Latest / Critically Acclaimed Network / We've Got Mail #185 | The Trans Characters Who Mean the World to Us

Transcript

We've Got Mail #185 | The Trans Characters Who Mean the World to Us · Critically Acclaimed Network

0:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to, we've got mail.
0:10
[SPEAKER_03]: As the podcast, where you control the conversation right here at the critically acclaimed network, my name is William Bibbyani.
0:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I write for the rap, and everybody calls me BIMPS.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: was very dramatic.
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is my name is Whitney Simon.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I too am a film critic.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a lestramatic.
0:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I contribute to slash film and for the purposes of this particular podcast, you may call me rock my stream of cool.
0:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You needn't, but you may.
0:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You must.
0:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I sound a bit loopy.
0:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it's because, uh, I, William Bibbiani, everyone calls me dibs.
0:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, I was recently exposed to COVID again, and I have been quarantining like a good boy, and I am getting a little loopy.
0:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry.
1:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I've watched so many episodes of Taskmaster!
1:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm approaching everything with lateral thinking skills.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... my wife and i have been catching up on task master as well it's just taking over the united states i think a lot of people are catching up with task master it's about and we started watching because uh... of recent season uh... start jason men's ucus who is again we're very fond of i don't know season he was a delight
1:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Jason Menzuka, he was the first American to appear on the show, and we know him because of a podcast called How Did This Get Made, it's a film review podcast with Paul Sjir, and Paul Sjir, his wife, Junta and Ray Phil and Jason Menzuka watch really like notorious movies, and just sort of do comedy bits about them.
1:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem with this is they've been doing it for so long.
2:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The pulse shear actually knows a lot about movies now to the point where he has a podcast with Amy Nicholson as well.
2:09
[SPEAKER_01]: That's called Spooled.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's it's a little weird to go into see how did this get made show and hear a pulse shear kind of.
2:18
[SPEAKER_01]: fainting ignorance about cinema when he's a made a lot of movies and be Studied a lot of movies with Amy Nicholson who is the L.A.
2:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Times chief film critic these days So look, he must know something you either die a comedian or you live long enough to become a film critic I suppose so those are the roles like he probably could be a film critic at this point if you wanted to
2:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, we should get back on track.
2:47
[SPEAKER_03]: This is our podcast where everyone sends us emails or other forms of correspondence.
2:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And we read them and we respond to your questions and we react to your comedy.
2:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And we,
3:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Listen very attentively and take it very seriously when you criticize us Because otherwise you would be huge hypocrites and here's how it works.
3:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You can email us their email address Is letters that critically claimed dot net with me?
3:14
[SPEAKER_03]: What is our PO box?
3:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You can write us a physical letter or postcard.
3:18
[SPEAKER_01]: What if you like and send it to the critically acclaimed network PO box 641 565 Los Angeles California at nine double out six four and Well, golly.
3:28
[SPEAKER_03]: That's about it really so let's
3:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's, oh, that's great for me now.
3:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it.
3:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm coming up so you better get this party started.
3:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just kidding.
3:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm here because I'm quarantining.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, our first letter comes from Chris W. Hello, Chris W. Hi, Chris.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And it says, hey, folks, spoilers for Eddington.
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's about the movie, Eddington.
3:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I still haven't even seen Eddington.
3:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So, OK.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you should see Eddington because there's
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a conversation there, but it says, spoiler-friendly, I know Whitney wasn't in love with the movie.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't a huge fan, that's true.
4:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a key plot point that he might have missed that could potentially potentially change things.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I always love this.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
4:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And also, quick reminder, if anyone wants to not hear anything about adding 10, skip ahead a little bit, you'll be fine.
4:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll get to another letter.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is not huge spoilers.
4:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Like nothing super dramatic.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But it says,
4:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The private airplane that an antifa supersalgery was using had the corporate low go of solid gold magic harp, which was like an evil corporation in the movie that was trying to build like an AI factory on the edge of town.
4:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the film is saying that tech companies intentionally inflamed a culture war with antifa and the algorithms showing black lives matters and anti-vac stuff on people's phones, et cetera, et cetera, in order to solidify their power.
5:00
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't really care who is in charge, but and will exploit all sides.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end, the sheriff and everybody else was oblivious to the actual conspiracy.
5:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Then there's an addendum, correction.
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: This is at the second email attached to the first.
5:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, with the video on demand release, I was able to check the scene of the plane and it's actually not the solid gold magic harp logo.
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the thesis of the story is that right-wing conspiracy theorists miss the fascist takeover by tech bros.
5:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing with Eddington is it was a portrait of like two years ago like it's like two or three years ago was all it took place during sort of a height of lockdown So COVID lockdowns.
5:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean that'd be one of those chairs and go now.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess so, but it was trying to capture all of the paranoia that we felt.
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There are multiple scenes in Eddington if people scrolling through their phones and looking at Instagram and how there's actually a stark contrast between what the people who have right wing politics are seeing on their phones versus what people on left wing politics are seeing on their phones.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's
6:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess that is part of the narrative that there's this kind of technological bent that is feeding us these bad things and that
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: through all of this, the technology that is producing all of that is able to sort of grow and thrive in these big factories on the edge of town.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I suppose that's what the film is about, but that's also just what's happening in real life.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think it's like necessarily a very profound statement that Eddington is making, but that is an excellent point that there's in addition to all of the paranoia that this
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: various multi-pronged panic that we felt during the first Trump administration that this is also a big part of that.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Eddington really is a matter of too soon though.
6:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we were just there, I remember it and I feel like this, I feel like the film was just sort of repeating what we just went through rather than making some kind of original new comment about it, although the idea that
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: it's all really about sort of the tech bros kind of just being able to continue to thrive as an interesting point.
7:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll say this, and again, I haven't seen Eddington, so I'm not commenting on the movie, I'm commenting on something you just said.
7:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's an ethos that a lot of people in art are kind of struggling with.
7:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We say that like, oh, we were just there.
7:32
[SPEAKER_03]: We were just in, I mean, we're still in the pandemic.
7:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm quarantining right now, but we had lockdowns.
7:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We didn't have a vaccine yet.
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything was really, really, really, really dicey in particular at first.
7:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And that period was so bizarre.
7:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And so unlike the rest of what modern life has been for a very long time, that I feel like
8:00
[SPEAKER_03]: either by mandate, maybe the studios or corporations that finance a lot of these shows and movies kind of don't want to deal with that very closely and they kind of just want to move on because people don't enjoy it.
8:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe it's just too fresh, too painful, it was too traumatic.
8:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And people just don't want to relive it.
8:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like we're not
8:22
[SPEAKER_03]: revisiting that era enough, artistically, just in general.
8:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like we're not really reckoning in as much detail as we should with what literally almost every human being in the world went through five or four or three years ago, in particular, let alone now.
8:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, I think the idea of re-litigating that is not only fair game, I think it's probably to be encouraged,
8:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I suppose so I think there's something really larger at work here, though, um, I say it's like it's too soon.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't really need to re-litigate that and that my thinking is we were all on social media.
9:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We are all sharing all of these.
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: There are all these artists who are
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: talking about how what painful it was to make these clear to continue to create our during lockdowns.
9:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We had multiple films about lockdowns made during lockdowns and put out while the lockdowns were still in effect.
9:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Burnham's inside the shutter film host films like that.
9:29
[SPEAKER_01]: and there is already a living record of what everybody was going through and it's all available at our fingertips and a film like Eddington is not re-litigating that it's just sort of looking through those records.
9:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I still think he's going on about you, man.
9:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I think a lot of people are going to sell it.
9:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that, what I was going to say is, despite the fact that we have a living record of everything that's been going on for the last decade, people are so in curious and so addicted to novelty that a lot of that stuff falls by the wayside real fast, like our memory for recent history is so short.
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Why on earth would we have reelected a fascist like Donald Trump?
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like,
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: He fucked everything up.
10:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is anybody so bad?
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, it's absurd.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and this is true on larger levels as well.
10:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I was just reading someone talking about how the reason why so many people are saying what RFK is doing about like, you know, sort of delegitimizing vaccines and how Florida is saying, people, you know, you don't even have to vaccinate your kids to take into the school.
10:36
[SPEAKER_03]: All this kind of stuff, like it stems from people who
10:39
[SPEAKER_03]: grew up just a little too late to remember what it was like before we had vaccines and just how absolutely terrible it was and even though the history of like when we still had people were still suffering from polio like in at an early age and having long lasting health effects that wasn't that long ago and people don't know about it.
11:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And people don't think it was a serious as it was.
11:05
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just incredibly distracted people, and we have incredibly short memories.
11:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And frankly, as I said before, I think one of the problems with American particulars were incredibly short sighted as well.
11:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We're all just in the moment, and nothing else seems to matter either our future or our past.
11:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, I think just going through the records, this is something that I myself might have argued against a while ago, too.
11:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, oh, do we really need another movie about, yeah, apparently we do constantly, yeah, that's my theory anyway.
11:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But I haven't seen editing it for all I know.
11:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It's things.
11:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I know a lot of you didn't like it.
11:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you kind of liked it if my research.
11:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, are my room ready?
11:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Any time?
11:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Yo, did you love it?
11:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you hate it?
11:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm trying to remember.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think my comment on it was sometimes it is valuable to put these things out without context yet just so we can kind of capture in a bubble what our feelings are in the moment.
12:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a TV show we covered on canceled to soon.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was just called here and now.
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like a kind of a dramatic soap opera.
12:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was about sort of the issues that we're going on the exact year it was made.
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It was talking about how to deal with like racism and social issues that were just like um, That was one of the curious.
12:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's Patrick.
12:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's Patrick.
12:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It was Tim Robbins was was like the patriarch of the family.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like kind of a shitty character.
12:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And like his character was a shitty guy.
12:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Not like he was poorly written.
12:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And that one was trying to be very up-to-date, but it also mixed in this weird supernatural plot about it.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a guy having a vision about a volcano.
12:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was Holly Hunter, not Kira Sedwick.
12:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's right.
12:55
[SPEAKER_03]: However, my confusion isn't entirely out of nowhere, because that show also starts so seabakin' who is, you know, related to Kira Sedwick's daughter.
13:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, exactly.
13:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm not, I'm not,
13:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not, I'm not like completely out of touch.
13:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just, I'm just, I'm just wrong, but yeah, I think there is some value to that to try to comment on where we are at this exact moment and as we're trying to navigate it as best we can without the benefit of hindsight, I think Eddington is valuable in that way, but I don't think it's a very effective drama because it essentially just is ringing
13:39
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, let's move on.
13:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the email.
13:42
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, here's our next email.
13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This comes from Alexa.
13:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Alexa.
13:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Alexa.
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Lexa writes, uh, so I recently got a chance to see a double feature of Yojimbo and Sanjuro in a theater.
13:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yay!
13:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And it, and it was a spectacular time, but after walking out of Sanjuro, I had a thought.
14:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I would describe the film as a middle-aged man, bossing around a bunch of younger people, where he's always right.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: A description you guys used in relation to F1 earlier this year.
14:11
[SPEAKER_01]: What makes that style of narrative work in something like Sanjuro and fall flat in F1?
14:17
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... that's interesting question uh... so let's let's ground people for a second if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about uh... you jimbo is uh... a care croissant was when was most famous movies and samurai epic about wandering samurai walks into a town where two gangs are fighting over control uh... and he manipulates both sides turns them against each other it's a brilliant film and it was completely remade as a fistful of dollars
14:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Sanjaro is the sequel to Yojimbo and Sanjaro finds that same Samurai in a small town where a group of young men Have they take issue with the corruption in their town, but their attempt to do something about it is extremely naïve and overly trusting in the system
15:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And it turns out that everything they did to try to fix their town is just going to get them killed, and New Jim but shows up, and he basically helps them fix all the stuff that they broke and bring some sense of order to their crap town.
15:17
[SPEAKER_03]: The argument that this is a movie about a mid-lage man telling a bunch of well-intention teenagers what to do is 100% correct.
15:27
[SPEAKER_03]: F1 was a bread pit as a mid-laged race car driver coming into a formula one team and telling everyone how to live, how to wear their socks, like it's just, it's also in telling what to do.
15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And I would argue that the difference and the reason why I think Sanjaro gets away with that, and F1 doesn't, is because F1 is about race cars and Sanjaro is about violence.
15:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think Brad Pitt has less to say about racing than San Gerro has to say about violence and the way that young people glorify a kind of action cinema type of trope.
16:13
[SPEAKER_03]: This kind of hero gonna solve all our problems we're just gonna be the white night coming in saving the day, stabbing.
16:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's not reality.
16:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think San Gerro feels mature about it and if want to me, feels immature.
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... and uh... i think there's something uh... about uh... this the central character he's
16:36
[SPEAKER_01]: that lacks from Brad Pitt's character in F1.
16:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Brad Pitt's character in F1 is seen as a little worried world weary.
16:43
[SPEAKER_01]: He is, you know, a man who's like about 60.
16:46
[SPEAKER_01]: He has achieved a certain kind of bliss in just sort of racing and small races, but that part is really deemphasized throughout the movie F1.
16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea that he's this very calm,
17:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Master of racing.
17:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he doesn't really do it because he likes to win.
17:06
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't for the sheer love of the sport None of that comes through an F1 because as soon as he has a job He becomes a boss and he starts bossing people around and he becomes very forthright.
17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He tells people what's right and People just sort of snap to and he becomes
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: a little bit of a tartar.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: He starts dictating his will on others.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: If he had come in and overwhelms them with his wisdom, if he were a little bit more of a contemplative character, who was giving out Zen columns, maybe it would have read a little bit better as
17:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It would have been like more about him destroying his own ego, whereas F1 came out as something that bolsters his ego, and that he needs it for his ego, and that he likes having it, and that ultimately he was right to seek out that playcating of his own ego.
17:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about himself.
18:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:01
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no, no.
18:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
18:04
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but just that's it, and I think in Sanjaro, it was about how the world weary character had reached a level of calm and how he was dictating his will on others.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He was just saying, I've been through it, that's incorrect.
18:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he's been through and again, we're not talking about stuff like just racing and that's not to denigrate racing, but there is a little something less severe about Formula One racing than there is about political corruption and killing people.
18:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
18:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are, those are different vibes.
18:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Very different vibes.
18:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And in San Giro, he's saying killing people is bad and we should avoid it.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And political corruption is complicated.
18:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And we shouldn't assume it's as simple as telling someone, like telling your proverbial dad.
18:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he'll, he'll solve it because he's probably in on it, because that's how politics works.
19:01
[SPEAKER_03]: He's coming at it from a place of wisdom about how to solve, like,
19:06
[SPEAKER_03]: difficult moral problems as opposed to how to win races.
19:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, there's nothing wrong with a race car movie about how to win races.
19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing wrong with a sports movie where what's at stake is sports.
19:19
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a lot of sports movies totally, totally fine.
19:23
[SPEAKER_03]: But the way that they dayify Brad Pitt in F1 makes it seem like they think this is like super important when
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just super cool, man.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and at the same time, like, at the very end of the movie, he said, and it wasn't important after all.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, then why did I spend two and a half hours watching a movie about how it was important and how this was vital for everyone that they win, and there was even vital for Brad Pitt to sort of get his mojo back by winning, not by doing, but by winning.
20:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know what to tell you, man.
20:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, everyone is not a terrible movie.
20:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I just know that it's really slickly made.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really, really watchable.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't like the messaging.
20:11
[SPEAKER_03]: If I don't even like it, I just don't buy it.
20:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it's very interesting messaging.
20:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't think it amounts to nearly as much as the incredible level of production and seriousness that they brought to the film implies.
20:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, I mean, again, we're picky piss heads, it comes to F1, as has been documented.
20:36
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, that's why I don't think it particularly works.
20:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I do really love the idea of comparing it to San Juril because I think there is
20:46
[SPEAKER_03]: a tendency people have to forget that movies that aren't necessarily comparable in subject matter or even quality or even tone can have a hell of a lot in common.
20:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And I agree, I think at their heart, they do have quite a bit of the same DNA.
21:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I just think the dramatically different context is one, altars, the quality of one, not altars.
21:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's what makes one feel more important than the other.
21:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
21:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll say this.
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a way to tell the F1 story well of just sort of this old race car driver.
21:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've said before, I'm very fond of movies that star a character who is already complete when we meet him, who is, uh,
21:28
[SPEAKER_01]: or like has maybe some trivial personal problems that they have to work with but is serves as kind of a sage for other characters.
21:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm think of, you know, the one I go to is being cross-beezed character and going my way, but you could also say that about Dersu Uzzala, another Kurosawa phone.
21:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you could say that about a lot of different Batman media as well.
21:48
[SPEAKER_03]: If it's not about him, he's getting started.
