] That's right. Because you have a little one in the house, right? Yes. I've got a five-year-old and a one and some change year old. Both of them, by the way, fun fact, same birthday.

[00:03:40] Oh, wow. You ready for you saving up for the therapy bills for when they get a little bit older? Absolutely. Luckily, it's on Earth, Wind and Fire Day. So we get to sing and dance every time as well. We got a song built in. So that's fun.

[00:03:52] That's good. Wow. Both on the same day. That's amazing. They must be excited for the holidays here. Yes. The older one is super duper in love with Christmas and princesses, any of those things.

[00:04:03] And then the other one just wants to eat literally anything. We keep having to pull fake pine needles out of her mouth. And, you know, so it's an active battle every day to keep her away from the Christmas tree.

[00:04:14] So usually that's a cat related thing. It's I've never really heard of a baby trying to crawl up the Christmas tree. Yeah. She she just wants to do battle with it. It's that's funny. That's a lot of fun. Well, thanks for coming on today for our one shots.

[00:04:28] And just as a reminder for folks, one shots are our format where we can talk about a show, a movie, a book, anything that we're not going to do episodic coverage of. And both of us saw this title for this movie.

[00:04:43] And I put a call out on our production server on Discord and said, hey, anybody watching this? You know, I really love to cover it. And you piped up. And so here we are.

[00:04:55] I'm pretty excited to talk about this film. What is your background with the movie and with the writer and director Sam Esmail? Do you have a lot of familiarity with his work or anything he's done in the past?

[00:05:09] I did watch Mr. Robot, which, you know, I went I was like, oh, yeah, I love Sam Esmail stuff. So I looked and I was like, what else what else has he done that I know I've I've loved?

[00:05:19] And it's nothing like I guess Mr. Robot penetrated so deeply that I was like, I love this man and I will watch anything he does. But I have not. I'm not a huge consumer of like movies and TV very much anymore at all.

[00:05:34] Sure. When I get the spare time, I'm usually trying to play video games or, you know, just sit in silence. But in stillness with the world swirling around you. Yes. You could be a long island vacation. I could. I would love that, actually.

[00:05:49] But yeah, the I've loved, you know, the Mr. Robot was great. Just the vibes. The like I'm going to use the word vibes a lot in this. I imagine 100 percent. It's a very vibey movie.

[00:06:00] I guess you could consider me in a self-imposed blackout, which is fairly appropriate of this movie. I think you'll you'll come around in a few years once the kids get a little older.

[00:06:12] I can already see with the five year old. I'm like, oh, yes, you're you're so much easier. You're just coloring and doing whatever. And a little we have to be like, let's do it now. We're doing fun stuff now. Right.

[00:06:23] We have we have one eight year old and it's great because she's able to do all our bathroom stuff and get herself to bed. We just come in and check on her and she's, you know, she's coloring or listening. We're big on Taylor Swift these days.

[00:06:36] And she's just listening to some music or whatever. And it's like, oh, wow, I suddenly have a whole hour of 45 minutes to an hour back to myself that I never had before. I don't know what to do with myself sometimes. Listen more Taylor Swift, I guess.

[00:06:51] Is coming for home release. You can watch that. Yeah. We're, I think, hosting a watch party with a couple of friends. So on Saturday and today is actually the day that we're recording, I believe, is her actual birthday. Canonically. Yeah. Yeah, it is. That's right.

[00:07:06] Yeah, it sure is. So I'm going to have to send her some send her a thank you for being born on this day. Yeah. Anyway, you made a night. So, yeah. So I'm kind of in the same. I loved Mr. Robot.

[00:07:21] It's not without its here's and there's, but overall, I just, I just loved some of the visual work that they did in that and the storyline and the characters. It was just such an interesting, innovative show.

[00:07:36] And I was like, yeah, I was saying with you, I was like, oh man, CMS mail. Yeah, I'm down. And then when we were preparing for this podcast, I was like, okay, so what else have I nothing? I've only watched Mr. Robot.

[00:07:46] I haven't seen any of his other really. But for me, it was okay. Sam S. Mail directing Marshall Ali. I'm in and oh, and it's and it's it's apocalyptic. Oh, I'm definitely in. Yeah, this ticked most of the boxes for me for sure. Yeah, it really did.

[00:08:06] Especially like Marshall drew me in so much with true detective. Yeah.

[00:08:13] And I figured if I could get anywhere kind of spooky, Mahershala back in my life, I was like, I'm going to need that because and the trailer does a great job of this foreboding this, which is not definitely certainly not a word. It definitely isn't.

[00:08:27] I was like, this looks like it's going to make me feel things. And but you spoiler alert. It did. But he is so good in it. Like, I just couldn't believe it. All right. So the production details on this.

[00:08:39] It was written and directed by Sam S. Mail, and it was based on a book of the same name by Roman alum. And that book won the 2020 National Book Award. And there was a Sam S. Mail has been a bunch on on a bunch of the ringer podcast.

[00:08:56] He's buddies with the folks on the watch and on the big picture. I don't know if you listen to any of those links that I sent you, but it was really interesting to hear them talk about how he read the book and how he read it through first.

[00:09:08] And then he read it through a second time and basically had a lot of the film visualized in his head by the time he was done reading his second read through.

[00:09:17] That's interesting the way that works for us for certain directors who see the full thing so they can block it out in advance. Yeah. I forget who it's one of the big ones that that I think it was The Shining. Who's that guy? Oh, oh, God.

[00:09:33] Now you're going to make me look up The Shining. This is this is this is bad. The film was Stanley Kubrick. Yes, I think it's him. And it's it's that the whole film is visualized before the camera is even rolling.

[00:09:50] So it's just like he knows what shots he needs and everything like that. It sounds like Sam works the same way. Pretty, pretty cool. It's sort of like it just pops out of their heads and then the hard work is just translating it mechanically onto screen. Exactly.

[00:10:06] Whereas like some directors just get like they go for like coverage and they cover like every angle and whatever. And like George Lucas fix it in editing. Yes, exactly. So this stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Mahala.

[00:10:21] And I believe the kids are Farrah McKenzie and Charlie Evans. And Sam Esmail, he produced this under his company. He's got a little production company and they're working on scripts and doing all kinds of other things.

[00:10:39] And so I believe it was shot by his longtime cinematographer partner, Todd Campbell. Part of bit like business partner. And it was edited by Lisa Lasek. It was a limited theatrical release and then it went straight to streaming. And the budget is reported somewhere around 25 million.

[00:11:00] And it was shot partially on location on Long Island. And then they and we'll talk about this later, but it was also partially shot on a soundstage, which is a really interesting part of the production for it.

[00:11:10] I guess this when Sam was able to option this and then they went out to bid for it and Netflix bid the most for it. You know, they basically won a bidding war to produce this.

[00:11:26] And then I guess Sam pushed to have it released in the theater for a little while before it went straight to streaming.

[00:11:34] And I don't know, did you how do you feel about this slightly two step thing where we do a little bit of theater and then we go to streaming really quick there? Are you enjoying that structure or? I do like that.

[00:11:48] Personally, if if given the option, I am going to sit in my perfectly curated living room if I want a like, you know, I can wear my pajamas. I can make a cocktail. I can pause.

[00:12:01] So my preferred viewing experience is always going to be in my house in front of my very expensive television.

[00:12:08] But for the people who are theater people and perhaps I'm one of those, you know, I'll be one of those again later on in life when I have more time. Right. But I think it's great because then you get to have that experience, too.

[00:12:21] It is best of both worlds. And I really hope something like that sticks a little bit more. Yeah, it's hard. Like I was looking at Oppenheimer.

[00:12:30] I haven't seen Oppenheimer yet or Killers of the Flower Moon because I'm waiting for them to come on streaming because I just cannot justify three hours of my life away from my family. Without an intermission as well. Like without an intermission. Come on, dude. Let us piss. Sorry.

[00:12:46] Jeez. Let us get another drink. Let us use the bathroom. I heard a theater got in trouble for like inserting an intermission. Yes, I heard it too. Nuts. God. So yeah, I think it's I like it.

[00:12:58] You know, Sam Esmail was talking about this on one of those podcasts where he was saying, you know, I really wanted to make sure, you know, it had a big screen and a big sound because sound plays a lot in this. It does. You know, experience for people.

[00:13:13] But then for me, it made sense as a movie. I don't think I would have gone out and paid the theater premium for this right movie. And I'm so glad that I could see it like right away.

[00:13:25] Like I'm dying to see Godzilla minus one right now, but it's not playing in any of the theaters near me. We live in a smaller town. And so I'd have to drive 45 minutes to go see it. And I'm like, when is it going to stream?

[00:13:38] I need to see this. So I like this idea of, yeah, you know, put it out, maybe put out an IMAX or those great sort of movie pubs where you can have a night out and you get some friends together and that kind of thing.

[00:13:50] But to shorten the window to when we get it, get to streaming. I don't know if something is working for me in that in that regard. Yeah. And I mean, it adds the water cooler back. Yeah.

[00:14:01] Like a lot of the time people used to go see movies all the time or the TV shows would be airing at the same time.

[00:14:06] So now if everyone can sort of view it on their terms, whenever it's convenient for them, everyone's talking about it at the same time, which is what you want when you make a thing. You want everyone to consume it. You want everyone to talk about it. Yeah.

[00:14:18] I think it's cool. We talk about monoculture. Yeah. Yes. Monocultural events. Yeah. Like the Ears movie. Yes, exactly. It's got to be the biggest cultural moment that I can remember happening in a very long time that wasn't like a pandemic. Yeah, right.

[00:14:37] But everything is so segmented in its own little pocket cultures now. Well, I would say Top Gun Maverick, Barbenheimer, Ears. Okay, yeah. So we've got a few of them recently. Those are these great things and we don't have enough of them right now, like you were saying.

[00:14:58] Having everybody being micro-cultured down into being at their home theater by chance. Yeah. But then you have a podcast so you can speak on these things whenever you want and a Discord. It's true. Yeah.

[00:15:12] And that's the one thing that's fun about our Discord too is if you're a TV hobbyist or a movie hobbyist and it doesn't have to be ours, it could be Bald Move, it could be film and movie making ones. There's all kinds of communities out there. Video games.

