Transcript

THE ODYSSEY · The Spectacle

0:44
I'm gonna say greetings, sea people and people of the sea. Welcome to another riveting episode of The Spectacle, where we talk about movies and sometimes movies talk back, but not today. It's a one-sided conversation today.
1:03
Yeah, yasas, yasas to us all. But before we talk about Odysseus and all his pals, we are just pleased as punch to be on the Channel Zero network of podcasts. So here's an ad for another show they've got on offer.
1:17
Hello and welcome to The Child and Its Enemies, a podcast about queer and neurodivergent kids living out anarchy and youth liberation. Here at The Child and Its Enemies, we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, but to anarchy itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and development and gender onto our necessarily asynchronous and atemporal queer lives, and youth and teens are at the center of this form of oppression. Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for youth that challenges all forms of control And inspires us to create queer, feral, ageless networks of care. I'm your host, MK Zario. I'm 15 years old, and I'm the youth correspondent at the Anarchist Review of Books, author of Debate Me, Bro, and organizer of some all-ages queer spaces in my city and online. If you want to learn more or join us on Discord and Signal, our website is thechildanditsenemies.nelblogs.org.
2:29
When your eyes just go red. Here are my— here are my friends. It's, uh, it's Mackenzie and Tuck. They're here to talk about the Sea People and their many doings.
2:44
What is this, a crossover episode?
2:47
I guess so. No.
2:51
Um, hi. No, I— look, hi, what's up? Mackenzie, I thought you were a co-host at this point, so I was just like really Confused. Are you still a guest?
3:05
I'm best friend of the co-host of the podcast at this point, I think. I think you can give me that designation. And I just want to start this as Travis Scott, just saying, a story, bonk bonk, a movie, bonk bonk, I didn't like it very much, bonk bonk.
3:24
Yeah, what'd you think, Tuck?
3:27
Yeah, I didn't like it. I mean, I have sort of a A series going at this point where I invite a friend to see a movie with me at BAM, and then everyone says it's a good movie and you should see it. And then we see it, and then we walk out and we look at each other and we go, are we sure this is the same movie that everybody else saw? But in this case, unlike all the other movies that this has happened, we know it's not the same movie because everyone saw a different fucking movie shape. And some people got to see it really big. Uh, and you could see the whole screen, whereas I saw it in 35mm, so I could see approximately 1/3 of the frame and had no idea what was going on due to it was cropped to hell. So—
4:09
35? That's half!
4:11
That's half! Half a millimeter. Yeah, I mean, I'm in New York, so we do have some of the screens where you can see it the way it's meant to be seen, in, in air quotes. However, you could obviously only see it if you waited a month and then agreed to see it from 3 to 6 AM, which is just not the way that any movie is meant to be seen. And so I saw it Normal style, and normal style was bad because they cut out most of the movie. Uh, you just couldn't— you just can't see the frame, they cut it out. And I'm like, bro, I just— let me see the movie. Shrink it down and put it in a square in the middle of the screen.
4:45
Letterbox it.
4:46
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, so I know that we're probably gonna mostly talk about like the content of the movie, but One of my main complaints is just that I could only see half of the movie, and yet I had to pay for a full movie.
5:02
No, this is funny about the form. This is impressive before we even get into the content.
5:06
We went to film school. You gotta talk about form.
5:09
Well, I was like, I'll get into that because I wanted to bring this up with with y'all. This is the movie that everyone's like, oh, gotta see it in 70 millimeter, gotta see it in IMAX, gotta like not sense fucking gravity. were people like really hammering on me to get into IMAX, and I was trying to get— I was trying to get everybody to go see it with me. And then Mackenzie, you saw it, and I heard— I saw your Letterboxd, and I was like, oh, it's probably not very good. I'm gonna just get stoned and go to $5 movie day because who gives a fuck? And let me say, I liked it.
5:44
I think that was a better choice if you decided that you really had to see this film in theaters. I saw it in digital, which I believe was actually the whole thing just smushified the way that Tuck would've wanted to see it. And it was, it was a, it was a movie.
6:04
I mean, you could see their hats.
6:05
You could see their hats. You could see the whole boat. It was a full boat production.
6:09
You could see, you could see Aga, my mom's hat that says, hold my hat while I have sex with your wife.
6:18
I regret not seeing it big, even though I heard big was scary. I also heard that people were seeing it in 40x and they were sort of like being waterboarded in real time, which is kind of like, why not? You know, if you're gonna go. That is one of the themes of the movie.
6:30
Not as many bwahs as Nolan is used to, which I wasn't enthusiastic about. Like, I went on $5 movie day. I took an, I took an edible at 2:00 PM cuz I'm unemployed essentially, and Had— I got $5 worth of fun out of this movie, and if you pay $6, you are throwing money down the drain.
6:51
Well, I think that's the thing, is that I not only paid for my ticket, but I also paid for someone else's ticket who said they would pay me back and then changed it to they would buy me concessions and then changed it to they weren't gonna do either of those things. And I was like, well, I didn't care about this movie enough to buy 2 tickets to it, I'll tell you that much.
7:09
If you think about it, you really got the whole Trojan horse experience.
7:18
You got a Trojan horse of a movie ticket would be like I walked in and they leapt out of my tote bag and they were like I'm here now.