21:49
[SPEAKER_03]: He's probably the expert who's been there and knows everything and his, I said, he's helped everyone out and you know,
21:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe not Batman, because Batman is like has his own struggle, he's kind of an angsty character.
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You know who I am?
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
22:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You know who a burnt gummer from all of the tremors movies, he's complete.
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows who he is, he's there to help others on their journey.
22:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I like those kinds of characters, and if they had presented the Brad Pitt character like that, and he's like pulled characters aside and gave them messages that they heard and understood what they needed, uh, guess what, we could have left F1 with those same lessons.
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We could have learned something for the Brad Pitt character, but that's not what the movie was about.
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about how Brad Pitt is really cool and we need to admire his dazzlingness.
22:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
22:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I can see a point.
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I can see a point.
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
22:44
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's move on to the next letter comes from when, hello, when.
22:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, when.
22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Biggs, Hi, Bibbs and Rocky Mistrow.
22:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Rock, not Rock, Mr. McCool, but Rocky, Mr. M-Y-S-T-R-O.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
23:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, that sounds, that sounds like a, that sounds mysterious.
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like a villain in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I started wearing makeup and feminine clothes over 2024, and then my friend told me a lot to watch.
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw the TV glow.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: When I did, when I did watch it, my entire brain went, I don't want to be like Owen, and the scene where it says, there is still time, a little fire under my butt, so hot.
23:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't stopped moving since.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I did voice training, and I'm going on HRT within a year, talking to a specialist very soon.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's awesome.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, welcome.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to yourself.
23:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Battle of the Sexes had me come out as queer, specifically arrow ace, but that was a slow process of figuring things out.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was more like lightning striking.
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Battle of the sex is the tennis movie that I see that what are whatever cracks it open.
23:54
[SPEAKER_03]: That's great but I would have thought about it about gender dynamics.
24:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes sense.
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Bobby Ribbe Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King and they were famous tennis match from the 70s.
24:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a good movie.
24:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah it's it's pretty good.
24:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Ever since then I've had a minor session with transgender characters so I'd like to tell the tell you the transgender
24:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, tell the transgender characters plural for movies that I love and there's there's two categories here There's the coded trans characters and there's the not coded coded trans characters that coded Gwen Stacy from the spiderverse movies
24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen a lot of this that Gwen Stacey has a protect trans kids poster on her wall and there's a scene in the second spider verse movie where she's having a conversation with her dad and the entire wash of the screen starts to look like a trans pride flag.
24:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the blues and the pings and her outfit is blue pink and white.
25:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's very much that that that scene is very much about accepting her identity and her father not accepting her identity Yeah, and and and the character is also like a little like feminine presenting but also like a little bit Androgynous so there there's yeah, I can see the the read there, but the character never says I am trans nobody says the character That's what it's coded.
25:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's coded.
25:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sure.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Also coded DAX from Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
25:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Hell yes
25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, DAX has been male and female and constantly talks about that and DAX can sort of move back and forth between genders very easily.
25:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Both of these characters have had transgender youtubers make great essays on them so I'll count it.
25:45
[SPEAKER_01]: As for not, not coded trans characters.
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, Maddie from I saw the TV glow after playing the role, uh, after playing the role, Jack Haven came out as trans and I do love the idea of Maddie being able to escape her prison because she's authentic really is awesome.
26:02
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... the fandom from twenty-twenty is a furry documentary made by ash cries who went uh... wanted to show the history of the furry fandom and how weird and queer it is from the start uh... yeah i i actually i don't know any friends so i've been i don't know the movie though the fandom uh... a vast a book about pirates written by trans authors
26:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Dread not by April Daniels what if you became the most powerful superhero in the world But everyone instantly knows your transgender and Wonder Woman is a turf.
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god.
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds amazing Yeah, Dread not by April Daniels.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna read that one noted
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Tom Boy is about a kid who is exploring their gender and is forced to be feminine, but clearly hates it in fierce purity.
26:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard, I haven't seen Tom Boy, but I've heard some dicey things about that one.
26:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And Kressa Maive Ina made a few short films about Godzilla being the dad of a trans kid.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen them also adorable.
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are really sweet.
27:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They're really like warm and accepting.
27:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that.
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just little animated shorts about how
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... Godzilla Jr.
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: from the uh... haysair uh... comes out as trans and Godzilla's just like well i don't know how to feel about this so Godzilla's goes online and looks stuff up and how can he be a more accepting dad it's about i'm becoming a more accepting dad to his trans Godzilla's son and these are the only solution yeah so wholesome it's so cute uh...
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They're awesome and in one of the films, she's playing Dungeons and Dragons, but everyone wants to be John Wick.
27:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It might be the greatest thing ever Yeah, look up those shorts those are those are so so sweet a side from the rocky horror picture show Can you think of any other movies TV or books that have actual trans characters that aren't coded?
27:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, if you, if you haven't, what did you think of my list?
27:59
[SPEAKER_01]: When, PSI've been using the name win for ages or changing it officially really was the best decision.
28:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at for you.
28:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, well, well, well, welcome to yourself.
28:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations.
28:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Very very happy for you.
28:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really amazing.
28:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of think of like, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll
28:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it doesn't happen.
28:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It was I'll tell you a character who I recently discovered this isn't obscure or anything I just only finally got around to it.
28:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is it's a comic series called Galaxy the prettiest star.
28:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's wonderful.
28:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, hold on, let me make sure I credit it correctly.
28:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking of DAX, it's created by Jed Zia Axelrod, and Galaxy the pretty star is it's actually in the DC Comics universe and it is about a princess from another planet who is hiding out on Earth and in order to hide her from her interstellar enemies who have conquered her planet, she's been hidden as a boy.
29:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And so she's literally in the wrong body, and it's very, very literal, but it is in a sci-fi fantasy context.
29:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And what I would love about it is that it's technically a superhero comic.
29:28
[SPEAKER_03]: No superhero stuff happens.
29:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It is about, it is about, and something that we've kind of forgotten about and we don't really do much anymore, especially in film, but even in comics less so than I like, the idea of superhero identities as a way, as a metaphor for describing your true self.
29:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And or at least the complexity of yourself, the multi-faceted nature of your personality.
29:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And Galaxy, the pretty star is basically just, no, there's a real me in here and I can't show it to anybody.
30:03
[SPEAKER_03]: It is absolutely beautiful, it's gorgeous, it's illustrated by Jess Taylor, I wanna give credit where credit is due.
30:10
[SPEAKER_03]: There are other books in the series or other collections I haven't gotten to yet, but it's one of my favorite comics, I've read in a very long time.
30:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is just wonderfully written and very, very sweet and very romantic.
30:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And I highly recommend it.
30:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Can I recommend it enough?
30:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to think of trans characters in movies of TV shows that are treated with complete fairness because I grew up in an era where there were a lot of trans people but they were always treated as like the butt of jokes.
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: There were like a lot of trans phobia was going about and I don't want to point to them.
30:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like okay they're non-coded trans people but they're clearly hated by the filmmakers.
30:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Doug Day after an income straight to mind
30:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Chris Randon's character was trans and based on a real trans woman, which is have some sensitivities, especially for the, it was for the era.
31:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a film made in the 1970s and it was actually like really open-minded about that and about how,
31:11
[SPEAKER_01]: this woman needed surgery and needed medical care, and that's the whole impetus for the heist in the first place.
31:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's all surrounding the happiness of this character.
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And the character is not, I mean, they use in sensitive language because it was made in the 70s, but
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't disparage the character or the relationship she's having with the cis man played by Al Pachino So I think that's really great.
31:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Something I learned recently is another film from the 70s Veronica Kurt Rates character from Alien
31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, uh, it was a trans woman.
31:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yep.
31:47
[SPEAKER_01]: She's played by a cis woman, but it wasn't until aliens that they actually like had a file like her file flashed by on the screen.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the Blu-ray era, people are able to freeze frame on that at her file said that she had transitioned.
32:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And it even said at the bottom like very positively something like she transitioned and everything's going fine, like yeah, like she's just really mentally healthy something along those lines.
32:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I reminded of something I recently, you ever hear a song a million times when you realize you never really heard what it was really about.
32:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, uh, the kinks low-level.
32:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a hit song.
32:23
[SPEAKER_03]: In 1970, it charted.
32:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like number nine of the Billboard Hot 100.
32:27
[SPEAKER_03]: That is about, it's about the sister experience, but that is about a sister protagonist meeting a woman at a bar, falling desperately in love with her, finding out she's trans, having a brief moment.