[00:15:24] Hmm? Video games, not to do my own horror, but you can come talk video games in the Lower Hounds Discord too. There you go. Or anywhere. And it's great to have that community, that curated community where we can sort of all nerd out about these things together.

[00:15:37] There is a word that usually has a negative connotation, but I think it is a good thing. I might need your help finding it. I am not educated. It is this thing. It is like echo chambers. Yes.

[00:15:52] You can find your own little niche, little echo chamber and just basket it when you want to enjoy a thing because everyone is still consuming things. They're just doing it at their own time. Right.

[00:16:05] And then so having, then being able to come around a podcast or a Discord or something like that is a nice way to then reconnect with other human beings. Definitely. So yeah. Awesome. Well, let's, oh, last note about the movie too.

[00:16:21] It seems to be pretty consistent across the review sites, Tomatoes, IMDB, Letterboxd. Metacritic has it as 67 out of a hundred. So I think it's falling right in there pretty consistently across everything. So what is your overall spoiler-free hot take for Leave the World Behind?

[00:16:41] I'll start by saying I loved it and I can't believe it's not reviewing way higher. Yeah. I have some theories why, but yeah, continue. Okay. I found many things about it aside from just the draw. So trailers, people who made it, people who are in it.

[00:17:02] Aside from that, as soon as I started watching it, the music and the pacing, I found them very unsettling in a good way. Like in the best possible way so that something can be unsettled for a movie. The vibes are immaculate as the Zoomers say.

[00:17:16] The camera shots in this thing, which we will get into later. Oh man. But like everything just feels so, the movie feels with the camera and the music. It all feels so dynamic. And it's not usually-

[00:17:29] And it's not usually to disorient you and to give you that, those weird vibes of like, ooh, something's not right in the world. Exactly. And I'm not typically one to, you know, I'm not a huge movie guy.

[00:17:41] So, you know, I'm not one to spot that kind of a thing unless it really like they're using it as a way to do storytelling. And I even picked up on it. It's pretty obvious in some cases. Definitely. So like, it's very welcome.

[00:17:58] And last bit of it is goddamn Mahershala looks good. Like everyone is doing great, but I just love looking at Mahershala and his face. And everything he's doing in this just works so well for me. Myhala does some great work in here too.

[00:18:17] But yeah, the whole cast, which is a small cast obviously for this one. But everyone just crushes it. Yeah. And the set is great. Like I guess it's all gush for me. My hot takes are gushes. Okay. But yeah, what about you? Gushy vibes. Gushy vibes.

[00:18:37] I really enjoyed the movie. And I think the thing where maybe it's falling short sort of in the broader pop culture thing is this isn't a big entertainment film. This is not a Top Gun Maverick. This is not a Barbie. To me, this is a filmmaker's film.

[00:18:55] And I feel like he really pushed himself and his creative team. And it's genre pushing in a little bit in some of the techniques and styles that he's telling the story in.

[00:19:08] So I think for my pet theory, my tinfoil hat theory here is that I think for a lot of audiences, it was a little like, ooh, I don't know how to deal with this. This is telling story in a weird way.

[00:19:22] It's not answering questions in the same way that I'm used to. So he's cutting cross grain a little bit. And I think it's really – I enjoyed it for that because it's so – there's so many intricate details. It's so densely packed.

[00:19:38] There's little drops of hints to other cross-cultural stuff in the names of things or maybe a t-shirt that somebody is wearing. Sam Esmail is always winking at us and burying little cultural touchstones and iconography into the backgrounds of scenes and stuff.

[00:19:58] And so I don't – I'm not surprised that it's trending a little bit lower than maybe we would want to because I think people are like, ooh, I'm not sure what to think of this because I think he is pushing it a little bit.

[00:20:11] Right. So it's like a Norm MacDonald sort of a comics comic version of a movie. Absolutely. That makes sense to me. And it's fun coming from a person who is like, not that guy. I still kind of felt maybe that intention going into it. I'm an art guy.

[00:20:27] I'm just not exactly a cinema boy. Right. Yeah. I'll call it. But yeah, I felt every bit of that.

[00:20:36] And on this podcast, we're really – in the Lorehounds, we're really much more centered on television and episodic storytelling as opposed to this movie storytelling, which is really interesting because in a lot of ways, this felt like to me something that I would see on television, the way it was scripted and the way that it was shot.

[00:20:56] It feels like a TV show to me, but it's a two-hour, 11-minute single story. Right. Which I really appreciate as someone who just – time is at such a premium for me right now. Like, a beginning, middle and end is such a great thing.

[00:21:12] Like with video games, I'm gravitating to more like a shorter, densely packed game.

[00:21:20] And right now, movies are kind of working that way for me in such a way like this film might have like sort of opened up a door for me into going like, I need to watch more movies because it's – I can enjoy a thing and have it be done.

[00:21:32] And be done with it and move on. Yes. It might be – like this movie might be a door for me. Which is why I think it's interesting that they did the limited theatrical release and then straight to streaming.

[00:21:46] Because then the cinemaphiles can get it in that big screen the way it was intended, but then the rest of us mortals who are living a busy family life, we can enjoy it too and still have the buzz in the zeitgeist, in the conversation space.

[00:22:01] Where it's fresh as opposed to, oh, we had to wait three months for it to come out on streaming or something like that. There's something there about the fat cats up top watching it in the cinema and us worker bees.

[00:22:14] We'll get into that later as the movie goes. Yeah, that's a different show maybe. But yeah, like you said – This is his movie, very vibes to this movie. Sam is a cultural critic, right? In that way.

[00:22:25] Same along with Noah Hawley and Fargo season five is dealing with some very similar themes that are happening with that. Shout out for that show. Season five is rocking. It is on fire. But yeah, like you were saying, the camera work was amazing.

[00:22:41] The complimentary music, the needle drops. Even a needle drop that goes into a diagenic where we hear the soundtrack sound and then it drops down into a scene of a character listening to that same song on the radio as they're driving. So really, really fun filmmaking techniques.

[00:23:02] Again, more of Sam Esmail being a filmmaker, a TV show maker or whatever, and using tricks and techniques and reveling in those kinds of things. Yeah. I had a thing too about the soundtrack.

[00:23:17] So Mac Quayle, who composed the original score for the film – I'm reading this part directly off of Wikipedia. But I thought this was really neat. The whole score is consisting around like a nine note mode by Oliver Messiaen.

[00:23:30] Oh, interesting. Oh, right. And you're a musician, so you're going to pick up on this a little. Yeah. And I mean, it's that piano. It reminds me of – I'm not a music scholar or anything, but Lydian is like a different mode that I've heard before.

[00:23:42] And it came from pretty much all of my classical music comes from John Williams and Star Wars. So I learned that he used things like Lydian modes for character leitmotifs and stuff like that.

[00:23:55] So I think it's neat that you can, in such a small thing, you can use literally one mode and use that as the entire score. So anytime you're getting that sweeping chord on the piano, which it's a mode, it's not a chord, but it comes out as like –

[00:24:13] It's so spooky. It's the first thing you hear when the movie starts is that piano run where it's like, like that. And it's the same thing. It's like the pulse of the movie is that sound. I love it.

[00:24:27] Wow. Okay. So I'm going to have to go back and watch the movie again now thinking of that.

[00:24:31] Oh, and by the way, the next time we interview music composer Bear McCreary, we need to have you on the podcast so you guys can talk about this kind of stuff. I had so many questions. It was such a great interview. He was so fun to talk to.

[00:24:45] I can't listen to everything the lorehounds do because these madmen are constantly putting stuff out and I just don't watch very many things. But this thing is a must listen. Bear McCreary is a treat.

[00:24:56] Yeah, it really was. We were so grateful to be able to take some of his time because that dude's got to be busy as anything these days.

[00:25:03] He didn't seem like it. He was right there with you guys the whole time. He was just so excited to talk about it. It was awesome. Great guy.

[00:25:10] Yeah, very fun. So the last note that I had was, you know what this movie really reminds me of? Is a modern version of a Hitchcock film. Yeah, you say that and I'm like, okay, I'm there with you.

[00:25:22] Yeah, so I'm not a big Hitchcock devotee. I haven't studied his films a lot. But I remember in Vertigo, seeing Vertigo when it was remastered and re-released in the theaters and really noticing how he would raise the tension.

[00:25:38] He would turn the knob and there's this one scene where they're in an apartment or something and they turn and there's like the way that the closet is framed and the clothes are in the closet. It gave me a mini jump scare. Right.

[00:25:54] As if there was somebody back there waiting to leap out and just all the time doing those little things so that by the time- Playing with your expectations.

[00:26:01] Completely. So that by the time you get to the climax of that movie in the tower and when certain things, I don't want to spoil. I mean, it's a very old movie, but whatever.

[00:26:12] When this big climatic moment happens, I leapt out of my seat. I was so freaked out because he had slowly just notched up that volume knob on the tension just ever so slightly every scene so that I was triggered and I was primed by the end of it to be like, oh my Lord.

[00:26:32] Pardon my brain, but you were edged all the way until the huge knot at the end. So I don't think- It really was. Yeah.

[00:26:43] It was masterful. Now, I don't know that he- I don't think in this movie we have that same trigger release at the end because it's more of a creeping doom and a slow spreading. Right.

[00:26:55] But it also really reminds me of Jordan Peele's work with like Nope and what's his other one? Get Out.

[00:27:04] Yeah, Get Out where it's this horror that's set in the mundane primary world and we take a conceit or one or two conceits and then we set the story in motion.

[00:27:17] So I just really appreciated the fact that he was able to set everything that we see that goes on all the big set pieces. There's some amazing big set pieces that we're going to talk about.

[00:27:29] When they happen, I was just like, whoa, I've never thought about that before. What if that could have happened? There's one scene on the roadway which we won't spoil now, but I was like, oh, it was a very modern take.

[00:27:43] That's the word I was going to use. It is exactly the kind of scary that you can only get in a very, very modern world as we live in right now. But he's using those Hitchcock- Now. Yeah, he's using those Hitchcock techniques though- Yes. To contextualize modern.