7:27
Either way, I'd say that they broke Zeus's law.
7:30
Yeah, and should we talk about that? How did you feel about the movie being mostly about Zeus's law?
7:36
The movie was about like movies about guilt. Yeah, it's about doing a war crime and being like hey maybe we shouldn't have done that war crime, which is kind of just the plot of I like Oppenheimer.
7:46
It's Nolan. It's the Nolan special. He's like agonized winners haunted by their victories. I think that's maybe what Dunkirk was about. I don't know. Wait, they're kind of losing in that one, right?
7:56
They were losing.
7:57
But even in The fucking Dark Knight Rises, it's like, victory has defeated you, Batman.
8:02
Crunch.
8:04
Yeah, crunch. Yeah, he doesn't— I don't know, just a new interpretation of it for a Western canon of just like, oh, I'm sad about all the war crimes I had to do.
8:18
Well, filming it in a contested colonized land.
8:21
Making a movie in, like, in fucking occupied Morocco, the Western Sahara, is like, that clenches it. What do you expect us to do? This is the way the, the world is. By feeling guilty, we are absolved of, of these things. It's kind of the— what I'm gathering from this movie. Uh, that and Odysseus just doesn't have the swag I thought he did.
8:45
Mm-hmm. And do you think that was a problem with the script or a problem with Matt Damon? Genuine question.
8:51
I think, I think Damon can do more than we, than we let him do. But one of the first lines we hear him say is, you know, his, his horse dealer slash enabling girlfriend slash sponsor is like, don't, don't eat so many flowers. And he just says, but I love it. And you're like, oh yeah, it's just Boston guy Matt Damon.
9:11
Yeah.
9:13
He loves those flowers so much.
9:15
What a I love it. Quote from Odysseus.
9:18
Well, and here's an interesting thing is that, you know, like the Odyssey and Odysseus, there's, there's the Greek concept of arete, which is like, you know, like a culture's like most coolest guy basically. Like every culture has like a guy that we think this is the coolest guy. My beautiful Tabitha Foxglove said that like Roadhouse in the '80s, that would have been the arete of the '80s. Like he's just the coolest guy. And like Odysseus was like the coolest guy to the Greeks in like The Odyssey. But like, is this the coolest guy of our time version? Because he just kind of seems like a real not coolest guy.
9:58
He's nothing. He's got no essence. Is he a dumb guy or a clever guy? Is he like a vengeful guy or a smart guy? Like he's— Odysseus is kind of like through line through all the interpretations, even when they were just like, what a prick, can you believe this? Is like a guy who's too clever for his own good. And this guy doesn't have any, he doesn't seem to have a brain.
10:21
Totally. Yeah. I don't have as much of a problem as some people, as someone who doesn't care so much about the Odyssey, with an artist like Christopher Nolan or whoever kind of putting their own spin on it, because I think that is one of the functions of art is to be like, uh, all of us as artists are like telling the same story over and over again via different stories. Right. And so it's like Chris Nolan obviously has his one thing that he is doing that we can identify. And the Odyssey was like one vehicle for doing the Chris Nolan thing, similar to how, you know, we all have themes that we're returning to over and over again. However, I think what Ayo's saying, 2 things here that I agree with. One is like, you have to replace it with something. You can't just be like taking out his existing personality and putting in nothing.
11:09
Mm-hmm.
11:09
And then the other thing is like, again, like I actually think it's interesting to think about Zeus's Law is essentially the Golden Rule. Yeah, I don't mind if the message of a movie is you should treat people better. Like, I actually don't have a problem with that. However, what I do have a problem with is what you were saying, which is like implying that we can do whatever we want as long as we feel tortured about it afterwards, and like go eat 7 years of flower petals and then come back and kill a bunch more people. Like, it's like, yeah, wait, so what, what is the moral here? Like, I don't know. I, I, I, I can see where it could have been a thing where I was like, you know what, he did his own thing with it and it's no problem. Unfortunately, I don't think it really like worked for me on that level either.
11:49
Yeah. What did he, what did he do with it? Like, if you're gonna like have the high-minded idea of like, oh, the Odyssey is told and it like represents something about every single culture, like Odysseus is just exhausted and guilty the whole time. And it's just like, okay, the West is exhausted and thinks like, you know, we're just, we're just gonna go eat Helios's cattle because who, who gives a fuck anymore? Like, It's— and but it wasn't our fault, we had to do it. But like, we— and we feel guilty about it, and like, we want this glorious pity from everyone. Does feel like it kind of reveals something about the West, but I'm also reaching to just find something in this movie besides a dope-ass Cyclops scene, which I did actually really like.
12:35
Well, we can do the thing where we say what is something, or more than one thing, about the movie that you actually did like, and then we can go back. But what is something that you both liked about the movie?
12:45
I really liked Agamemnon's armor. I thought it was cool armor. I liked the big boats that they made, even if they weren't accurate to the time, because I just like that somebody had to make a big boat. Um, I liked— I mean, I'm always going to just be like, I like that John Leguizamo was there, because I always like that he's there. He seems out of place, but I like him.
13:12
He seems really out of place, but he was really good.
13:16
and I think that's beautiful.