32:46
[SPEAKER_03]: of queer panic.
32:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And then realizing that doesn't matter, he's super into her and that's good thing any's happy.
32:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it is so progressive for 1970 and it was a hit song and it's it's my go to whenever people say Just foolishly and without any actual research.
33:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, this was a brand new thing.
33:10
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a hit song in 1970.
33:12
[SPEAKER_01]: There was very positive about it What do we well, what do we do?
33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a walk on the wild side like that that's some
33:22
[SPEAKER_01]: was a holly come from Miami FLA like plethora eyebrows along the way she shaved her legs then he was a she it's like this this is about like the gender experience in the gender spectrum and the sexuality spectrum and that was a hit song too take a walk on the wild side uh... yeah when was that that was uh... that was seventy-two so uh... seventy-two yeah so it was a happy but yeah yeah yeah
33:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and again, these are all early.
33:46
[SPEAKER_03]: These are all using, you know, terminology and a lot of, uh, portrayed from the sis lens, but.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: It's positive, it's cool, so there was an island in the 90s called Mavian Rose.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, not the Mary's version.
34:04
[SPEAKER_03]: The other one.
34:05
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, the one from the 90s.
34:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, watch any Pedro Almo de Valle, a mode of our movie.
34:10
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of trans characters throughout his work.
34:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It presented in a very positive, very, kind of,
34:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Zesty, uh, vivacious kind of a way.
34:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not all about my mother's one of my favorites.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, all about my mother's.
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, good.
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I'm I'm also trying not to think of films like Boys Don't Cry where the like the whole year, where it's about the violence that the characters about their violence and their personal tragedy.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And well, I think those characters are important.
34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I, I, especially in, uh, Boys Don't Cry Cause Brandon Tino was a real person.
34:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:44
[SPEAKER_01]: the movies tend to be a little bit miserable as like treat their their gender as if like it's some kind of personal tragedy to them so those need to be handled a little bit with a little bit of a gentility.
34:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but I think of others.
35:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure there's plenty.
35:02
[SPEAKER_03]: There aren't enough.
35:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll grant you, but I'm sure there are plenty.
35:06
[SPEAKER_03]: What am I favorite coded ones is just one of the guys?
35:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Who was it a star?
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You think she was a trans man?
35:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's definitely a read, but because that's thing, coded, we're not coming out and saying it.
35:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're seeking it out.
35:25
[SPEAKER_03]: We're seeing if it applies and you could read it as this is just the plot of the movie, but I look at it somewhat differently.
35:34
[SPEAKER_03]: But just one of the guys start Joyce Heiser, who I was always surprised never had a bigger career.
35:40
[SPEAKER_03]: As a teenager who is experiencing a lot of sexism in their high school and so they decide to prove a point by attending another high school Making themselves over as a man a young man teenager and just seeing how differently they are treated and then Of course they fall for a guy and there's a lot of confusion there and I Again, this is eighties.
36:03
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of stuff in there that isn't great, but like I remember watching it at the time and I'm just like
36:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't like fully conscious of the transgender experience I hadn't had a lot of firsthand experience with transgender people yet, but that was one where I was like
36:18
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, I can see, OK, I thought that it seemed positive to me at the time.
36:23
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious if anyone else has seen that more recently and has a very different experience whether or or even the same.
36:29
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a great opportunity though.
36:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I would really, really love our readers.
36:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I know we have a lot of readers from a lot of different gender identities if you would like to share your thoughts on your favorite trans characters, especially non-coded, but coded as well.
36:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we've reached the point in our culture, though, where, while coding can be helpful, we need to reach a point where we don't need that coding anymore.
36:53
[SPEAKER_03]: The characters can just be openly trans.
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And an example for a recent film that I really loved was actually Steven Spielberg's version of West Side Story.
37:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There's the character of any bodies.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Like in the original play, the character of any bodies is a cis tomboy character, like that's how they write the character.
37:27
[SPEAKER_01]: She likes dressing like a boy and hanging out with the boys.
37:30
[SPEAKER_01]: and in Spielberg's version, they actually made anybody's into a trans man that he was, he even had to defend himself.
37:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, hey, why are you hanging out with a girl?
37:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a girl.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And the jets accepted that that anybody's was just, and even the name, anybody's.
37:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like any bodies.
37:53
[SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of an implication of
37:55
[SPEAKER_01]: transness in there as well, and I like that they finally just set it in dialogue that anybody's is trans Because that was kind of the subtext anyways Spielberg just made it explicit and I appreciated that.
38:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I thought of another great character and this It comes a huge press But the Wachowski's and Tom Tickford did a really wonderful series on Netflix called Sensade
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, I haven't seen sense.
38:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'd love it too.
38:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of my favorite, like, works of art of the 21st century.
38:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think it's, it's a, it got, they had to rush the ending because they weren't even going to finish the series at all.
38:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they said, OK, you can come back for a movie.
38:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, oh, we have, like, multiple seasons to get through.
38:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's a bit,
38:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a bit cramped at the end, but it's so beautiful.
38:38
[SPEAKER_03]: There is a awesome hacker activist named Nome, played by trans actress Jamie Clayton, who you might recall as the new pinhead from the most recent L-Rayser movie.
38:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's just a wonderful character.
38:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Just an interesting, funny, sexual, positive, but actually dealing with the actualities and the difficulties of,
39:04
[SPEAKER_03]: being trans in the 21st century and also being part of this psychically linked cluster of eight people living all around the world who have to share each other's experiences and expertise and wisdom in order to survive.
39:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so wild and it's so ahead of it's time.
39:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really really great.
39:21
[SPEAKER_03]: But again, I'm just going to ask everybody if there's especially if there are non-coded trans characters that you love, that you think they're really positive and that you want more people to be introduced to.
39:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Please send us an email or email address is letters at criticallyclame.net.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Whitney, what is our PO box?
39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let's send us to the critically claimed network PO Box 641565 Los Angeles, California, nine double is 64.
39:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and again, we've been sitting in coded characters as well, and any other sort of complicated conversation when I have about that, but Whitney's point is well taken, let's let's meet some some characters and fiction who are not coded and are able to be out and proud.
40:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, that'd be great.
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Our next letter comes from Jaylove.
40:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Jaylove.
40:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Jaylove.
40:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Jens, I was born in the mid-90s, so Devo wasn't a group I listened to growing up, and it wasn't something I discovered outside of Wipit and the SNL skit where Paul Messecals attorney gets a group of men to dress in the Devo hats to try to throw the witness off when she saw them come at the crime.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't seen that, but that's funny.
40:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm serious about that.
40:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what we get.
40:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
40:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So following your discussion of the Devo documentary, I decided to get into the ban through something you discussed.
40:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Devo 2.0.
40:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.
40:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.
40:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that is the worst way to get into Devo.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But okay.
40:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: As we discussed in our review of the Devo documentary, which is just called Devo.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: In the early 2000s, a radio Disney tried to replicate the success of their Abba team group called the A teams by making a Devoteen group.
41:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: what madman at Disney thought this was going to be a good idea to make a divo cover band of all teenagers and put it on radio Disney and they changed all the lyrics they had Mark Mothers Bond Jerry Kassale remix their own music so it is divo music it's just these words singing it
41:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It means it's hard to find like a successful long running rock slash pop act that didn't sing about a lot of stuff that would be inappropriate to have kids sing without doing a lot of rewriting.
41:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Devo is not appropriate for kids to sing.
41:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an incredibly nihilistic group.
41:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They say, well, there's a guy committing murder and being horny and being how the world is falling apart, like they're not an upbeat band.
41:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I would, okay, better make a stand like the Rolling Stones or Arrow Smith, you know.
41:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I don't think Rolling Stones, maybe Arrow Smith.
41:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, if you cherry pick, listen, you know a lot more about Devo than I do.
42:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Apparently I was miss,
42:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I was listening for about the general vibe, but we should move on, we should move on to get to that.
42:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, it says, I was just a bit too old when the Dvo 2.L album was released.
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I just seen School of Rock, which influenced my teenage music tastes.
42:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So with no additional commentary, here's my list of Dvo songs as judged by Dvo 2.0's songs.
42:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it, okay, let's do it.
42:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Number 12 is whip it.
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Number 11 is Jerken back and forth.
42:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Number 10, freedom of choice.
42:32
[SPEAKER_03]: OK.
42:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I need your commentary on these, Whitney, because you know these songs better.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Jurkin back and forth is, with it is unchanged.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Jurkin back and forth has changed a little bit.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Freedom of choice has a bit where, like there's a poem in ancient Rome about a dog offense to bones.