[00:27:58] Right. It's like a college film. I've heard that about Beyond the Black Rainbow where it's someone who's using pure education from film to create a thing, like a showpiece for how you make a movie like this.

[00:28:13] Using the teachings of what has come before. But yeah, Psycho is sort of the same way where everything is very small and that's my one Hitchcock touchstone. Right.

[00:28:24] So I'm able to, as you said that, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's in there. It's in there. It's small and creeping the whole way through.

[00:28:32] Right. And the doom spreads slowly around you. And we're very intimate with all the characters as they're being challenged and confronted with things that shake them to their cores, but yet doesn't completely blow out.

[00:28:45] It's not like, oh, here comes an alien spaceship. Spoilers. There's no alien spaceships in this. But the horror is so intimate and all around and yet diffuse that it does. And then the way that the camera works and then the music works, it really does create this great environment of dread and-

[00:29:09] Everything's working in concert to make you feel. It's very well put together. I could totally see this being used as a, in a filmmaking class. Yep. Yeah, I could definitely see it the same way.

[00:29:21] Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So normally on One Shot Movies we talk about our theater experience or any trailers that we might have seen. No trailers. Did you want to, unless you want to throw out a trailer just for fun that you have seen recently or anything that you're expecting to see? Are you in for Rebel Moon or Dune or anything like that?

[00:29:40] I am very excited about the Halo show coming back. It is a very bad show that I'm very excited to watch more of. It's a second make of something, right?

[00:29:54] It is season two. Season one was pretty awful, especially as a Halo fan. Like it had some stuff in there for me, but it's just very wrongheaded and like, you know, it's not for the fans of Halo. So what are you even making it for? Right.

[00:30:11] But season two, same stuff, different day coming back. Very excited. Okay. Don't know why.

[00:30:18] One of our Patreon benefits is access to this curated database list of shows and movies that we're watching as a community. And I'll have to put Halo in that list now. I ignored it when I was calling the internets the other day for what's up and coming.

[00:30:34] It's pretty awful. I love it.

[00:30:37] I'm interested in seeing Rebel Moon. I've been seeing a lot of Rebel Moon material on the interwebs these days. So I'm very curious to see how that's going to pan out. It could be horrible or it could be really cool. We'll have to see. Zack Snyder, right?

[00:30:52] Yeah. It's his Star Wars epic. From what I heard, he's directly going for Star Wars, which has almost never gone well. So we'll see. I will wait for, I will listen to your podcast on that one.

[00:31:05] Very good. I believe Sean and Alicia and I are going to be covering that. Cool. Yep. So the last thing that we always like to touch base on, especially on the one shot movies is would you recommend Leave the World Behind and or would you see it again?

[00:31:21] Yes and yes. Absolutely. I think if you're any kind of a movie person or honestly not, if you like mystery, if you like just good old fashioned acting. Right. Julia Roberts is great in this. Ethan Hawke is great in this.

[00:31:36] I haven't even talked about them, but yes, they are crushing it. Like everyone does such a great job in here.

[00:31:41] It's a real actor, actor's film and it's real filmmaker film as well. I think it's a perfect Saturday night what's on, let me do this. Right? I think it's an easy film to watch.

[00:31:52] Maybe it worked so well on me because I was surprised, but it really did work well on me. So not to oversell it, but I loved it. Okay. Well, let's take a break and when we come back, we can start talking about the movie in detail.

[00:32:20] And we're back. Okay, Brandon, let's start talking about the movie in detail. This is your spoiler warning.

[00:32:27] We're going to be breaking down the movie and all its components and parts. So if you haven't seen it yet, or if you don't mind being spoilered, this is your chance to either stick with us or hop off and then come back once you have gotten to see the movie.

[00:32:42] Between the two of us, we generated, I don't know what, three or four pages of notes here of different bullet points. And I thought probably the best way to talk about this is just, we've got a map of the terrain here and wherever we start, we've got a whole bunch of things that we can talk about.

[00:33:01] So I think we can just sort of flow through the movie, talk about characters, production details, plot, some of the action, some of the set pieces, some of the themes and subtext. So we'll just sort of meander through and see where we end up. First off though, is there anything that for you was just the best part of this movie or the thing that sticks out the most or the thing that was the most chilling? Like what has got you by the short and curlies?

[00:33:28] I keep coming back to the very close moment between Amanda and GH, Julie Robertson and Mahershala's character where they had just like, they finally kind of broke through and had a small intimate moment that was handled, I think really well between both of them as intelligent adults who aren't just going to ruin their lives because they've had a couple.

[00:33:52] In another film it would have happened? Yes. In this film it was very, I'm glad that it didn't happen and I really liked where GH ended up at the end of the scene.

[00:34:04] Yeah, and it sort of just shows that they're both their heads are on straight. Like, you know, the whole world is going to shit around them as far as they can tell. And they're still like, I'm a grown up. Like let's get, you know, let's not ruin our lives here.

[00:34:21] Right.

[00:34:23] I like, I watched sort of, I watched it once in its entirety and then I watched in sort of bits and pieces. The very beginning, the way Julie Roberts, her character Amanda just sort of like orchestrates everything to get the fuck out of Dodge. She's just had it. She's like, I'm done with all this bullshit.

[00:34:40] Right. And then she delivers this monologue that I think is probably the, like, I'll say maybe the worst written in a, the only thing in the movie that, but he also might be trying to do something with it. I think he's, yeah.

[00:34:58] It's like theater. It came off as theater, like a theater monologue, but the way it ends with the camera cutting just to her face, like, I fucking hate people.

[00:35:08] The way she does that, I belly laughed whenever I saw it the first time. And the second I was like, this is clunky, but I think it's on purpose and I love it. So, I mean, that's another moment that really sticks with me. That and like some of the big action bits are just like striking visuals. Like what the actual fuck.

[00:35:27] So, just back to her text really quick. Well, when I couldn't fall back to sleep this morning, I came over here to watch the sunrise. And then I saw all these people starting their day with such tenacity, such verve. No one talks like that.

[00:35:41] All in an effort to make something of themselves, make something of our world. I felt so lucky to be a part of that. But then I remembered what the world is actually like. And I came to a more accurate realization. I fucking hate people.

[00:35:56] Exactly. I feel like that, but I don't, no one talks like that. No, no one does. And then the way that they do the hyper zoom in on her face. Oh yeah, it's like a rack zoom.

[00:36:07] Oh my Lord. He went the entire length of that lens. Right? I mean, he started wide and he was like, you could feel the zoom ring hit the stop on the far end of it.

[00:36:20] But I think to me, that was a really strong visual and script cue to say, okay, David, you're sitting here watching this film and you have a bunch of expectations and you have a bunch of thoughts about what you think is about to happen here. And this scene is here to tell you that everything that you thought is not actually going to be what occurs.

[00:36:47] Right. Right. It's just a big, strong signal to go check your expectations right here because we're back- You're in for a weird one.

[00:36:54] Yeah, you really are in for a weird one. And then the next scene where they're driving in the car and she's looking up outside of the car with the camera mounted on the outside of the car. And we're just looking at her sunglass face as they're driving down the highway. And she says, leave the world behind.

[00:37:16] Mm-hmm. And it's part of a conversation that we're dropping into probably with, I think, her sister on the phone and she's talking on her headphones. And then the camera moves inside the car somehow. Oh yeah. I have no idea what they're doing there.

[00:37:29] I have no idea how they did that. It's got to be some sort of a weird robot arm or something or a drone that is accidentally piloted. Yeah.

[00:37:36] That's a cool scene too because it shows just like they're all together as a family and they are all completely alone because they're all in their own heads. She's there on her phone talking, her husband's just listening to a podcast or whatever, trying to listen to-

[00:37:51] He's trying to get the game. He's trying to get the game on the radio. Yeah. The son is playing Call of Duty on his phone and then the daughter's watching Friends. Is that what it was? Call of Duty?

[00:38:00] It's got to be. It's basically whatever shoot them up game. Right. Probably, they're leaning more Call of Duty than Aliens because he has some information later that he's quote unquote learned from a video game. Right. With the flyers. How to say death to America on a flyer. Right.

[00:38:17] Let's talk about the whole Friends part of it and even through to the end final scene. What did you make of this theme?

[00:38:28] Because there's a line later on when Clay is sitting, him and Amanda are sitting in the kitchen on their first night and he starts talking about one of his students who's written a book and this idea that media serves as both an escape and a reflection.

[00:38:49] Here we have the daughter who is so much more motivated by Friends and the parasocial relationship she has with characters on that show than she is by anything in the real world or in her real human emotions, even though she's craving it.

[00:39:11] I thought her character was really interesting too. She's so oblivious to the way the world works, but yet is the one who is so observant and connected in so many ways. There was a great scene too when she goes out to see the deer.

[00:39:30] She walks barefoot out on the grass to go see the deer. Mm-hmm. That's a big thing people talk about these days on internet. It's like, yeah, unplug your social media and go walk barefoot in the grass. Touch grass.

[00:39:42] Touch grass as the kids say. I thought it was really interesting. Then that final shot where she gets to see the final episode of Friends in the bunker of that house. That's a dope bunker. It is.

[00:39:57] I don't know. I didn't know what to think of it at first. I was just left in such a state of shock, of joy, of... I don't know. I didn't know how to process myself because the movie was working on me on so many different levels.

[00:40:12] I know I called it. Whenever she was going into the bunker, I was like, she's going to find the DVD box set and she's going to watch that. I said it to my wife. I was like, it's going to happen 100%. She did. I was like, yes, nailed it, crushed it. I was in there for it.

[00:40:30] It's a great way to... Because all this horror has happened and then you can't help but smile and clap along when that theme comes on. Maybe it's people pretty much my age and up who Friends was such a cultural touchstone for like... Huge, huge.

[00:40:48] It was like a break. It's maybe the first parasocial thing where you feel like you know these people. It felt more real, I think, than sitcoms earlier did. It's not the Bundy family where they're all horrible to each other or anything like that.

[00:41:10] Or the Cosby show where you could see it, but it was also removed enough that it was a smaller pocket of life. It was a little bit more rarified.