13:18
I agree. I thought he did a good job with what he was given. Um, yeah, I liked—
13:25
Although, I don't— I'm like, can I say the same? Like, I think that Zendaya also did an incredible job with, like, the 3 things she was given to do, which is almost nothing. Just kind of, like, look sad, and then also die, and fail the Bechdel test. test.
13:43
Yeah, she sure didn't talk. That's something— rather than say something I liked about it, I'm gonna say something I also hated about it. I didn't—
13:53
That's fine, it's your podcast.
13:54
And it's my podcast. I didn't much care for— like, no disrespect, I really like Zendaya. We love, we love Chani, and I love— I loved her in the drama. Um, doesn't speak to the God of war to me. She doesn't really— she doesn't scream Athena. And also, one of the few things we know in the myth about Athena, about the way she looks, is she has gray eyes. Are contacts that expensive, Chris?
14:25
He's committed to doing everything practically, and that means no contacts.
14:30
Yeah, definitely everything prac— he made such a big deal about like, we're doing a historically accurate one, which I think he just meant We don't wanna have any pagan stuff in there because there's a, there's a Cyclops and there's giants and—
14:43
Interesting.
14:44
It's not, yeah, it's not historically accurate.
14:47
No.
14:48
I, I will say something I did, like, I made a joke about practical, but I think sincerely that when movies throughout time did cool practical effects, they should actually like tell me before. Um, so I will tie it back to The Odyssey, but for example, I watched all the Fast and Furious movies. I don't care about that stuff. Did I put out a book about it? Yeah, that doesn't mean I care about it. But then I read this other amazing book called Welcome to the Family, which is like a huge history of the Fast and Furious franchise. And I learned that the Fast and Furious guys were like inventing all these new stunts that had never been done before. And like when they flip a bus, it was like by an order of magnitude the biggest vehicle that they had— anyone had ever flipped for a movie. And like the stunt worker, like flew his wife and kids out to be there in case he died. Like, it was like so crazy. And I was like, obviously I would respect that scene more if I knew that a guy risked his life to flip the bus, you know? Like, I just thought you did computer. So similarly, I thought like, I read like 10 articles afterwards about all the practical effects that they did in The Odyssey, and I was like, wow, I really would have like actually paid more attention and thought this was a lot cooler if I had known that. Because watching it, I'm just like Like, I don't know, maybe if I was more locked in, I would have known already that he was saying everything was practical. But I, I just wish that I knew to pay attention and that I cared. Um, because it's so distracting when Mackenzie is waving the cutest cat alive. Um, but I mean, like, the, the, the Cyclops was like big puppet in a cave that they like built in a cave. And it's like, damn, I wish I knew that Cyclops was big puppet in cave. That would be so cool.
16:27
I'm really glad you brought this up because one of the notes that I made is like, everyone's just like, you got to see it in 70mm or IMAX, especially for this scene with the giants, because the giants' heads will be cut off and you won't be able to like get the full picture. But it's like, if you know that they're doing forced perspective with like people who are 7 feet tall and people who are a lot shorter, it's really cool.
16:54
Yeah.
16:54
if you care about the craft of movies. Otherwise, it's kind of a really ho-hum scene. And like, all of this garnered around, or like built around, like, go see it in IMAX so you can see this like kind of boring scene. Only if you, you know, like me, love the silver screen and want to see shit like that. Otherwise, you just go to IMAX so you can see a really big picture of Chris Nolan sucking his own dick about— I like, I like, I like movie magic. It's cool and all.
17:25
I, I just also like, yeah, I think similar to what Tuck said earlier, it's hard for me to know what the movie wants me to feel about anything.
17:36
It doesn't seem to know what it wants you to feel or want it or have feeling itself, really.
17:44
Like, I understand like the, the through line through into the third act, which is like the big central second act question, which is why it is in He is home. Like, what's stopping this? Or like, whatever. And the answer is ostensibly, I had PTSD because I did a war crime, and therefore I didn't feel like I deserved or wanted to be seen at my home because I felt bad about it. Okay, what did he learn in this time?
18:11
He learned that Lotus Flower fucking rips.
18:14
But then like, you would think that in the third act he'd be like, I'm going to use a different way other than deceit and murder to finish this story? If, like, deceit and murder is this thing that caused the downfall of all of his fellow warriors.
18:30
The way that they make Calypso—
18:34
Oh, that's what I was gonna say.
18:36
Perfect.
18:37
Oh, yeah.
18:38
Calypso is, like, both his, like, enabler, but, like, gets him off these things. Like, I can't tell if it— like, in the story, it's usually portrayed as, like, oh, I love fucking Odysseus. What a man. What a man. What am I? A good man. I want to keep him here for 7 years, all hopped up on flowers. But it sort of portrays her just like, we got to get you off horse. We're going to Requiem for a Dream you. And do they do that in that movie? I'm thinking of Trainspotting.
19:09
Anyway, you're thinking of Trainspotting.
19:11
We're going to put a baby on the ceiling about for you, Odysseus. And I can't tell what her fucking motivation is or why he's even there for 7 years. Is it all his because he loves it and He's just like, don't, don't do so much heroin, buddy. You gotta get off island time.
19:28
I think the implication is that he— his brain is so wracked with guilt that he basically needs to do like, uh, chemical-assisted forgetting until both his body and brain heal enough that he can handle it.