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He turned in circles until he dropped dead.
42:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And they just changed the lyric to until he dropped down.
42:58
[SPEAKER_01]: what?
42:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, and then, and then got back up again because you're never going to kill you.
43:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And and the punch line of freedom of choices, freedom of choices, what you got, freedom from choices, what you want.
43:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And they chain, they let that lyric out.
43:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like freedom of choices, what you've got and they just repeat that over and over again.
43:18
[SPEAKER_01]: They kind of miss the point of the song.
43:20
[SPEAKER_03]: miss the point.
43:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, numbered on its uncontrollable urge, which I mentioned, uncontrollable urge is about being horny.
43:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got an uncontrollable urge.
43:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, is it got down to a little bit of a urge to like play Super Mario?
43:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that what it is?
43:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a point out.
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about having a snack attack.
43:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a snack attack.
43:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to-
43:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's embarrassing, uncontrollable urge isn't embarrassing.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you remember, I'm gonna make this real quick, do you remember there was a PSA in the 90s about some kid who had had too much sugar and it was bouncing off the walls and running around?
43:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And all of a sudden it's like, oh no, she's had a sugar attack.
43:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to give her something healthy to eat to sort of bring her down.
44:02
[SPEAKER_03]: What about some cabbage?
44:03
[SPEAKER_03]: A cabbage?
44:04
[SPEAKER_03]: What about, you know,
44:06
[SPEAKER_03]: These strawberries.
44:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Ah, strawberries.
44:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there must be something she likes.
44:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And someone says, what about a sandwich?
44:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And then she stops and says, yeah.
44:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Sandwich.
44:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And to this day, every time I eat a sandwich, I'm like, I'm eating healthy.
44:22
[SPEAKER_03]: This is good.
44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Sandwich.
44:25
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
44:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Never mind that you just made a sandwich with french fries and fish fingers on it, you know.
44:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to say to it, it's all fake.
44:32
[SPEAKER_03]: If you make a divot in the bread and you crack an egg on there and then you put it in the oven at like 355 or 15 minutes to get a nice
44:40
[SPEAKER_03]: savory treat on top.
44:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that sounds lovely.
44:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
44:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaks around the edge.
44:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Get a nice crisp.
44:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's good.
44:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, number eight is big mess.
44:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I'm a man with a mission, a man with a gun.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: They change too.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a girl on a mission.
44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: A girl having fun.
44:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's it's not about a shooting anymore.
45:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I get a number seven number seven.
45:05
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That one remains.
45:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that's good.
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good song and that one remains largely unchanged if I recall that same with same with through being cool.
45:14
[SPEAKER_01]: That's number six.
45:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the message of through being cool.
45:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It means they're through looking cool.
45:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Number five is cyclops.
45:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and cyclops is actually a Dvo 2.0 original That was yeah, they had they allowed to do a song That I think you mixed it, but I think somebody else wrote this on I have to look up the details on cyclops.
45:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's that's not a Dvo original Dvo 2.0 got one that they could call their own Number four beautiful world
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you know, beautiful world and I said this when we review Devo, they changed the end Because the whole song is it's a beautiful world for you for you and then Mark Brothers boss things at the end But not for me it's a beautiful world for you
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They cut that in the Divo 2.0 version.
46:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a beautiful world for you.
46:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess me too was the change later.
46:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, they just took the teeth out of every Divo song.
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Number three, the winner.
46:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Divo didn't write it.
46:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Divo did write it.
46:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I confirm this.
46:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they did write it.
46:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Divo wrote Cyclops and another original song called the winner.
46:25
[SPEAKER_01]: that's number three is the winner and that's another devotee point of the original number two boy you want is a riff on girl you want and they took away all of the horny references oh you know she that's I forgot what the lyric was the original lyric is drip with an aroma of undefined lust you know and they they don't put that in the maybe it's about
46:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, drips with the aroma of undefined cheetah.
46:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Reds.
46:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, cheetah, there you go, we're good.
46:59
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, that's the fifth.
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And a number one was their cover of Peacaboo.
47:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And Peacaboo is also not altered.
47:05
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
47:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I gave away my devote to point OCD and I regret it now.
47:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I think because it's going to be hard to track that before.
47:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was kind of, maybe I lent it to a friend and they just never returned it.
47:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, the letter says, I'm not listening to a QR Renotman A, we are Devo and I'll give their discography a listen this week.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, go for it.
47:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us know what you think.
47:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Their first couple of records are really great.
47:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me know if you fall off when they put out their album, shout, because that's when everybody abandoned Devon.
47:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody cared anymore after shout.
47:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And best, Jay Love, not that one, either PS, Jordan Love is the QB for the Green Bay Packers.
47:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I did a double take when watching a game and seeing Jay Love listing in the stats, go birds.
47:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause his name is Jay Love.
47:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you very much.
47:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm glad to be here.
47:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm glad Steve 2.0 didn't ruin Devo for you.
47:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's exciting.
47:59
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, that's letter comes from Nolan.
48:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called Quick Gremlins Question.
48:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Dear Bugs and Rock Miser St.
48:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Jewels, that's us.
48:11
[SPEAKER_01]: If Gizmo ate after midnight, would he be a good Gremlin or would he turn into a little bastard?
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Nolan.
48:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's a great question.
48:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I've often wondered this myself.
48:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, uh-huh, that was like a logical endgame for the Gremlin's story because Gizmo acclaimed in want to become a Gremlin.
48:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Gizmo had the option of eating after midnight and did not.
48:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, so Gizmo has no desire.
48:38
[SPEAKER_03]: However, all the other Gremlins were assholes before they evolved into lizard monsters.
48:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
48:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So my theory is that Gismo might have, like, I mean, I guess his entire biology would be, would be different.
48:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he'd have a little bit more, uh, maybe he'd be more of a carnivore now because they have their sharp teeth.
49:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
49:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But, uh, I think Gismo would be a pretty good grandma.
49:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
49:09
[SPEAKER_03]: That's my theory.
49:10
[SPEAKER_03]: He might, he might be a little bit more
49:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Two, it was a two or three.
49:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives a room too.
49:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Who's Rambo too?
49:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so Gizmo watched Rambo first blood part two, which had it just been called second blood.
49:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was like, jackpot, that's me.
49:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So he does want to give an advance, but he wants to commit heroic American violence.
49:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think he'd be a bit of an anti-hero, but I do think Gizmo would be a good grandma.
49:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Thoughts?
49:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Gizmo has taken great pains to never eat after midnight.
49:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Gizmo would rather starve than risk it.
49:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, we don't know anything about the actual anatomy of Gremlins, so we don't know how long they can go without food.
50:03
[SPEAKER_01]: How often do they need to be fed?
50:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they don't.
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The rules work in sort of a story book fairy tale kind of away anyway.
50:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't get them wet because they turn into other creatures.
50:16
[SPEAKER_01]: which means they must smell terrible.
50:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if they shed anything, maybe they don't shed cells, maybe they're just permanent in that state, maybe they don't shed hair, or emit any kind of waste, maybe their bodies are just perfect.
50:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just saying they don't bath, or if they bath, they have to bath and like, I don't know, sprite or something.
50:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just think it's probably, they're probably stinky, stinky guys.
50:40
[SPEAKER_03]: it's possible like if they get something caught in their fur like their fur is actually like wierry and tenye that they can kind of jiggle and like kind of push them up I mean I've had pets who you know bless them we're doing their best and they would just get stuff stuck in in in the in the in the back region and uh... i'm just you know well again you're assuming they poop there's never any
51:08
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm saying that if their if their bodies are biologically perfect they would use every bit of Matter that they can soon That's just that the matter is perfect though, and I think that's another issue entirely because you know the food we eat isn't so pure that there is no waste So I think when they I could remember like remember they ate like Kentucky fried chicken in the original
51:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that'll mess up just because man, that's not that's not good, but it could be their ideal their guts are constructed in such a way that whatever they put into their bodies junk or otherwise they're able to they're they have like Mr. Fusion in their stomachs they're able to convert everything they eat no matter what it is into energy like they could make things that aren't food and still fuel themselves except for water except for water yeah Maybe they are but but but it's different in night though it's different after midnight
52:01
[SPEAKER_03]: so like their whole that that that that perfect biology that you're talking about like shifts to like the mirror universe lower intestine like after midnight it's just all of a sudden like yes give me give me more i will tell you before with the power of indigestion
52:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The fan theory that I've heard before is that it actually has nothing to do with like the actual hour of the day, but it has a lot to do with the position of the planets, like you're furthest in the dark and furthest away from the sun and there's something to do with gravitational fields that affects their biology.
52:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, that's much better.
52:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that that's how it was.
52:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a bold anything.
52:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
52:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if you want scientific BS, then that that works for me.
52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think the whole point really is had a hand-wavery line of dialogue about how that's how it worked.
52:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be fine with that.
52:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the whole point really is that it's a metaphor for having to take care of a pet that has very specific needs.
53:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And you don't even fully understand the rules of that pet.
53:06
[SPEAKER_03]: So of course a teenager in particular or a little kid is going to fuck it up and you're going to have to deal with, you know, in reality you probably have to deal with like diarrhea or trip to the vet, whereas in Gremlins they turned into murder monsters.
53:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, I kind of prefer the murder monsters, but anyway having had pets, we should move on.
53:30
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a fun question though and something I have thought about many times and it was always
53:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and there's plenty of Grimmlin's questions that Portio Dante, I'm sure, has fielded it from all kinds of fans over the years, including us.
53:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, and including characters in his own movies, that bit in Gremlins 2, where the people who are operating the like the TV camera panel, start asking those like questions, like what if a Gremlin eats after midnight, or eats before midnight, but then has a little food stuck in their teeth, and then swallows that bit of food after midnight.
54:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that count as eating after midnight, even though they ate it earlier?
54:08
[SPEAKER_01]: or uh... what if they're on an airplane it's always middite somewhere and it doesn't matter because the guy who asks that is immediately killed by a gremlin like the gremlins themselves don't care about their own rules yes this is why gremlins two is one of the best movies ever made uh... so yeah if you want to if you want to here's the rule if you want to make audiences not care about the rules don't make him care about the movie
54:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We care about the movie.
54:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll think about it a lot and then we'll start asking these questions So maybe your problem was you made gremlins too good And so that's why we ask So if you had a proton pack from Ghostbusters and you fired that like dangerous energy beam at a person and it killed them Would you snatch their ghost out of their body?
54:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I assume yes
54:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, why not?
54:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, yeah, I mean, it's in there, right?
55:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you don't die, and then your ghost is released from like a storage locker in Phoenix.
55:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it's in you, which raises the question, which raises the question, the age old question, if after you die, your ghost wanders around for all of eternity, what was your body?
55:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Like an egg shell?
55:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like it was, it was nothing like this was crap like it was all just to get to the ghost and the ghost is who you really are it's your soul.
55:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
55:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, and if you believe in transmigration, you know, you get body after body after body.
55:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still the same soul.
55:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright.
55:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's fun.
55:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm moving on.
55:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Moving on.
55:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Here is a letter from Drew.
55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Drew.
55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Drew.
55:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It says Dear Bibbs and sexy McMahon beast pronounced rock, my stomach cool.
55:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh god, stop it.
55:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, after, after years as a fan from afar, and in a escapee of the hell mouth known as Baker's Field's California.
56:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no.
56:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I've, what's we taking the task for Baker's Field?
56:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been to Baker's field.
56:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to call it a hell mouth because I'm not from there, but I do pass through Baker's field.
56:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't stop there for too many reasons.
56:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt compelled to finally write in after the attention of my dear hometown received the most received in the most recently, critically acclaimed.
56:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I had to laugh at your take on Baker's field.
56:25
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't a reason.
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I have not lived there in nearly two decades.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: However, I must be, I must be that guy, as I was perplexed when he described Bakersfield as being between LA and Vegas, I believe that blip on the map is actually called Barsto.
56:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm mostly familiar with Barsto, because it is the setting for a made for TV Angie Harman vehicle called Barried in Barsto, think of the longest good night written on ChatGPT, and it's awful, and I love it.
56:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not familiar with buried in bar stow, but I've been to bar stow plenty of times.
56:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I've also been to bar stow, and I'm beginning to wonder if I we just totally fucked up and we're thinking of bar stow.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be, but I've also been to Bakersfield.
57:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been to Bakersfield too.
57:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Wasn't there, wasn't there a cop show called Bakersfield PD once?
57:14
[SPEAKER_01]: There might have been.
57:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Bakersfield is like North of LA.
57:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess if you're taking a certain route you might pass through.
57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Bakers.
57:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you pass through Bakers field like if you're taking the five-up to San Francisco?
57:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we were talking about, we just don't know.
57:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Probably.
57:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I will say this.
57:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Bakers field PD was a real show and I auditioned for that show when I was a kid.
57:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Really?
57:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they were looking for there was some episode of Bakers field PD.
57:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I think 99% sure is Bakers field PD, which begins with or somewhere in there, there's like a kid's talent show.
57:49
[SPEAKER_03]: or something, and shit, maybe it was picket fences.
57:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It was one of those.
57:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's being used with a kid, not a kid.
57:57
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a show in tell.
57:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And they were supposed to be a kid in the script who was like singing opera.
58:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was part of a boy's choir at the time.
58:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And they just said, here's a kid who can sing.
58:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I went in, didn't get it.
58:10
[SPEAKER_03]: But apparently, I finally saw the episode one day.
58:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And the episode was like, the kid's in opera has like a very good Nigel, thank you, sit down.
58:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's great.
58:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Which is a great opening for an episode.
58:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's only shit.
58:23
[SPEAKER_03]: It was only on one season, but anyway.
58:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, the letter continues.
58:27
[SPEAKER_01]: This got me to thinking about the best movie set or filmed in or near hometowns.
58:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Silly isn't may seem knowing that I've walked where the characters have.
58:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Where the characters have.
58:38
[SPEAKER_01]: helps me connect more to the movie even bad ones.
58:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Below is a smallest of films I can genuinely be surprised to learn, have made in or around Baker's field, and the surrounding current county, including some surprising classics like 5VZ Pieces, any which way you can.
58:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey!
58:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Phelma and Louise, North by Northwest, Psycho, and a girl watch Home Alone at night.
59:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I understand this is similar to your discussion about L.A.
59:04
[SPEAKER_01]: based movies, but I would love to hear about other movies you connect more with when you're familiar with or have been where the film is set In closing I've been a fan since the schmodown days and you guys and you have been a weekly presence on my playlists since you have unknowingly been part of the soundtrack to several stages of my life including out of state movies, graduate school, marriage and fatherhood Thank you for the insight laughs and overall good times all the best drew minnesota by way of bakers field
59:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
59:32
[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome.
59:33
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really nice to hear.
59:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm from Pasadena, originally, which is in Los Angeles County, as best known for the Rose Parade, and yet a surprisingly small number of movies seem to be set there and TV shows as well.
59:47
[SPEAKER_03]: The most famous one's probably the Big Bang Theory, which takes place at Caltech, which is the California Technical Institute, Big College that's in LA just
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_03]: South West of passing the city colleges is a very respectable community college But for me the one when I was going up and it was I don't know if it was literally a set of Caltech for it was like Or it's like we just didn't want to deal with forgetting the right so we we all know it's Caltech, but it's not Caltech was real genius with Val Kilmer
1:00:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that's a Caltech movie.
1:00:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That is absolutely one million percent of Caltech movie and if you grew up in Pasadena, you would recognize all of those characters.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You've just solved them around.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, there's nice, you know, you're oh we're at Burger Cards and that's all They're Stephen Hawking, okay cool
1:00:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's probably the big one for me that I associate very very much the Pasadena even though I don't think it's literally set there, but it's set there.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and there's the problem with living in LA is we live in a place where they shoot a lot of movies.
1:00:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So we recognize the streets, but sometimes they're set in New York and they just happen to be shot in.
1:01:00
[SPEAKER_01]: in L.A.
1:01:00
[SPEAKER_01]: or hometown because I was born and raised in Santa Monica, California, a very wealthy white town.
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's its own city.
1:01:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not technically part of Los Angeles.
1:01:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And it has been used as the setting for like, you've seen it movies.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You've probably seen the peer, the Santa Monica peer, and a lot of movies.
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, a lot of movies.
1:01:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, Cellular is set there, but yeah, the problem.
1:01:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They watch this mirror laws.
1:01:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They watch was filmed on the Santa Monica Beach.
1:01:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I remember as a kid going down to the Santa Monica Beach like early in the morning, like 5 a.m.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_01]: and that's when they were shooting a lot of the scenes because there's nobody on the beach yet.
1:01:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It was easier to just go there and shoot.