[00:41:21] Yeah. There were things like Fresh Prince felt a little bit more real in a lot of ways. But yeah, Friends was a big one. It was just huge. But 10 season is of it too. That's incredible.

[00:41:34] And it always ran in syndication and in reruns, which she said was the thing that the old people used to do or whatever she said to Julia Roberts. She's like, what's that thing old people used to... Reruns?

[00:41:46] She's so clueless about the world, but yet she is the one who is so in tune with certain things that the others are completely missing.

[00:41:55] Right. And all it takes is for her to not have Wi-Fi or whatever so she can't watch Friends. And then she's like in there. She is touching the grass. She's looking at the deer, which by the way, those the hordes of deer is like deer in themselves because of how vacant eyed and stupid they are.

[00:42:12] They are a little bit creepy. But when you put a lot of them together, holy shit, what a visual. Very, very affecting.

[00:42:19] Right. And well, yeah. So where do we talk about the deer? The deer I thought was interesting in terms of the overall horror element. So this goes to another Hitchcockian element like the birds. Yeah.

[00:42:33] Right. Where the birds are just sitting around staring at everybody for a while and you're like, this is weird. What's going on? And so when they-

[00:42:42] It has to be supernatural. It feels like that. When all the deer were like that, it has to be an alien. It has to be supernatural. This isn't normal. That's the way it was making me feel like, well, some shit's going down because this is not how deer act.

[00:42:55] Right. And then the way that they chase off the deer and they sort of have this when Amanda and Ruth have their bonding moment.

[00:43:05] And I think that actually does a lot of work for them because Ruth is coming to grips with the fact that she's lost her mother. Even if her mother is alive, she's never going to see her again. Right.

[00:43:19] It's not like Walking Dead season one, early episodes where Rick finds his family again. Right? Yeah.

[00:43:26] We're not doing that. And so she's got to come to grips with it. And Amanda, who is a mother and she's trying to... She's a person, she's got to have a plan and everybody would got to know what's going on. We've got to have all our pieces in place and everything like that.

[00:43:43] She can't not but help be maternal in some way. And I thought that they're coming together after Amanda's just bullshit racist attitudes towards them. Yeah.

[00:43:58] That she got over herself in some way and could just be a human being and empathize with somebody who is coming to terms with loss of a really profound nature because Ruth really needs her mother.

[00:44:11] She says, so I need my mom and she's not here and I don't think she's ever coming back. Yeah. A lot of the character dynamics in this one are pretty strong, especially like basically Amanda versus everyone else. It's pretty good. She's just such a leader. Yes.

[00:44:33] And whenever any sort of power is threatened in her, she immediately attacks. I think this can be a useful thing for a mother to carry around or a parent in general.

[00:44:44] But yeah, in this situation and honestly it kind of worked out for him in the end. But yeah, it was really nice to see after so much tension throughout the whole thing that for them to finally like sort of stand together against what I don't know what those deer would have done.

[00:44:57] It's not like they're going to start, pull a gun out from behind their deer back and then, but you know, I guess maul them. That's the one thing they could do.

[00:45:08] Wildlife just to stare at you like that, that is a and not be afraid of you. And you're outside of a zoo, a petting zoo environment that these are wild creatures for them to not be is a very disturbing thing.

[00:45:24] A family member recently had an encounter and we don't know if the animal was rabbit or something like that, but it was a coy wolf, which is a hybrid animal that's coming up more and more, especially around in the Northeast.

[00:45:41] And it just sat in the driveway and stared and wouldn't run off. Right. It was so unnerving for that person. They were like, what do I do? And we don't confront wildlife on a regular basis. Absolutely not. Not if I can avoid it.

[00:45:58] Yeah. We don't live at that level anymore where we're encountering, I mean, okay. Chipmunk or a Robin or something like that. But any sort of mega fauna is, is very weird. And so it all goes into that spreading doom of like, why are these animals doing this? This is so unnatural.

[00:46:17] I actually did have a moment with an animal that was irregular. There was a possum. I was at work the other is like a couple of months ago and there's a possum who just like walked up to me. I was like, oh shit, what are you doing? But I backed up.

[00:46:29] Exactly.

[00:46:31] And I called people. I was like, hey, there's a possum. What do you want me to do? And my boss at the time was like, possums are North America's only marsupial animals. They cannot get rabies. So do not be worried about rabies. I don't understand the animal's behavior, but don't worry. You will not get rabies from the possum.

[00:46:49] I was like, that's a very interesting fact, but it's not going to help me here. I love it. Yeah. So, but yeah, it is very unnerving when an animal who normally would run from you on site just walks up and does not give a fuck. Right.

[00:47:02] Like it's weird for sure. And it's that whole setup too of the deer. So the family goes out to Long Island to get away from the pressures of the city. To leave the world behind.

[00:47:16] And here they are being encountering the world, but the world is not what it seems. Something is wrong here. And so it's not idyllic and pastoral. Like when they first see the deer, when I think Amanda looks out the kitchen window and says, oh, look, Clay, a deer.

[00:47:31] Oh, oh, oh.

[00:47:34] And so to use such an innocuous animal to be this, it's not a harbinger, but like a symptom of what's going wrong in the world I thought was a really fun way. And it fits. It fits with the story on Long Island. You're going to see deer. You're not going to see, you know, that's so it works from a storytelling standpoint that way.

[00:47:55] I agree. Very affecting. Yeah. It's always either a delight to see a deer or you're very mad because they're going to run themselves into your car. Right. It's one of those two options. And that's basically the only action that most people have with deer these days.

[00:48:08] Let's talk a little bit about some of these set pieces. So we have the deer, which is not really a set piece because it's more of an ongoing theme. Yeah, it's recurring. Yeah. But we have the tanker, the airplane, the drone and the Teslas.

[00:48:22] I loved the slow roll of the tanker. It was great. Where they're just like, oh, look, it's a tanker. And you know, a little while longer. That thing's coming right this way. That's that's cool. It's getting close. Well, it's getting it's getting real close. Hey, wake up. We got to move.

[00:48:37] I love the way that that was handled. And like I one thing, I was just so happy that they ran sideways. Yes.

[00:48:46] Like and I the scene just was the way it was rolling out. I expected that. I don't know what the bottom of a tanker looks like. I think they build them in the water, don't they? Yeah. Tankers that size. I don't know. That's a good question.

[00:48:59] I can't imagine how they could move it into the water. But I expected it to fall over whenever it fully got reached, like to roll to one side or whatever. But I was so happy that they didn't do the run on the train track instead of get off the train track situation.

[00:49:15] No one in this movie feels it doesn't feel like anyone does anything horror movie stupid person at all. Right. Like everyone is a real person, which I really enjoyed. Like you just run sideways if there's a thing coming at you on a predetermined track. Right. Yeah.

[00:49:33] Then there was the guys down on the shore who are standing right next to it and doing the video. And then they like they run at the last second. I'm like, that's very contemporary. That is very real.

[00:49:44] Yeah. Because I mean, you look at everything through the lens of your phone and you're like, that's not real. That's not happening in front of me. It's happening in my phone. Yeah. Right. It is that thing.

[00:49:55] A great visual as well, and a great way to set up the dissolving of infrastructure and all of these computerized systems, which is another big theme that this movie tackles is our dependence on technology. Clay getting lost. Not Ruth. What's the daughter's name? Rose. Rose being upset because she can't watch-

[00:50:22] The finale of Friends. The finale. You can't read the Airbnb terms to see whether you can kick me out of the rented house or not. Right. But I thought that the tanker really served as a great metaphor for this reality to crash into our fantasy.

[00:50:43] Definitely. It was the first real sign of like, shit is actually going down. Pay attention. Like in the movie.

[00:50:48] And how much of our world is unseen to you and I? Okay, I drive my car. I got to go to the store. The gas for that more than likely came on that tanker, but I'll never see that tanker. I'll see the tanker. Oh, look, we're flying over somewhere or something.

[00:51:06] Oh, there's some tankers out in the ocean. I know intellectually that there are tankers out there, but viscerally, I don't have an experience of what tankers do, what they sound like, what they smell like, what they look like up close. And so to have one run itself up the beach-

[00:51:23] Yeah. And living my, I'm getting away from the stresses of the real world. And I'm in, again, still in my real world, but it's a fantasy world to have the two worlds, that infrastructure world suddenly collide and crash into my vacation world. Right?

[00:51:42] That's such a good point. It's like a food truck crashing into a grocery store or something where you're seeing how the sausage is made. Exactly. I feel like I looked at it in the moment, but I don't know it right now. It's called White Lion. Okay.

[00:52:01] And I haven't done any research on it. I didn't do any lookups of what that might possibly be, but it goes into what Sam Esmail is doing in the world of the tanker. Okay. And I haven't done any research on it. Okay.

[00:52:15] And I haven't done any research on it. I feel like I looked at it in the moment, but I don't know it right now. It's called White Lion. Okay.

[00:52:23] And I haven't done any work on, I didn't do any lookups of what that might possibly be, but it goes into what Sam Esmail is doing in this film throughout. Rose at one point is wearing a NASA t-shirt. The son, Archie, is wearing an Obey t-shirt. There's a Bikini Kill t-shirt.

[00:52:45] I saw that.

[00:52:47] There's a mug, I think it's a Philly's mug on the nightstand in their apartment in Brooklyn, which is sort of an inside joke with some other people. So there's all these little things seeded throughout. And so, and it's not like the name of the tanker is determinative in any way on the story.

[00:53:07] But I love the fact that there are depths and reasons why is this person wearing this t-shirt? What is Sam Esmail saying? What is he nodding to? What is he reaching out to, to give us some depth to this story? So if you want to go chase those, you can. And if not, there's nothing lost.

[00:53:27] And I will say this film does invite a rewatch really well. The beginning credits as they open do sort of a clip show how things do now, like a stylized art thing. And it shows different things in the movie. These blocks become Tesla. Yes, yes.

[00:53:46] I think it's a really interesting. So like once you've seen the movie, everything starts jumping out at you. Exactly. Like, you know, everything leading up to what it eventually shows. I totally notice that.