19:42
Yeah, he's doing ketamine. He's doing ketamine therapy for 7 years because it definitely works.
19:49
Mm-hmm.
19:50
And now he's re— now he's ready. But like, yeah, he would have ne— is the implication he would have never gotten off of it if it was his own thing? Like, it— like, yeah, like Odysseus doesn't seem to have like any agency other than like his— it doesn't even like give us a scene where he is like excep— like making the horse, making like— he's not clever, he's just Fucking nothing. And 7, 7 years is like a long time to do something fun with that. And they didn't even do anything. They didn't even do something bad. It's just nothing.
20:25
You know what was so funny in this one is when he goes to build his raft and it's like 3 sticks and he just lays down on it and drowns. He's just— what? It's like when a pigeon builds a nest. Like, it's like, come on.
20:41
Crazy. Okay. That was a really fun scene.
20:45
Um, but yeah, it's the way that they portray Calypso is like she is absolutely like the person assigned to him because, you know, he's doing like ketamine-assisted therapy and she's like the trip sitter and she's just like, okay, honey, like it's time to think about your feelings. But isn't she the one that sort of trapped him low-key there for 7 years? Like in the, in the story, most— in the most tellings of the story, wasn't it kind of her going hee hee ho ho? I've got you. trap Odysseus.
21:13
Well, yeah, every single telling of this story— well, not every single telling, most of them are implying Odysseus is telling the story. So underlying it all is Odysseus is making himself sound really badass and cool. And the implication is just like, this goddess wanted to fuck me for 7 years, but I had to get home to my wife who I also love so much. But just so you know, I can still fucking pull out there.
21:38
I feel like Charlize Theron is reprising her role in Fast X specifically, where she's arbitrarily both kind of the bad guy, but also now she's familia a little bit, and she doesn't have white lady dreads anymore.
21:50
Yeah, she got rid of the white dreads. She got off the sauce.
21:54
And also, okay, there's a moment— I mean, we're talking more things that annoyed me, and that's most of this movie, but there's a moment where Anne Hathaway's Penelope, is basically like— it's like half a paragraph where she's just like, I wish that I could be a leader, but I can't because of the patriarchy. And that's the whole statement. That's where that entire statement is. And I'm just like, yeah.
22:24
I heard people saying, huh, Chris Nolan finally wrote women well. And I was like, this I gotta see. And turns out— Who said that? Liars. Liars is who said that, because no, he didn't. I think that people wanted— I think that people attached a lot to Cersei that, uh, was very undeserved, um, in my opinion. Like, I think she's just portrayed as this hysterical misandrist who, like, she sees these men and just like, oh, they've murdered and raped and plundered, which, like, blink and you miss it, but But they do show, yeah, these guys are raping and plundering out there in Troy.
23:02
Yeah.
23:02
And elsewhere they're burning villages, ostensibly doing all those things in those places. But like, she turns them into pigs because like, well, they could have done that to me. And she's kind of portrayed as like hysterical for thinking that, for seeing into these men's hearts that they do that stuff. And I feel like every woman in this movie is given some line. Like, the scant women in this movie are given a line or two about patriarchy, but none of them— Penelope probably gets the best of it, but none of them are portrayed as trustworthy. I feel like whether or not he was trying to or not, he just doesn't portray it that way with Helen of Troy or Circe, or I guess there's 3 women. Is there another one I'm missing?
23:52
There's Mia As, uh, also not trustworthy. Yeah, also not trust— but she's Mia Goth, she's never trustworthy.
24:00
No, and well cast, perfectly cast. Yeah, uh, she really has iPhone face, but I kind of enjoyed that about that. Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're completely right. I just like don't even know what more there is to say because like, yeah, Chris Nolan is bad at women, and I'm sure that he on some level thought he slayed this one.
24:24
I read the Emily Wilson translation, so yeah, what else, what else do you want from me? I read a book by a woman who wound up hating my movie.
24:31
Exactly. But yeah, no, I mean, I think some of the dialogue also in general is just like so bad. I'm curious to hear in general what your experiences were like in your respective theaters, because there were some lines of dialogue that were so bad and so corny that like the audience was just laughing, uh, which felt great. Yeah, insanely, a guy laughed when the dog died, and it triggered a bunch of other people laughing. So my theater was just laughing at the dog dying, and I was like, "I'm gonna commit a terrorist attack." But yeah, I'm curious what the vibe was in your theaters. This was like packed opening weekend bam, and so there were a lot of people, and I think there was just sort of contagious hee hee heeing, which I don't mind as long as it's not a movie that I actually care about.
25:20
Likewise. I saw it in a pretty full theater, like maybe the second weekend that it was open, and I do feel like there was like a lot of reactivity to it. Luckily, I don't think anyone laughed when the dog died. Hashtag emotional moment.
25:37
I should— I shed a tear for the dog. That was the only emotional moment, really.
25:41
And, um, I don't know. I was definitely laughing a lot at things I shouldn't have laughed at, just because the movie was such a LaCroix of a plot that I'm like, "What am I even latching onto here anyways?" Like I laughed a lot at all of the faces that Robert Pattinson made. His little like, I have a little stinky mouse that I'm smelling face. That was great. I feel like he was the only person who was just like, "I know what silly movie I'm making, and I'm gonna make it." And I was just like, "Oh yeah." Let's, let's ham this shit up. And I'm having fun with you because you're having fun with this movie, and everyone else is just acting like they fucking are imminently gonna just have the worst day of their life.