1:01:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
1:01:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Like right when the sun was coming out.
1:01:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So the problem with a lot of those movies though is they're filmed in Santa Monica, but they're not necessarily set in Santa Monica.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Some movies that do have scenes in Santa Monica that I can think of, get shorty.
1:02:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The Miami scenes were shot in Santa Monica, but they also go to the Arrow Theater, which is on 14th of Montana.
1:02:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Same with Donnie Darko, they go see a movie at the Arrow Theater and it plays itself.
1:02:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, it's, it's definitely the arrow.
1:02:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They go to the arrow.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, could have sworn that was self-pass.
1:02:25
[SPEAKER_03]: OK, there was a lady, certain.
1:02:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Is the South Pass had the Rialto?
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_03]: South Pass.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
1:02:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So maybe I'm mixing it up with another similar.
1:02:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let me look that up, because I, I could be operating at a remiss conception.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_01]: That happens a lot.
1:02:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll tell you another Santa Monica movie, pretty in pink.
1:02:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Several scenes take place in a record store on the promenade.
1:02:44
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's right.
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's on Santa Monica Boulevard.
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, Donnie Darko was was was at the era at the end of the game on a game.
1:02:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's I remember I remember running run But it it is true.
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I use you'll watch a TV show.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I love watching Re runs of the TV show hunter the cop show from the 80s I watched that with my mom when I was a kid and it was great watching them do chase scenes around Santa Monica California because it's like a Placid boring little town.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There aren't cheese
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_01]: like police chases going on in Santa Monica, but they were on hunter and they would shoot a chase scene where the two cars would like wheel around one corner and there'd be a quick edit just from the opposite corner of the same intersection and they just wheel around the other way.
1:03:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, edited together it looks like they're actually going like across town but it's really just the same intersection.
1:03:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I went to I went to college at UCLA and the University of California Los Angeles is frequently the double for every other college.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_03]: If you watch legally blonde that's not Harvard that's I mean there might be a few exteriors that they shot the fake it but the scenes are filmed at UCLA.
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember I was actually in a class in film school at UCLA where they were teaching about like locations and how to like find locations and how to take one location that's technically something else and make it look like something could be a different like oh here's a statue garden but you could set a cocktail party here or some sort of you know whatever and I remember we went to this one tower.
1:04:23
[SPEAKER_03]: that they have at UCLA, and the professor was like, and this is a very famous tower we have here at UCLA, but UCLA never lets anyone film this tower.
1:04:32
[SPEAKER_03]: This tower is always off limits, and I was like, Freddie Krueger threw a guy off that tower in Nightmare in Elm Street 3.
1:04:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And that professor hated me forever.
1:04:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I never want to back it.
1:04:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Never gosh.
1:04:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do like watching movies where even if it's not a place I've been, I can tell they paid attention to the way the streets operate.
1:05:00
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of films that have just really good spatial continuity, and you can tell that the filmmakers wanted to capture a real place authentically.
1:05:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like one of the movies that does this best in recent memory was the town, the
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been to Boston, but I haven't, I don't know the neighborhoods really, really well, but I could tell that Ben Affleck did, like he really wanted to capture certain corners, certain neighborhoods of Boston and really kind of get the vibe and the geography correct.
1:05:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And it really helped that moving, I think.
1:05:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the town.
1:05:36
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I like the town too.
1:05:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been to Boston, but I've never been to me.
1:05:44
[SPEAKER_01]: trouble to ask us though because we're L.A.
1:05:49
[SPEAKER_01]: guys.
1:05:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so many movies that are in and around Los Angeles that it's hard for us.
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say that's that's it's here.
1:05:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, good.
1:05:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Just I'd be interested to hear from people who are from like maybe a smaller town, not even in California.
1:06:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Just anywhere in the world that a film was shot there or was set there and it like,
1:06:08
[SPEAKER_01]: really was able to capture the vibe or the geography of the town accurately.
1:06:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Or they screwed it up entirely and now people have a totally wrong idea of how that town works.
1:06:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I would also be very very.
1:06:18
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're from Fargo right in and let us know.
1:06:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.
1:06:23
[SPEAKER_01]: How accurate is Fargo?
1:06:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, but yeah, to the original point, yeah, I'm pretty sure in my head it's not entirely but on some level I can flated Bakersfield and Barstone.
1:06:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think some of the things I was talking about when we discussed it, I was talking about Bakersfield and I think a couple of them I was thinking about Barstone, which to be fair is near Baker, which is probably how I screw that up.
1:06:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, there you go.
1:06:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because when you're going to, uh, when you're going through from LA to Vegas, you do pass through Baker.
1:06:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the, uh, even in first jerky is.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I, I had the, I, I think I mentioned the jerky thing, but, uh, the actual, it's, yeah, it's not a way of the Vegas, it's not a thing.
1:06:59
[SPEAKER_03]: But everything else, I stand by.
1:07:00
[SPEAKER_03]: We should move on.
1:07:01
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
1:07:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, here's a letter from Sparky.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Sparky.
1:07:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Sparky.
1:07:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Dear Will and Bims.
1:07:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, writing as a fan of your show.
1:07:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you.
1:07:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I was lucky enough to find your podcast shortly after your first episode I enjoyed your show for a while then life hit with a series of trains to the face I lost track of your podcast.
1:07:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I lost track and recently was thinking to myself I would have canceled too soon was still casting
1:07:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Much to my pleasure, the show was still going.
1:07:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, since the last episode I remember was clearly 50-ish, I just started over.
1:07:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in about 8 months, went through 100 episodes, decided I would write a letter at each of the 100 episodes marks.
1:07:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I realized my taste and shows can be a bit odd.
1:07:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I was the odd kid who taped episodes of not only the 100-lies of Black Jack Savage.
1:07:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes!
1:07:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But also of Young Magyver, four, two to the embraced, and brainstorm, just to name a few.
1:07:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I like this really good show, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorms, brainstorm
1:08:13
[SPEAKER_03]: somewhere in my closet in my parents house is a VHS with white dwarf on it and I don't know probably some other some other hunk of crap on there I've no idea yeah because we didn't we didn't like we didn't fuck around
1:08:29
[SPEAKER_03]: with like EP.
1:08:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We use all, you know, the sick, you set your VCR to record a six hour tape because, you know, you want to put, you want to pack as much in as possible.
1:08:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So we always have like the SLP format.
1:08:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'll record in speed.
1:08:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:08:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, he says after white dwarf, I just wanted to say thank you for what you do.
1:08:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a joy to listen to your podcast and it helps me through work on Fridays.
1:08:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad people just sort of idly listen to us at work, but that brings me joy.
1:09:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd make you really really happy, although if anyone sits down after a long day and
1:09:06
[SPEAKER_03]: a leather easy chair with a roaring fire and a glass of brandy and just put on some headphones and listen to us then.
1:09:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, like people say like you should see it in the theater the way it was meant to be seen.
1:09:19
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the way we were meant to be listened to.
1:09:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It was with a snifter of brandy.
1:09:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, in front of a fire place, you should be wearing a smoke and jacket, a pair of slippers on, you can have a cat in your lap if you want that part's optional, and just in a very fancy, easy chair, just listening to our word eagerness as words.
1:09:42
[SPEAKER_01]: those were some pretty genius words just there.
1:09:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:09:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, finally, the letter goes on.
1:09:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I have in my possession, and I'm also suggesting a show, which I think no one else might know exists.
1:09:53
[SPEAKER_01]: If you enjoyed stargate, and it's spin-offs,
1:09:57
[SPEAKER_01]: My parents somehow managed to find the show Stargate colon infinity.
1:10:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good team spin off, taking 30 years in the future involving a Stargate crew being framed, trapped off-world and trying to both clear their name and get home.
1:10:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I would suggest Stargate Infinity as I'm curious as either of you have ever heard of it existing, as everyone else I talked to assumes I made it up until I showed them the DVD.
1:10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your time and your show, Sparky.
1:10:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're listening to a cancel too soon.
1:10:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You haven't done one of those in a second, but it's a project that's closed to our hearts and that we get back to as often as we can.
1:10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll do more at some point in our lives.
1:10:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Certainly, that's the plan.
1:10:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very intensive and a reach to point where we could do it, but only if we watch like very short seasons, like a six episode season, or maybe maybe 12 episodes of it was a half hour show.