[00:53:58] But Julia Roberts drops this line right up top. Where it's like, oh shit, that's the movie. Like it's a whole thing right there.

[00:54:05] Speaking of those hidden things too, did you notice that in the opening shot of the sort of the earth from space, as we come in on the coastline, it's North America, but oriented so that Florida is on the top of the screen and the Long Island coast where they are is sort of down the bottom.

[00:54:28] So he's, he's inverted up camera just like he's inverted the camera throughout the whole production of this thing.

[00:54:35] Yeah. Cause the camera does do that where it keeps rolling in. Like I say rolling and it's confusing for a camera, but it does like the camera itself does a barrel roll. Right.

[00:54:45] And one thing I wanted to look, but I didn't have time to do it was if lights persisted because we keep getting all these global shots like next to a satellite.

[00:54:55] If like city lights and stuff, cause in the first shot of the globe, in the very opening of the movie where you get that, um, that mode, the musical mode there with the piano. Right.

[00:55:06] It shows, uh, the planet there, like you're saying with Florida on top and it shows the city lights and everything as the sun is wrapping around. And I'm wondering if as the movie goes along, we're going to see less of those lights or if this was just an American phenomenon, which I'm not sure.

[00:55:21] Interesting. Yeah. I w you know, then that's the kind of detail that I would expect Sam would pay attention to. Definitely.

[00:55:29] Let's talk about the airplane crash when, uh, GH is gone over to his neighbor's house to investigate, um, you know, try and see if he can find anybody to talk to. What did you think about this scene and the setup of it?

[00:55:43] I loved it. Uh, so just the, the discovery of like, what is all this shit everywhere? Like what happened here? Right.

[00:55:51] My wife was like, well, what's happening? I was like, that looks like a divorce. Uh, you just see like clothes on the yard and stuff like, wow, interesting. Let's let's continue. So he walks in and you know, he experiences all that. And then it goes to the arm where he, and, uh, I wasn't exactly sure how much of what was coming up out of the sand. I was like, that's a watch. That's going to be on an arm. I know it.

[00:56:13] And then it's just the arm and it like the reveal of the beach as you're seeing the first plane is like, is just such an, Oh shit moment. And then you just see another one coming. Um, this isn't a movie for the visuals. I don't think like, I think you'll watch this movie for the actors. It's an actor movie, but this is CGI, the deer, the plane.

[00:56:39] Yeah. They're a little, little soft, uh, but, but it's fine. Like it is good. Like I don't give a shit about it. Yes. We, we still play eight bit video games now because we like it. Like this isn't, this isn't going to be, you know, you, you, you know, it, but it so affecting watching that plane come down and GH has a reaction to it. Like everything is played so well. Um,

[00:57:02] And I love that we are left on a little cliffhanger too. Like, did he survive? And then the next scene is why are you all wet?

[00:57:08] Yes. A couple of did he survive situations like the, the, the, the crop dusting, uh, which I did. I was like, is that metal shavings coming? This is obviously with Ethan Hawke's character. Um, later on or earlier. I can't remember. It was kind of concurrent.

[00:57:23] Sort of at the same time because well, he's well, GH is at the neighbor's house. Um, clay has gone out to try to go to town and gotten lost. So this is, this is simultaneous. Oh. And I think at some point too earlier on in that morning, there's a sound of a plane overhead flying over. Like you can just say, I heard it on my second watch. Like they're sitting there having coffee in the kitchen or something like that. And I forget when exactly, but you hear a plane.

[00:57:53] And then on my second watch I was like, Oh damn. That's the plane that just crashed at the neighbor's house.

[00:57:58] Yeah. Cause you never know like how loud something is. Like, would it be super loud for a plane to crash near you? I know. Like if you've ever been around a car accident, like it is so loud. Like it is shockingly loud, but it's probably not like a nuke going off or anything. You know, I don't know if you'd feel it from a mile or two away, a plane crashing. I don't think you would, or I don't think you'd hear it, but you'd probably hear it screaming on its way down, which you did in the movie. I think that's really interesting. Um,

[00:58:25] the visual also of the crop dusting. Oh, well before we go into the crop dusting thing really quick. I just want to say for me, you know, I got a lot of lost vibes from the airplane.

[00:58:36] Okay. Yeah. I think I felt you there. I was not a big lost guy, but I did watch the first season. That's all you need for that.

[00:58:45] That's all you need. The other thing that that does though, is that it sets up a great point of dramatic tension between GH and Ruth. Yes, definitely.

[00:58:55] Because you can't tell them about the plane crash without upsetting Ruth. And so that that goes into Ruth's whole thing when she's talking to Amanda saying, well, I disagree. I don't think you should protect your children. You should tell them the truth of all of this kind of stuff.

[00:59:08] So when GH withholds from her, she's not only hurt by the fact that she could have lost her mother, but you lied by omission to me. Yeah. You fell in. Oh no, he outright lied and lied because he said I fell in the pool.

[00:59:24] Yes. Yeah, he did. He did lie. I didn't even think about that. I guess my brain was like, maybe he did fall in the pool hiding from the plane. No idea.

[00:59:35] Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so I just thought from as a device, as a storytelling device, the airplane really sets that part of the tension up between Ruth and GH where there's this pain and this hurt.

[00:59:48] We didn't really get into it, but the tension of GH and Ruth running up on the family at the house in itself was like really, really good. Like really strong. Oh man. Yes.

[01:00:02] Because everyone's nightmare going to an Airbnb is for the owners to come up and be like, we're staying with you. Scoot over. It's the worst thing that could happen when it comes to an Airbnb.

[01:00:14] Especially in an isolated area and with wonky service to begin with. How do you get help if you needed help?

[01:00:22] Racial connotations aside, I don't think at first Amanda's reaction is all too unwarranted because it is weird having strangers in your house. It's their house, but that doesn't make it any easier.

[01:00:36] And her skepticism of whether or not these people are telling the truth, she's got a lot of good questions that maybe I wouldn't consider. I'm much more of the clay vein. Like, hey, we're cool man. Come on, have a drink. We'll talk it out. Everything will be Gucci baby.

[01:00:55] But Amanda is such a protector that right out of the gate, she's like, who are you? Where's the mother? She has all these really smart questions.

[01:01:06] Which are then layered in with racist overtones of like, oh, how could you, a black family own this house? That seems even less plausible to me with all the other reasonable unplausibilities that are there. Like you don't have an ID. We can't do the email to check. Like where are the pictures of you on the wall?

[01:01:28] Like there's all those other little subtle things which aren't in general are not bad clues to be thinking about. But then she layers in that racism, that casual racism so heavy on top of it right there.

[01:01:42] Yeah. And GH, like you can tell like GH is aware, but he's so used to this. He's so used to dealing with that world.

[01:01:49] Mahershala did an interview where he was talking about how black men are very aware of how they're coming off to outsiders. They've had to deal with like such ingrained racism. And he also said that thankfully the younger generation isn't as aware of it because the world we're in, like some things are getting weirder. Hopefully it gets weirder before it gets better. But anyway.

[01:02:10] Something like that.

[01:02:11] The younger generation doesn't really have to deal with it as much, which it comes across in Ruth in Mahershala's performance where she's like, this is right. Like she's obviously like, this is obvious racism. But GH, he plays it much more like, yes, it is racism. How do we get beyond this? This is our house. We have to be careful around these people because you never know what can happen with them. It's a very skittish, dangerous animal, the white man.

[01:02:38] Very, very. Especially when you're using a piece of art from the owner's house to potentially bludgeon the owner with because you don't have a bat. Absolutely. Yeah.

[01:02:49] That was such a funny little thing like, oh, I've got this like art and like that's my art. Then you're going to hit me with it. Exactly. It's sort of weird.

[01:02:59] I thought we'd be remiss if we didn't at least cover like how tense that first meeting of them was because it gets into it and that's like a big part of the first chapter act. What do they call it? Yep. Chapter. Chapter.

[01:03:11] The house, I believe is the chapter name for that. Right. Beautiful house also, by the way. Which is a whole other thing we're going to try to talk about. There's a lot of stuff in here.

[01:03:19] The best part about this film is it's like a web of interconnectivity and how do you break it down? How do you go about systematically discovering this film and talking about all its elements because everything is tugging on something else. Very dense. I love it. Very.

[01:03:37] Do you want to get into the crop dusting?

[01:03:39] I do. I want to talk since we were talking about the families and their meeting and the racism aspect, I have to talk quickly about that scene or that shot of them, of Clay and Amanda standing inside the house and GH and Ruth standing outside the house. Yes.

[01:03:58] The way that he shot that so that the camera is really far back, so we see everything, but the camera is standing in line with the line of the wall of the house. Yes.

[01:04:14] The house has been cut away and sectioned so that we see both interior and exterior simultaneously. It is a gorgeous shot. The lighting of the indoor and the outdoor lighting, the two families confronting each other, these questions of race.

[01:04:31] This is GH's house, but yet he built it. He paid for it and yet he's being excluded by the white people who are borrowing it for a weekend and are excluding him from his own place even though he's doing it by intent because, yeah, hey, I'm renting the house to you.

[01:04:47] Just all of that complexity in that shot and that shot is visually beautiful. Masterpiece. Just an absolute-

[01:04:56] Totally agree. They do the same thing later because, of course, he's staying in his own basement instead of the bedroom of the house, but they do that same shot, but they do a tracking shot coming from underneath up into the house and you see through the floor and everything.

[01:05:10] Kind of like how in cartoons you used to do that thing where if you go underground, you'd see skeletons of dinosaurs and stuff as it passed through into a basement.

[01:05:17] It's like that, but realized and beautiful. You see it brings the camera up through that. I would love to know how they did this, whether they actually had a bisected house on a set or if it is just CG.

[01:05:31] Yeah. On the Big Picture podcast, which is a Ringerverse podcast- Yes. I still want to listen to that. You sent it to me, but I just-

[01:05:42] Right. Yeah, yeah. It's fine. Sam Esmail is talking about some of that and he doesn't clue in because one of the co-hosts of that show, Amanda Ryan. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Not Amanda Ryan. Amanda Dobbins.