26:21
Did anyone like the casting in this movie at all? Because Robert Pattinson's the only one that, that I was just like, yeah, that— yeah, good for him. He, he knocked it out of the park.
26:32
I mean, good for Elliot Page for making a dollar.
26:35
True.
26:36
Yeah, I—
26:36
yeah, I really liked Elliot Page as Sinon.
26:40
I liked Elliot Page coming out of the muck. I think he did a great job coming out of the muck. Um, the whole muck scene was cool. Speaking of practical effects, they really like buried stunt actors in the muck and gave them little straws to breathe out of and had them like actually come out of muck. And I'm like, that's cool. It's cool that they put people under the muck. Um, but yeah, I thought Elliot Page did a good job. Oh, sorry, what were you gonna say?
27:03
I was agreeing. I think he did a really good job. I liked him just caked in dirt and always feeling on like the verge of like vengeance against Odysseus. But like, I also was like, because the character he plays wasn't in the original Odyssey, it was added by Virgil later. And he's like the liar who sold the lie of the Trojan Horse. And there was just like another note that I made of like, Odysseus, one of the most celebrated liars in all of history. Where is all— where is all the sneaks? Where's the cheats and the phonies in this fucking movie? Everyone's just like, Uh, I want— I wanted him to be a— because he doesn't, uh, uh, Elliot Page's character is just like, oh, I didn't know anyone was actually in the horse, and he just dies for no reason.
27:51
Yeah.
27:53
So I— my friend was a producer on an Elliot Page interview that he did about The Odyssey, and the big takeaway was that he just kept saying over and over again, you know, my character just doesn't know they're in the horse. And it's like, yeah, man, he doesn't. Um, but it's to your point, Why not?
28:12
Yeah, good point.
28:16
Yeah, we got it.
28:18
And now he's in hell because he didn't know guys were in the horse.
28:22
Do you think that anyone's kink unlocked when everyone was shitting and pissing in the horse?
28:31
It would be a positive outcome for the movie.
28:33
I think if this movie could evoke some deep animal emotion like that, that would be a huge win for Chris.
28:42
I agree, there's a lot of stuff. Uh, I do want to go back. Speaking of casting, I do think Samantha Morton does a good job with that role, and that is an instance where you can sort of see the practical effects happening. Like, you can sort of see her smushing people's faces in real time, and I did enjoy that. Uh, that whole scene was really the first time that I started watching the movie at all. The first entire hour, my brain was just screaming, why am I here? Why can't I see anything? And her scene was like when I locked in and was like, okay, I'm having a good time actually for this scene. However, uh, I— well, and also I've heard that that was true for many people, as many people without me prompting are like, this was the scene where I locked in. So what I should— what I'm suggesting is that they should have kept to the original and just had them hang out on the island for a year and keep those guys pigs. Because that's like the story, right? Is he like stays and fucks her for a year.
29:35
Yeah. And they're still— and they're just pigs for a while.
29:38
They should just keep them pigs. I, I love pigs.
29:40
They, they should have kept them pigs. They should have kept them their true selves.
29:44
Uh, they're all gonna die anyway. Yeah, go ahead.
29:47
There's like so little emotional weight to the dwindling of his army from like a bunch of guys to no guys.
29:53
Totally.
29:54
Which is why I, I wrote in my Letterboxd interview that the thing that was genuinely at the top of my forefront through most of the movie was that stupid YouTube video of not real Eminem reciting his his time as a 2nd century warlord, which is just the misadventures of Eminem to Real Slim Shady as just being a 2nd century, uh, warlord who slowly just loses more and more troops through misadventures. And I'm like, that had more emotional weight to me than this movie, this beautiful movie where Odysseus is just like, oh fuck, I missed— I guess I just like lost some more guys.
30:28
Yeah, they're really pausing towards him caring about them.
30:32
I feel like they were doing a classic thing where like more kept showing up. Like it'd be like, now we're down to 8 guys. Oh shit, we lost 5 more guys. There's 8 left. You know, it's like, wait, I'm not sure that the math is mathing. Yeah.
30:45
Yeah. Had no, he had one guy, um, whose name escapes me right now, but like the rest of them were just full-on cannon fodder until he's the, he's the last, the last boy. There's no stakes with all of his boys. What was I— I lost my thought. I'm so mad at this movie right now.
31:06
I think my question is, because obviously the 3 of us have critiques of this movie, and obviously it's also this extremely critically acclaimed movie that everyone's like, you got to see this movie. And I'm just wondering where you find it. It's critically acclaimed? Yes, it's got 90-something on Rotten Tomatoes. People love it.
31:27
Wow.
31:27
And like most of the reviews are extremely positive, and I'm just like, where's the disconnect happening here? Because usually at least I can be like— I guess like on the merits of like it is an epic that he obviously like invented new techniques to use a really big camera for.
31:42
Yeah, he put in— he put in his work. There's sweat equity in this movie.