1:10:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And as much as I enjoyed doing that,
1:10:53
[SPEAKER_03]: slightly cheating because early on we were able to do so much so many bigger shows and I feel like that was my favorite thing to do but we don't have the time anymore to dedicate to it but answer your question, Sturgeon Infinity I am familiar with Sturgeon Infinity I've never seen it
1:11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I've actually only just recently started watching Stargate SG1.
1:11:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember when it came out on TV in the late 90s, and me, it kind of enjoying the Royal Endemic movie, was pretty stoked about it, and then I watched it, and I was like, wow, this is cheap, and I lost interest very quickly just because I couldn't really take it very seriously.
1:11:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And then earlier this year, maybe late last year,
1:11:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I was talking to renowned acclaimed and much more successful than we are YouTuber, Lady Knight the Brave, who used to write in to the show early in the back of the day.
1:11:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was like, you need to see Stargate SG1.
1:11:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, okay, I guess I'll watch it.
1:11:54
[SPEAKER_03]: She was like, no, no, no, no.
1:11:55
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't just watch it because a lot of it stinks.
1:12:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, it's like next generation, you're gonna cherry pick the first couple of seasons.
1:12:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, there's only so many great episodes, and then there's also a couple of episodes you need to see because they'll be important later, even though they're not good.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you watch the entire thing, you will never get hooked.
1:12:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, that's very, very fair.
1:12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So she has been slowly working me through.
1:12:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we're...
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_03]: We're finally in season two right now, so I, but I will say this, if we do start getting the affinity and it sounds very, very fun, there are 26 episodes of it, so it would be a lot of work.
1:12:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we should try to get her on.
1:12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think she could explain it to us and and God bless her for it because there's a lot of There's so much gd stargate out there For what I understand the stargate TV series.
1:12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a show time show, right at first initially Yes, and then they moved to To the sci-fi channel.
1:13:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it was on the sci-fi channel after that.
1:13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it started on show time and yeah
1:13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I suspect that it was on Showtime for as long as it was, because just because Showtime didn't have anything else.
1:13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we need something.
1:13:17
[SPEAKER_01]: This is our big property.
1:13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to dump all this money and to start again and let it keep on going.
1:13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They were invested inside by fucking seasons.
1:13:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, didn't Showtime have that actually pretty good reboot of outer limits?
1:13:31
[SPEAKER_03]: No, that was on Network TV.
1:13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I think later, it was on wasn't it on initially?
1:13:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me look that up, but I'm pretty sure that was just like a CVS show on the screen.
1:13:43
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it was on show time.
1:13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it?
1:13:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I was originally on show time.
1:13:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It was on show time.
1:13:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It was on show time from 1995 to 2000, and then it was on sci-fi network from 2001 to 2002.
1:13:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So show time to sci-fi network was kind of a pipeline.
1:13:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.
1:14:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, but like I think the earliest season of Stargate they tried to have some more like adult stuff so like the pilot had some nudity in it and now if you get and now if you watch it that all of that's been cut out.
1:14:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And honestly, yeah, that's not the tone of what you do in man, that's no one wants that.
1:14:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I suppose someone might want that, but it didn't do your show any favors.
1:14:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, so when it was like released elsewhere, they just cut all that out, and I don't even think that's officially on home video.
1:14:37
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, so yeah, anyway, Stargate started.
1:14:40
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a whole thing.
1:14:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Stargate.
1:14:41
[SPEAKER_03]: How many shows are there in Stargate?
1:14:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Hang on.
1:14:43
[SPEAKER_01]: There's Stargate Atlantis.
1:14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Stargate ST1.
1:14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Stargate Atlantis.
1:14:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Stargate continuum.
1:15:02
[SPEAKER_03]: story universe that was there was there was there was three try get in front of you so there's a lot there was also a web series called stargate origins and continuum and art of truth were straight to video movies not sure okay didn't it was a movie it was apparently a movie and then again I am just
1:15:21
[SPEAKER_03]: vaguely learning about this.
1:15:22
[SPEAKER_03]: There's 364 episodes.
1:15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Stargate.
1:15:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Stargate.
1:15:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's not even counting the original movie that it's all based on.
1:15:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
1:15:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, but I don't that that takes at the 365.
1:15:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's pretty negligible, but yeah.
1:15:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But Stargate Atlantis lasted a bunch of seasons, too.
1:15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It, like, not as many as the original lasted 10 seasons.
1:15:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And Stargate Atlantis was at least five or six.
1:15:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It was five.
1:15:49
[SPEAKER_03]: They lasted 100 or so.
1:15:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's exactly apparent, like, okay.
1:15:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:15:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And so Stargate universe lasted only two seasons with 40 episodes, but 34 episodes.
1:16:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, boy.
1:16:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Which were like episodes, but you could watch them on your computer.
1:16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: it's totally different, there's a lot of stargates by point, but yeah, no, stargate infinitesis, I will
1:16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I will make note and I will I will ask around with my stargate friend this see if there's maybe something we can do about that but it's kind of a long one just in terms of just duration it would take to watch it so don't hold your breath not because you we won't do it but because people can only hold their breath for like a few minutes at a time and it will definitely take longer than that it will definitely take longer than a few minutes.
1:16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That's hope that's a breathing works like what animation studio did start getting finnity I was just looking it up.
1:16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, indeed.
1:16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah
1:16:56
[SPEAKER_01]: that they do everything.
1:16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they were very very big in my childhood.
1:16:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I watched a lot of deep studios TV shows when I was a child.
1:17:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
1:17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I don't even, because I know they fade and merged and they're not the same thing anymore, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
1:17:20
[SPEAKER_03]: and bless them for it.
1:17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Care bears, Jason the wield warriors, massive.
1:17:26
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the a lot of other shows.
1:17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: They did captain and the game master.
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Dino saucers.
1:17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They did Dino saucers.
1:17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
1:17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: They did cops fighting crime in a future time.
1:17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to love that show.
1:17:38
[SPEAKER_01]: That show kicked ass, man.
1:17:39
[SPEAKER_03]: That's so much way better animation than any right to have on kids TV in the era.
1:17:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there was just no way.
1:17:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember it and this is just my childhood memories and it's like 10 at the time.
1:17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember it being like a little bit more thoughtful than the shows around it.
1:17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure if it wasn't real show.
1:17:56
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no, no.
1:17:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I watched a few episodes like a couple of years ago and like, yeah, it's kitsho, but like for the time it was trying to be more like gargoyles in terms of its sort of ambition.
1:18:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it predates gargoyles, but it was like trying to like have that tone and suppose to the, you know, Inspector Gadgetton.
1:18:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah.
1:18:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Good stuff.
1:18:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And on that note, I think we're going to wrap this sucker up.
1:18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you everybody for listening.
1:18:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for joining us.
1:18:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for writing in, really appreciate it.
1:18:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We had a couple of prompts this episode.
1:18:32
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to write in about any movie shot in your hometown, particularly if your hometown is in the place where a lot of filmmaking is done, we'd love to hear about that, how the movie turned out, and whether it did your town justice.
1:18:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, if anyone wants to reach out, celebrate trans characters in film, television, comics, wherever you find them, especially positive representation, especially not coded, but we're just curious.
1:18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's make this an opportunity to spread the good word and encourage people to support trans characters in fiction and in general.
1:19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's great idea.
1:19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So our email address is letter is at critically claimed.net.
1:19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Whitney, what is our PO box?
1:19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, send us that letter to critically claim network PO box 641565.
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Los Angeles, California, 9 to below 64.
1:19:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
1:19:26
[SPEAKER_03]: As always, we have a huge shout out to our patrons over patreon.com slash critically claim network.
1:19:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a lot of exclusive material over there.
1:19:33
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a weekly newsletter.
1:19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You can get that if you sign up for free.
1:19:38
[SPEAKER_03]: you don't even have to pay anything to get the newsletter, but you do have to sign up.
1:19:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, if you can afford to help out the show, that helps us out the most that actually gives us an opportunity to actually do what we do.
1:19:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And
1:19:51
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, the more support we get on Patreon, the more time we can dedicate to this enterprise and do more canceled too soon and do more of these other shows.
1:20:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So it helps a lot.
1:20:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you can't that'd be awesome, but I know exactly what the economy is like right now and I totally get it.
1:20:07
[SPEAKER_03]: So any support you can give any kind is 100% appreciated.
1:20:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course run social media, I'm Matt willing to be on a
1:20:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm mad, Whitney Sybel, the usual spots.
1:20:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, that's it.
1:20:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you, everybody.
1:20:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Hope you have a great week.
1:20:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Since nearly yours, bibs, and Whitney.