[01:05:56] Sam has been on that show before and they kind of all know each other, so he's joking with her a little bit. Did you pick up on how we did the house or what I did to the house? But he gives clues later and you can kind of piece it together if you think about it for a moment with the camera work specifically is the big clue.

[01:06:18] So that's a real house that they shot partially on location out on Long Island. But what they did was they rebuilt the house or big sections of the house on a soundstage. Okay.

[01:06:48] Kind of like the way that they work in the volume in the Disney stuff, right? Where they use a lot of processing to create parallax views so that the fin of this ship matches perfectly with the LED screen background. So you feel that the scale is correct or what have you.

[01:07:08] Right.

[01:07:10] And that's what they did because he never confirms this explicitly, but this is my theory is that they built the house and then so all of those tracking shots where we move through a wall or up and down vertically, or there's that great shot where we follow Amanda when she's in the living room going upstairs-

[01:07:29] All the way up to the bedroom. Yeah. And the camera is doing these barrel rolls and twists and follows. I think it's because they had a soundstage version of the house where it had no roof.

[01:07:43] A Barbie dream house that they could film in where it's no sides and everything.

[01:07:47] Barbie dream house is the perfect analogy for it. That's exactly what it is. So absolutely amazing. And the freedom as for like the director of photography, the cinematographer to, okay, well we don't have to deal with elements, rain, sunshine, whatever.

[01:08:03] But now I can have these cranes with these cameras doing these insane physical motions that I could never do on a real house somewhere. Gave them the freedom to do all of this extra stuff. And it was really fun to see them playing around with the camera work and the way that they told the story.

[01:08:26] And like we said before, the upside down camera stuff makes you feel upside down in the story. Yes. Which is how I would feel maybe if my phone started, stopped working and a bunch of deer were walking around in my yard.

[01:08:38] It is so disorienting in a very fun way. Yeah. Like it's such a surprisingly visually interesting movie for like a movie shot in a house basically because of that, because they got to use the Barbie dream house approach.

[01:08:52] Awesome. All right, so let's talk about the drone. Maybe we should have just done this film just through these set pieces. That would have been a good analytical framework. Yeah, for sure. It's working.

[01:09:03] Yeah, I think we're doing fine. The drone was, it was the first time that it looked like an attack was happening. Did you think it was a gas or what did you think was coming out of that crop dusting plane?

[01:09:19] I was really perplexed. I thought, yeah, was it a gas? And not only was I questioning what was it, why is it all the way out here in Long Island?

[01:09:30] There's nobody out here where they are. This is like farmland. So why would you be dropping those things out here? So that was the two questions I had. Like, what the hell is that?

[01:09:42] And I was starting to panic too, because Clay was panicking because Ethan Hawke acted the hell out of that scene. He did, especially when he was talking to the Hispanic woman. The woman on the side of the road, yeah.

[01:09:56] And she was speaking in Spanish and he didn't know how to speak Spanish. I picked up a couple of words and one of them was rojo, which is red.

[01:10:03] And I saw the red cloud at first and I was like, oh shit, this dude's bad to get. I thought he was getting gassed or whatever. Right. Like some sort of a chemical weapon. Attack.

[01:10:14] Yes. And then when it was just the flyers, I was like, what the hell? It was shocking to me for some reason. But yeah, that visual of the red cloud coming down. That's beautiful.

[01:10:28] Very good. And the way he spins the car around and drives the fuck away. Like, good. That is a smart move. Not a horror movie.

[01:10:39] Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, I'm going to be a hero or something. And I love the fact that when they show him stepping down on the accelerator, he's wearing sandals. Yeah. He wears flip flops the whole movie. Gotta be very comfortable. The whole movie.

[01:10:51] Yeah. The way he leaves that woman high and dry is sort of this... It's affecting.

[01:10:58] And it's the way that people ignore when a homeless person is standing at an intersection or whatever, at a red light. You just sort of like turn your head away and you pretend that they're not there. He does this to this woman, which is brutal.

[01:11:14] And just the way he drives off and then he has to sort of like hold that with him for the rest of the movie. He brings it up later when he's smoking a doobie with Ruth or a vape, when they're vaping out by the pool. Yeah, right.

[01:11:27] Yeah, that was a fun conversation too, by the way. Not to get too much in the weeds, but the way that the characters sort of like all kind of go off to have their own little moments together.

[01:11:39] Right. Because that was happening simultaneously with GH and Amanda listening to records. Yes.

[01:11:45] Right. And then with Clay, obviously he cares about people. He sees himself as a kind and easygoing sort of person. He has a little emotional moment earlier on when the kids are playing in the pool. It makes him really happy.

[01:12:01] I feel very much like a Clay. He's the character in the movie I resonated with the most. Do you quote the NPR in the Atlantic? I read about this thing in the Atlantic one time, or I heard a story on NPR.

[01:12:14] I quote dumber sources, but yes, I do lots of quotes. I get a lot of my news from NPR if there's a big thing happening. I just tell my phone to tell me the news and it live from NPR. Right. This is whoever.

[01:12:28] I love that it's so very Sunset Park, Sunset Park Slope kind of thing of being a dad and listening to- It feels like very well modern connected, man connected to the internet. Right. Who gets lost?

[01:12:45] Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm a professional driver and I always have my GPS on just because it keeps you up to date with traffic and everything. But if you ask me a road name, I'll tell you I don't know. And I'm a professional. I get paid lots of money to drive.

[01:13:00] But that is true. If all of the maps were to go down, I would be screwed. I know I just learned that depending on whether interstate road ends with a five or in a zero, if it's going vertically or horizontally, I just learned that. And I'm a professional.

[01:13:18] So I very much am with this man where if it's a detail that you don't need to know, it's gone. It's gone, baby. We don't need it. Right. There's too much going on in the world.

[01:13:29] Unclutter your mind. Whereas Amanda is the opposite. My wife's name is also Amanda and she is also this type of a person. So I was like, look, it's us. It's us on this movie. It felt very much that way.

[01:13:41] That's hilarious. But then for Clay to leave her on the side of the road?

[01:13:48] That is so antithetical to who he thinks he is as a person in this world. And it's so unnerves him and upsets him. And each of the characters have a sort of undoing moment where they have to become untethered from the fantasy world that they're living in.

[01:14:07] And then as GH says later, he was a person who prided himself on always being able to see the world as it was. But even he's deluded. Even he is not yet ready. He has to go through something. And the plane crash I think is his moment to come to the realization that he's got to leave the world behind and face this for what it really is.

[01:14:32] Right. And he definitely has moments where he keeps like, because he just keeps putting it off. Like, no, it's not going to be that bad. It's not going to be that bad.

[01:14:41] No, Kevin Bacon's not going to shoot me in the face whenever I need this medicine. It's little bits where it's just like he just keeps putting it off because it can't be the end. It can't be.

[01:14:53] Right. Great Chekhov's gun by the way. We see it in the first act and it's used in the third act. I pointed at the screen. I looked at my wife and I said, it's Chekhov's gun. Literally. Literally.

[01:15:04] Yeah. I know things about movies. I just don't watch very many of them. That's Chekhov's gun. She said, shut up.

[01:15:13] So this drone too, and this flyer, it was very North by Northwest. Again, another Hitchcock comp, right? You know, with, is it Cary Grant running away from the crop duster?

[01:15:23] Yes. Oh yeah. I've seen that parodied many times. I haven't seen the movie. It was parodied on Family Guy once where he was running, Peter Griffin ran away from a plane, but I know the reference.

[01:15:33] So, but then this flyer, so tell, say more a little bit about this flyer. Cause if it comes from the Call of Duty world, I was like, huh? Like, what is this? I don't.

[01:15:43] A lot of things parody Call of Duty because Call of Duty is a parody. It's not like, it's not like a, you know, a Marvel cinematic universe where it's like a specific thing, but Call of Duty is like an, it is fast and the furious of war.

[01:15:59] So like it is dumb action movie, but war. So depending on whatever version you're playing of that game, um, it's a very easy thing to, to use as like a, this is just quote unquote Call of Duty.

[01:16:14] But, uh, in the modern warfare version of the games, a lot of them are taking place in like, you know, the Middle East or wherever, like Russia, they're not taking place in Russia, but there are like villains that are like vaguely, you know, vaguely the enemy.

[01:16:28] Uh, that's, it could be called Call of Duty vaguely the enemies. Um, but, uh, the, he's able to, because of, you know, bullshitties seen in the game identify that this means death to America, which I loved Kevin Bacon's thing. Uh, the character Danny, who is just the, right.

[01:16:45] What do we want to call him? Yeah, he's a contractor, but we want to call him a blue collar conspiracy man. Should we call him that?

[01:16:53] Yeah, he's a working man. I don't think he was like a prepper prepper cause he was loading up a lot at the last minute there. He would have already had all of that prior. I think

[01:17:02] he was wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat, but he could very be easily be wearing a red one. Um, so I'll say that.

[01:17:09] And that's funny because Sam is doing that. He's, he's putting in again, t-shirts, hats, mugs, all of these little things. There's a whole bunch of cultural iconography. I can say that word embedded in this movie. And so, uh, that hat, it doesn't have a deep, deep meaning. It's not determinative, but it's a visual signal for us to interpret.

[01:17:30] And if you have, if you're a sports fan, it says something to you clearly, right? It's boom. There's a, there it is. Right. And they see, you see it in the shot. Right. And in clay ear GH even says wearing cowboy or a Cowboys hat. Yep.

[01:17:44] And of course when you see the character again, he is wearing it. Yeah. I cannot remember why I brought him up in the first place. Right. So there's, there's so many like set piece moments still that we really haven't like the Tesla's.

[01:17:56] Yeah. We haven't talked about that yet. Uh, you have here, I'll go ahead and just say it. Great modern horror trope. It absolutely is. Um, it's, it's, you know what everyone's afraid of with a, with electric cars that are like better controlled, they can self-driving cars.

[01:18:12] I don't know why it took me so long to get there. I just saw actually a note from today. They recalled like a whole bunch of these cars, a whole bunch of Teslas because of the self-driving things too. So it's like, yes, I woke up and I read that and I was like, I'm recording a podcast today.