31:47
But he's got the same with Fast and Furious, is like they invented a bunch of new stuff that hadn't been done in cinema before. And I was like, well, if you told that up front, I would respect it. So at least this one, I knew that he had invented how to do the whole thing in IMAX. However, I couldn't see it in IMAX due to— that's not the lifestyle that most of us are living. So that wasn't really relevant to me.
32:08
Fast and the Furious is so aware of what it's doing, though. And Nolan wants to have it every single way. He wants to have like a— he wants to be a brilliant, like, say something about society. He's an auteur and he doesn't— he does immersion well, but he doesn't do anything else well. And he only does immersion well sometimes. Like, did you get— what'd you guys think of the Cyclops scene? Because I— when he bends down and he, you know, chomps on that soldier, Saturn devouring his sonningly, I thought that was cool.
32:38
I'm gonna be honest, it was really dark and I couldn't see anything because it was dark and cropped. So I don't know. Um, did you two have the really loud theater thing? Because people have been saying this is the loudest movie they've ever heard, which I don't even know how that's possible. Like, did they send a message to the theaters that said like, crank it up past the recommended dB? Yeah, like crank it up.
33:01
Make it like a Motorhead concert. Um, that was, that was the thought process.
33:05
It was definitely loud in my theater. Like, I'm pretty sure my watch gave me a, uh, it's too loud notification at least once, which does not happen in a movie theater for aforementioned just equalize the movie reasons.
33:17
It seems like you're— seems like you're in a machinery warehouse. I hope you're wearing earplugs. Is that what watches do now?
33:23
Yeah, they do.
33:24
I just put my loops in, so it felt normal to me, but it's because I was warned, because I was wearing earplugs.
33:29
Yeah, I was just in the shitty AMC around here. That was the thought that I lost of like the question you asked about like the theater experience going out on a matinee and not, not an IMAX. Yeah, it feels very classist that like you gotta see it in IMAX, and I was there, I was there. I was there with the trolls and the guy in front of me. I wish I had a theater full of people doing this. One guy kind of changes the experience of him, of, you know, the Cyclops comes in and he's just like, oh no.
34:00
Uh-oh.
34:01
Like, he had, I think he had 5 scattered over 2 and a half hours. 5 uh-ohs.
34:08
That's awesome.
34:10
It was awesome.
34:11
I'm glad he was having a good time.
34:13
Yeah, yeah, he was, he was invested, and it got me a little invested.
34:16
Maybe he was a Nolan plant.
34:19
Yeah.
34:20
Really, really punch up the audience experience by being some guy who cares about your movie.
34:24
Yeah, me, me and the 7 other people in the theater left even better.
34:28
I mean, this reminds me when I saw I Love Boosters and there was a woman sitting behind me who only— she repeatedly talked but only to say one thing, which is when that huge ball of like bills and responsibilities rolled out, she's like, there's those bills again, and just like would always react to the bills and then had nothing to say about anything else. And I'm like, I wonder how she's experiencing the rest of this completely insane movie.
34:50
Listen, if you like those bills, you'd love Katamari Damacy for the PS2. How would— this is a stupid question because the movie is not a movie that any of you made, but how would you begin to start to make this a script that is more enjoyable?
35:15
That's a really interesting question.
35:17
And put jokes in it.
35:18
Because I feel like there's so much shit in The Odyssey that the fact that they ended up with this, which has, like, so little anything, is just kind of a marvel to me.
35:28
Incredible. Incredible to put so much of a premium on, like, we're doing it historically accurately, Which, like, I still— I've got an opinion on that that I might— that I'll probably get to later. But then not just in the, like, we're gonna do an Odyssey without all the fun stuff of the Odyssey, but we're still gonna have the Cyclops and giants and all the magic bullshit. Only some of the magic. I would give it to Robert Eggers. I wouldn't do it. I would let a guy who cares about, like, I want the birds singing. to be from this era. I want the costuming to be fully right, and but still knows how to fucking have a werewolf, have a Dracula, have a, have a lighthouse keeper just, just jerking it in the middle of a lighthouse. Yeah, Poseidon could reprise his role.
36:23
I was just saying, because we rewatched The Lighthouse recently, and I'm like, there is better mythology in Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse then there's better Greek mythology in Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse than there is in The Odyssey.
36:37
And say that, diva. Absolutely.
36:39
Slay.
36:41
I mean, this is a fun question, is what directors would you like to see do something with The Odyssey? And like, what would be the wildest ones? Like, what would the Baz Luhrmann Odyssey be?
36:52
You know?
36:53
What would the James Schoenbrun Odyssey be? You know? Like, a fun question.
36:57
I would kill everyone to see a Baz Odyssey. I want— give, give Baz the Iliad. He would do something fun with Achilles.
37:07
I just feel like that would also be more to my liking of like Greek mythology, Greek theater. Like, I feel like there'd be a little pizzazz in there. There'd be like some sort of soul, whereas I feel like this movie has absolutely no soul. And I'm just finding that so impressive that you spent like, what, like Like a third of a billion dollars to make something with all these actors, and like 2 of the actors made me feel something sometimes.
37:36
Yeah.
37:36
How did it happen?
37:37
And like, I don't think any of us are saying like, oh, they didn't do the Odyssey right, because the Odyssey's been told. It's like, it's not a story. Homer might not have been a real guy. It was just poems sung over, over, and over again until somebody like wrote them down. It's just the newest interpretation the biggest interpretation that we're all going to take of like the canon of it. And it just sucks. All the other ones have something going on, and there's just like— there's some, there's some big fun set pieces, and that's about it.
38:10
Yeah, I mean, I feel like the pacing was also very strange. There was just, there was just a lot of strange choices being made, but I I think what happens when you make a movie that big, not that I've done it, is that it's almost impossible to not get lost in the sauce because you are making so many decisions on so many levels with so many people. And it is literally an epic and also an epic undertaking. And at some point, you're just like, well, we're making it. Let's see what happens. And I don't know, it seems like it's a miracle that anyone's ever made a big movie that's been good because it's like there's just too many people.
38:50
Well, and did I recall like some interview thing where they're like, they didn't know how they were going to do the inside of the Trojan horse until they're just like, all right, get in, see what happens, get in the horse. And it really shows.
39:06
Yep.
39:06
They're just kind of stacked in that horse and they're like, I guess let's get the dead brother from The Bear in there and just see what happens.
39:14
I think when you like are shooting stuff on location, and you have elaborate costumes, whether they're period appropriate or not, you really like— it feels so immersive that you're like, how could this not be good? I mean, do you remember when, uh, before Cats 2019 came out, they had like teasers for Cats 2019 where all of these beloved artists like, uh, Dame Judi Dench, for example, I remember specifically, were like very genuinely to the camera being like, this is going to be one of the best movies ever And then it was fucking Cats 2019. So I just think sometimes you just don't know when you're in it, and then you're in the editing booth and you go, well, uh-oh, uh-oh, attempts were made.
39:55
We got to get rid of some day one buttholes.
39:57
Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh, a lot of buttholes. Release the bubble cat. Yeah, release him. That does—
40:05
it must be hard to make a movie. I mean, I've never made one. And I try and, you know, I go into a movie and I'm just like, hey, I liked it. Movies are hard to make. I'm glad they tried that out.
40:17
I mean, that's the thing. One of my friends who did really like the movie, after I came out, I was like, what did you like about it? Well, he said he cried 3 times. And I was like, when did you cry? Write them down. But then I was like, wait, so how did you have a good time? And he's like, I like to have fun at the movies. And I was like, oh, we're very different.
40:35
Yeah.
40:37
I also like to have fun at the movies, and I did not have fun in this movie.
40:41
Right. I mean, obviously the ideal is to have fun at the movie, but some people are just capable of going into the movie and having fun at the movie.
40:47
The concept of the movie. Insert movie here.
40:50
I am one of those people. I had fun at the movie, but I was like, what a piece of shit.
40:54
This sucks.
40:56
This is— yeah, it was. And I was having fun. If you want a fun time at the movies, show up and check out— look at your phone for a lot of it.
41:06
Sure.
41:08
I'm so confused as to the actual, the literal versus metaphorical interpretations of the gods and goddesses of this movie.
41:16
Yeah.
41:17
Because they really pushed back and forth between these are metaphorical gods and these are actual gods. And they're like—
41:24
We have a real Cyclops, but not a real god.
41:27
And the real Cyclops, who in The Odyssey speaks and has a name, and they have a conversation and it's a whole thing, but he's kind of semi-feral, but not really in this version. And then Athena, like, arguably the most important goddess in The Odyssey, is kind of just a metaphorical representation of guilt because she's— she was or was not actually Athena. She might just be somebody who got murdered.
41:51
Yeah.
41:51
And then, like, I guess, like, technically, like, Zeus technically punishes them for the cows, but, like, I just don't know where or why Christopher Nolan made those decisions. Like, he really really seems like he was trying really hard to muddy the waters thematically at every single stage. And I think that's a big reason why I didn't connect with it, is because I'm like, who are these characters and what is their relationship to reality?
42:20
It might be unfair to say, but I think it was cowardice. He just didn't want to do— he didn't want to show gods. He didn't want to try and write because he's not good at writing a story, and he would have to— like, even though The Odyssey He's got it there. The script's already written for you. You just gotta zhuzh it up a little bit. You can portray the gods, but I think he would just be like, it would be a little corny to show, you know, Barnacle Beard Poseidon being, being just like, I hate Odysseus. Like, he didn't want to fuck around with something like that, so he just padded out the movie a little bit. Like, it really drags in so many parts, in parts where you could, you know, go up on Olympus And Hermes is just like, Odysseus is having a real hard time, am I right?
43:02
And I think that would've been fun, but I did just watch Hadestown also, and that was a lot more fun.
43:08
Hmm.
43:10
Okay. Speaking of gods, here's my only other complaint. Uh, my, my real complaint is obviously like I could only see half the movie, but here's my personal complaint. Uh, as some people may know that I have an unintentional fixation on the Joan Osborne song, What If God Was on a Bus? Which, that's not the real title. Title, but we all know what song I'm talking about. This whole this whole movie is basically about what if God was on a bus? Like the whole Zeus's law is what if Zeus is on the bus and you treat him mean and you trip him in the aisle? And I just think that they could have had Joan Osborne reprise What If God Was on a Bus for the credits instead of Travis Scott. Sorry to him, and they could have made On a Bus rhyme with Odysseus. And I just don't know why they didn't do this for me.