[01:18:26] Perfect. A whole section of this movie where they, they, they got to like do this horrifying Tesla situation. So yeah, the, the Tesla is just running themselves and they're all white Teslas too running themselves in to each other on this, like trying to get out of town. Um, uh, I actually, Oh, I remember now it was,

[01:18:48] Oh, you remember your Kevin Bacon point? The Call of Duty connection. Yeah. So that's it. That's right. That's right.

[01:18:52] Kevin Bacon brings up a point. Well, we'll get back to Teslas, but where, uh, in a different city under a different context, they're dropping things with like a Korean message of death to America. Okay.

[01:19:05] And, and, you know, I can't necessarily trust Kevin Bacon in this situation because he seems very much a conspiracy guy. Although he was right. Um, he did get the water and he knew stuff was coming, but you know, maybe he's right for the wrong reasons. Right.

[01:19:21] Um, but this Tesla situation was so good and also played very well where Julia Roberts, you know, it doesn't just wait. She says, Oh, they're stacked up. There's an, there's more coming, getting the car we're going. And, uh, the action hero moment of for her is driving around these things and not getting her old family killed by, you know, rogue Teslas.

[01:19:41] Well, I don't want to play call Grand Theft Auto, but I could see it. It felt very video game dodging these cars in that way.

[01:19:47] It did. I'm a professional driver. I don't know if she could, uh, I don't know if she could handle like if I could handle this situation of, you know, skirting around cars and they were in a Jeep Cherokee as well. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[01:19:58] A pretty nice one too. Uh, but yeah, she, she handled the hell out of that and got her family out of there. And then the, the hard cut right back to, uh, Mahershala opening the door for them because they can't, now they can't get out of town.

[01:20:11] Yeah. But the way that he, Sam set that scene up, cause at first we're like, huh, that's weird. And then the shots back and forth between her face and the sticker and then the sticker again. And the, you know, with a closeup on the self driving, it was really, I think as an audience member, I was ahead of her by a couple of steps, but that's what you want.

[01:20:37] So that when the character reveals it, we feel smart. We feel like, Oh look, I solved the mystery.

[01:20:42] Perfect breadcrumbs. Lots of points in this movie where they breadcrumb you like that, where you're slightly ahead of the character. I knew that, you know, by the end of the movie, uh, you know, in the last scene, I was going to be clapping along to the friends theme.

[01:20:53] Same situation where it's like, oh shit, the Teslas are coming. The Teslas are coming. And, and, you know, Amanda caught right on. She was like, oh, oh, oh, it's happening. Get out. What a great modern.

[01:21:05] And he's like, what, why? It was, it was perfect. I mean, it told the story of the family as well because they were the family. Their dynamic was playing out in that action scene. And it was very real. The mom take, you know, or Amanda, that human being taking control of the situation while, uh, clay, the other human being, the thing who's more soft and emotional and about people is not thinking about the practicalities of life.

[01:21:32] Yes. So it was perfect. And in what a great modern context, a great commentary on the world. And then going back to the theme, of course, of dependence on technology and when that technology can be used in, uh, in the ways that it's not intended to be used.

[01:21:51] Exactly. So perfect. So now every time I see a Tesla, I'm like, Oh, damn. Side eye. A side eye to that Tesla. That's right. Big time.

[01:21:59] I don't have much to say about Archie except that he is such a little shit for the whole movie and he never gets better. And it's another one of those moments that, uh, I was wondering how much of this could be supernatural or not, uh, with the noise.

[01:22:14] Well, the noise, we haven't even talked about. We haven't even talked about the noise. There's a noise, but the tick bite. Yeah, that was weird.

[01:22:21] I wasn't sure exactly like, is this going to be a zombie situation? Cause this dude just starts falling apart. He gets sick, his teeth fall out of his head. There's this crazy noise. How much on the hook of that, like, I guess real quick, what did you think going in and what did the movie have you believing as far as like, did you think this was a supernatural thing? Did you think aliens? Did you think terrorism? Like what, what was your head?

[01:22:48] Where was your head at?

[01:22:49] So, yeah, that's a good question because I didn't actually think about it. I just knew that it was going to be a start of an apocalypse. I loved the whole disorientation, like what, and people theorizing, well, power plants and, you know, uh, you know, these kinds of, uh, you know, satellites are tethered to the ground stations and things like that.

[01:23:09] So they're theorizing and trying to make up answers in the moment, but without an internet or a phone or a television to tell you what's going on. That's how they really told the story from the ground. Whereas a lot of disaster films tell the story from above. We see the meteor striking down, right? Or we see the situation room and the president being briefed. Well, Mr. President, if you know, if we don't do X, Y, and Z, the earth is going to be destroyed. And this is how it right.

[01:23:33] So we don't get any of that until the very, one of those variants ending scenes. Yeah. We just get the characters speculating in the way that the characters would speculate.

[01:23:43] Um, and so the, I going into this show, I had no expectations of what or how it was going to emerge. The, the, the end of things as we, as we know them was going to emerge. I think I knew that maybe embedded in because Sam SML made Mr. Robot, that there would be some sort of technology component to it.

[01:24:09] Sure.

[01:24:10] But I, I certainly wasn't expecting aliens or air force one, you know, or any of that kind of Michael Bay or, you know, you know, any of that big explosion type of stuff. So I really didn't expect anything. And so when this, when we first hear the noise, I was really WTF.

[01:24:31] Right. Yeah.

[01:24:32] I was like, what is this? Because it sounds like there's missiles flying overhead. There's a whole bunch of different sounds that don't give me any clues as to what exactly is happening. And then the sound is everywhere and it's affecting everyone at sort of the same levels. And then that brings up a whole question of this movies too, that this movie never answers any questions.

[01:24:56] Yes. We don't know what's going on other than that there's been a cyber attack to, to the point that it's crippled the infrastructure of the country. Yes. And that's all we know too, the country. Right. We don't know if it's global or what. Right.

[01:25:11] Which I, I, I don't care. I think that the story is told and I'm, I'm, I'm satisfied with that. I guess to, we're not wrapping it up yet, but the, the, that's how I feel about a story that doesn't tell you everything. I don't need to know everything.

[01:25:25] Right.

[01:25:26] I, in, especially in a story like this, maybe I want more in a TV show. I want some answers because that's part of the fun is knowing the answers. But in a movie, I think you get the wiggle room to, to have your own speculation, to, to build your own story in your head as long as everything is there to do it for you.

[01:25:45] Interestingly enough, Amanda is that kind of person who can't not have an answer. Yes. Right. She's not okay with not knowing. Whereas Clay is cool, baby. He's cool as a cucumber. That's right.

[01:25:57] Uh, which I, you know, I, I loved that. I will say that I was supernatural the whole way through. Okay. All the way to the end. I was like, this is aliens. This is, uh, monsters are not maybe not monsters, but like, yeah.

[01:26:12] Who even like, but it's gotta be something. Deer don't act like that the whole time. The rapture, it could have been anything.

[01:26:20] But yeah. And I guess technically it's still good. Who knows? I'm going to say it was the rapture and it is archangels that are bombing New York city.

[01:26:28] Well, I'm rehearsal or GH does say he does unfold the theory, which is, I didn't, they do this in, maybe they didn't do it in Mr. Robot.

[01:26:39] And maybe I'm confusing some movies, but like, Oh, there was, maybe it was one of the diehard movies where they talk about like a fire sale, you know, these hacker concepts, right.

[01:26:46] And these, these sort of socially engineered catastrophes that you can build. I'm sure some of that was in, in Mr. Robot as well. I think so.

[01:26:54] Yeah. But that, you know, so GH unfolds that. So, and then the sound now I haven't heard Sam Esmail talk about this at all, but to me, what that was, it was the Havana syndrome thing where there's these ultrasonic weapon stuff. Yeah. Microwave weapons and stuff like that.

[01:27:09] Yeah. And so I don't understand the tick bite. The symptoms don't set that quickly. It doesn't happen that fast. And the tick has to be on for a long, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff around that. Yeah, you don't get Lyme disease like that.

[01:27:23] No, you don't. This is not it. It's weak. I am rural. But yeah, it takes forever. But the microwave thing and the teeth. So the teeth was the one moment that I was like, huh, okay, this is a little weird. I'll go with it.

[01:27:37] Because now it's a multi-pronged attack. It's not just a cyber attack. It is a, it is a like chemical weapon attack.

[01:27:44] Oh, here's a theory if we want to get behind it. What if that is not the sound is not a weapon that's being used by a foreign adversary, but a weapon being used by American authorities or state authorities to subdue problems in the city or to fight some sort of other factional element that is because as the society is breaking down and people are facing off against each other,

[01:28:11] maybe they were using that as a way to try to cauterize the civil unrest.

[01:28:17] Yeah, I mean, it's a non-lethal way. And you know, our government has had no trouble blasting us with non-lethal or lethal for that matter ways to make us shut up. So I think it completely makes sense. I don't know what they did to the ticks, but they did something to force Archie's teeth fell out.

[01:28:36] Right. And I think that might be because of the microwave thing, because that's reportedly one of the symptoms that goes along with the Havana syndrome stuff. So yeah, maybe somewhere in those secret military installations that, you know, where was it? Was it Amanda who was saying where don't they have those things? Or I forget who said it, but what somebody was saying, where are those things or where are the power plants?

[01:28:58] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe there were these weapons out and so they're being, maybe they could even be activated by the cyber terrorists. Right. You know, whoever's causing it and they're just flipping those things on as they can.

[01:29:10] I think GH has probably got the right of it. He gives like the plain reading of what has actually happened. Right.

[01:29:18] Where it's like, world's gone to shit. All the rich people knew about it a couple days in advance. All that they can do is give you a nod.

[01:29:25] Right. Great storytelling, the way that he recounts that story, the way he reaches her arm and grabs her and stops her from leaving. Yeah. Like, hey, this is important.

[01:29:34] This is important, but she's like afraid of the violence that's about to happen, but it's not. He's just got to finish the story. And the story is so he didn't laugh. He said goodbye and I felt, yeah, it was just so unweird. It was not his normal character.

[01:29:50] Really affecting the world. That was my signal. Yeah. I loved that. And I do think probably as far as the mystery of the movie goes, GH is probably, the plain reading is probably right. Right.

[01:30:02] And that's all, that's the way I took it. I was kind of taking the piss when I said aliens or rapture, but I think GH is probably right.

[01:30:09] Well, I think that's probably why the movie isn't polling as well is because I think this is where Sam Esmail is cutting across the grain. Normally we have answers. Normally we get the big picture.

[01:30:19] We have that third person omniscient point of view of seeing the asteroid hitting the surface of the earth. And this movie where the camera is down on the ground with the people experiencing it with no answers, no information.

[01:30:34] And we are just, we have to sit with that. And I think that is unnerving to people when they see this. That's the point. Yeah, exactly. That is the point of this movie.

[01:30:44] This movie is about the people. It's not about the problem. It is about the people. And I think that he did such a good job telling a human story in a very non-human situation.

[01:30:56] And a couple of other theme, well, are they themes or maybe even the thesis of this is that the real answer is that no one is in control and that God helps those who help themselves. God, small g God.

[01:31:10] Because that's actually not biblical. It's apparently ancient Greek and then it made its way into Aesop's fables. And so that sort of has gotten around. But the West Wing comment, yeah, I only watched the Sorkin seasons. That was a nod.

[01:31:28] But this idea that there's no one in control, there's no one coming to save us. We are here with ourselves and we have to take some agency and ownership of our lives. And we have to examine our dependence on technology. Maybe you should start carrying a Thomas guide and you know, with driving around. Right?

[01:31:50] I should bone up on reading maps. I know how to do it, but man, it's been a minute since I've had to.

[01:31:55] So I think it's a, I think he's, you know, this big, big statements that he's making are this idea of media and this, you know, is media being a reflection in our parasocial relationships.

[01:32:09] We're certainly purveyors of that with our podcast here and in the shows and TV shows and movies that we're covering.

[01:32:16] But then this idea that the reality is no one's in control and we've got to be able to help ourselves. And I think when there's another line, hope begins in the dark.

[01:32:26] And so the fact that Danny and GH square off, but they don't kill each other. And then this, this family, these two families find some common ground to be able to support each other as opposed to turn against each other.

[01:32:45] The rest of the world is turning against itself. And at least in this place, here is a, here's a little glimmer of hope where these two families who you know, and Amanda says, I fucking hate people. Yeah. She's got to learn to love people in this.

[01:33:02] Yeah. It's like that story of how the Russian, one of the Russians that was in control of the nukes, there was a glitch in their system and it looked like America had showered the world in nukes and he had his finger over the button and he refused to shoot a nuke off at earth or not an earth, but at America or whatever.

[01:33:24] Right.

[01:33:25] And because of that, like his country, like did not appreciate him because he didn't do what, but I mean, it was his humanity. He didn't want to do that to everyone. And it's sort of the same situation on a much smaller scale where Kevin Bacon did not fill them full of holes.

[01:33:41] Right. It just shows that maybe we're not all bad. Right. Maybe we're not all bad, David.

[01:33:46] Where we can see our ways to seeing each other's humanity. And I loved Clay's, Clay finally has a moment where he stands up for himself in some way and says, you just said Danny, that you would do anything for your family here. I am doing the only, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm trying to do something.

[01:34:09] So see that and appreciate that. I don't care about the money, but just get to the point that you can see that I'm trying to help my son. I'm coming to you as a human being. Yeah.

[01:34:21] This is everything to me. That's all I have. Like, yeah, it's very heartfelt, very well delivered. And yeah, it is very helpful. I did the hell out of that scene too. They did. So. Everyone involved.

[01:34:32] Good stuff. Well, I think this is a pretty good place to wrap it up. This was really fun to talk about. I hope folks see this movie and I hope we see some more from Sam SML before too long.

[01:34:44] Yeah, I need to go back and watch some of his earlier stuff. I think I owe it to him in this one because he's really like the only things I've seen out of him I've loved. So. Right. Might as well bone up on the man.

[01:34:57] Definitely check out the podcast too on the Big Picture Podcast because they have a Julie Roberts comes on and they talk with her a little bit. And then they talk with Sam for quite a while.

[01:35:07] And he gives a lot of insights into his process and how he goes about visualizing and making things.

[01:35:14] So it's a really great, it's not just a, Hey, we had the director on, so we're going to ask him popcorn questions, but it's a real examination of how Sam SML and what his creative process is and how he sees things and what he's trying to do with his work.

[01:35:29] So it's very cool. Oh yeah. Sounds like a must listen. Good stuff. Okay. So let's wrap it up here. First, our quick notes. We are coming up on the end of the year and for our normally our patrons get a exclusive benefit of our second breakfast podcast.

[01:35:50] That's where John and I talk about life, the universe and everything. Talk about things that we're doing in the real world. We usually pick a silly movie to talk about as well, but we have a tradition here on the lore hounds that we do our top 10 rankings.

[01:36:04] And so John and I put together our top 10 lists for television shows from 2023, but this year we've done something new and that's, we put out a community survey.

[01:36:13] So anyone who's a Patreon subscriber had the opportunity to fill out a Google form and rank your shows plus three bonus questions, which are what was your sort of secret pleasure show?

[01:36:28] I don't want to call it necessarily guilty, but you know, the one that's sort of fun and you can't help but watch, even though you might never rank it in your best lists. What was your biggest miss?

[01:36:38] You know, what is the one thing you didn't get around to watching this year? And then what are you most looking forward to in the future?

[01:36:44] So a couple of our users on the discord, Greg Saw and Davey Mack and a little help from SubZero. They've taken all that data, they've ranked it, they've analyzed it. They actually use the Mario Kart ranking system, I guess. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

[01:37:01] I'm a gamer and I don't even know what you're talking about.

[01:37:03] Anyway, it's points based on yeah, whatever. Anyway, they put it all through the spreadsheet. So we have a top, we have of every show that was listed by everyone who answered the survey, a list of all the shows. We've been able to rank them. We've even ranked the networks and which shows, which networks had the most ranked shows.

[01:37:25] So that was a kind of fun little piece. We're going to put that all together. We're going to send that out as a blog post when John and I record our final second breakfast for the year, which will have our personal top 10s. We're going to be interviewing all of our co-hosts. So Brandon, we're going to interview you and do your top three.

[01:37:43] Lisa and John and Marilyn and Anthony. And we're going to intercut those into the podcast. So for patrons, that'll be out early, probably late next week, which will be around the 22nd by the 22nd or so. And then for the general public that should be out on the 25th as a little present to unwrap for yourself. And then we'll make all that data available as well.

[01:38:06] Other things that are going on in the network. Probably Howard movie review has wrapped up their current season. They'll be back next year with some more movie reviews. But in the meantime, Steve and Anthony are covering the first season of severance. And we've set up a whole separate feed for that. So if you're into severance and you're looking forward to season two, go check those podcasts out. They're dropping every Friday.

[01:38:31] And then as soon as we know when season two is going to come back, we'll let everyone know. And our plan is that myself, John, Anthony and Steve, the four of us are going to cover it weekly episode to episode. So that should be a lot of fun.

[01:38:47] Over on the wool shift dust feed with Alicia, she's going to have some more Dune coverage coming up since we've got the movie coming out in March. Her and Luke are doing sort of big 360 sweeps around the culture of Dune, how Dune was made, the book, how the book was written, all that kind of stuff.

[01:39:05] But as well, she's been covering beacon 23, which is a interesting Hugh Howey book or a series of short stories that MGM plus has put on and stars Lena Hedy. And her and Luke have been doing sort of package their packaging up various episodes in chunks and putting those out.

[01:39:25] And then she's got some Christmas programming too. I think she's going to be covering the wonderful life and a few other Christmas movies and to put that out for some fun listener viewing. We are also John and Alicia did a doctor who they're going to be doing a doctor who special, the doctor who specials. They're going to be covering that.

[01:39:47] Alicia, John and I are going to be covering season one of what if so that we can cover season two when it comes out. But we're also going to be covering rebel moon. So we've got that John and Marilyn have recorded episode for hogfather, which is a Terry Pratchett book that was turned into a TV movie. So they're gonna be talking about that. So we get a whole bunch of stuff that is just going to be coming out randomly at the latter half of December.

[01:40:13] So we'll have plenty of things for your ears. And then we've got plans for 2024 as well. I believe don't hold me to it, but I'm pretty sure we're going to be covering true detective night country when it comes out. That'll be our big show for the new year. There's a whole bunch of other stuff coming on again. If you're a patron, you get access to our exclusive list of television shows as they roll out through the year.

[01:40:40] I even set it up as a Gantt chart so you can see which shows overlap over the course of the year. So that's really fun. But all of that is made possible by our Patreon subscribers. You could be a subscriber as well for as little as three bucks a month or get a, there's three tiers, but if you get the lowest tier and you buy it for a year, it's like $33. That's like two happy meals these days. Right? It's not expensive at all.

[01:41:04] And that money goes to all of our production costs. We also make sure that our co-hosts are taken care of as well. And we have our top tier, our Loremaster patrons, and we always like to give them a big shout out at the end of every podcast.

[01:41:34] Thank you all so very much for your continued support. It means a lot to us. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers. Thank you to everyone who listens to us. Brandon, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. I look forward to doing some more one-time podcasts.

[01:42:03] Absolutely. I'm a one-shot person these days, so I'll be keeping an eye out for movies you want to see. That's perfect. I like these lighter weight coverages where we can just jump in and grab something. Are you a Kaiju guy?

[01:42:16] I do like the big monsters. Those are fun. Okay. Well, let me know if you see Godzilla minus one. I'm going to try and see it.

[01:42:23] I'm definitely going to look around for theaters near me. I'm fairly rural, but I've got a couple of movie theaters nearby that I can look around for. I am interested. Very cool. Awesome. That thing looks wild.

[01:42:33] It does. And it's been getting great reviews too. Really good dramatic reviews. For sure. I've only heard good things. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Brandon, thanks so much. It was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it again the next time. Have a great holidays.

[01:42:44] Oh yeah. Thanks for having me. You can find voice mails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad-free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the lorehounds.

[01:43:02] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening. I fucking hate people.