44:02
This is a billion-dollar idea.
44:04
Thank you. They should be hiring me on to all films. I have a film degree. They should be bringing me in just to say stuff.
44:12
This is really an inspired idea.
44:16
Yeah, so that's when you asked what we would do to fix The Odyssey. It would be mostly that.
44:20
I would cut to the Rerun of the History Channel's History's Mysteries that I watched as a young, lonely autistic child about the Sea Peoples.
44:28
I just listened to a podcast about the Sea People. Well, I was listening to a podcast about the fall of the Bronze Age, and they were like, I think it's a combination of Sea Peoples, earthquakes, and drought. And the Sea Peoples, we think, are basically refugees, like climate refugees and earthquake refugees. And so Mostly it was like an effect of climate, uh, is probably what happened. A bunch of different bad climate stuff happening at once. Um, but what did you learn, Mackenzie, in your— in your History's Mysteries?
44:58
Uh, yeah, basically that. It was just kind of like marauding people that lost a land, and it wasn't exactly like a very— and it was just like, you know, it's a series of things that cause any civilization to collapse, and it was fine. It wasn't just the lack of polite decorum caused the The collapse of Western empire.
45:16
Yeah, I wasn't able to go to my friend's house and they would give me a dinner and then I would give them a better dinner and our Age of Bronze has finally collapsed.
45:25
Yeah, can we talk about the end? Because nothing was funnier to me in the whole movie than at the end when, uh, Anne Hathaway goes, tell me, why will they tell our story in song? And then Matt Damon like barrels the camera and is like, because the kids are on TikTok too much these days. Like, it's like, what? The fuck is happening now? Like what? It's not that the rest of the dialogue was good, but like what? And that's not even in the Odyssey, right? They just kind of added that whole part on where they float into the West.
45:56
Yeah, they just did the end of the Lord of the Rings.
45:58
Yeah, they did do the end of Lord of the Rings. That's why it was familiar. I was like, why does it seem like I've seen this before? It's literally the end of Lord of the Rings. But why did she ask that? Are you ever on a boat and you ask people why will they tell our stories in song? That's just not something that I'm often doing on a boat.
46:11
You're not on a boat as much as me, and I'm asking that four or five. times a week.
46:15
That's true. I've gone about that much.
46:17
You got to know your knots. You got to know port and stern. You got to ask about—
46:21
One's that way, one's this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, up until that scene, I was just like, okay, I think there's a lot of, like, you know, there's a lot of psychology going on in the— like, obviously, like, he's trying to tell— he's processing some stuff about being, like, I assume, kind of a progressive guy who's, like, complicit in the guilt of like movies sucking now and also just America kind of ruining the, ruining the world. Um, but then it's sort of made it pretty explicit, like, ah, how will they tell our story? Are we gonna leave a good tale or whatever?
46:55
Like, they—
46:56
I didn't— he was obviously thinking about shit like that and it was just like, ugh.
47:00
But his answer is like, whatever, whatever I said about TikTok, his answer is like, because they're gonna forget how to read. Like, I'm pretty sure he actually does say that. And so it's like not even just Like, how will they tell our story? Will we be good or bad guys? They'll be like, how will they tell our story? Well, that's a great question. Everyone's gonna forget how to read due to the collapse of the Bronze Age. And it's like, what? Why do you know that? Like, what's going on?
47:23
He didn't— yeah, he could have gotten a vision if he put some fucking gods in there. Calypso was a god. What's the— wait, what's the fuck? What the fuck? He does have a god in there.
47:32
But in this one, she's a therapist. You have to remember that.
47:34
Now she's just an island therapist.
47:36
Well, and it's Like, there's a real, there's a real giant. There's a real whirlpool. There's real sirens.
47:45
I mean, I think the art— the argument is that this is Odysseus's telling, and so he could be really talking all this up. But the problem is that, as you both said earlier, he has no reason to talk all this up because his character isn't a guy who talks things up.
48:01
Like, yeah, he's, he's not a fabulizer, which is unfortunate.
48:05
That's one of I would say the only like sort of thing where he sort of lies is like, I guess when he's in disguise at the end and also, um, when he has Elliot Page murdered.
48:19
Oh yeah, he goes to hell too.
48:23
Yeah.
48:23
What's he doing? What's he doing in hell talking to people who are telling him just like, you gotta, you gotta go home and you gotta lie right away. You gotta lie to everybody right away.
48:32
Yeah.
48:32
Yeah, it's just a real thematic mess of a movie. And I think that's the one thing that I think is scrambling my brain about it more than anything, because it's like, how did you have all this time to make this movie and this is, this is what you want to say?
48:48
It's—
48:49
I don't— yeah, there's so many different thoughts and they all contradict each other and none of them are like complete thoughts. And I mean, this did— like, I think a lot of people are like responding well to this movie just because it's like the big blockbuster and everyone loves a big blockbuster, and I don't blame them.
49:08
And also people are like, this is an anti-war movie.
49:11
Yeah. And I'm like, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Superman was against— was, uh, pro-Palestinian. Um, but like, and you know me, I have the correct opinion about every movie when it comes to the culture, or when a bad guy comes on the screen, I shoot my television. But how am I supposed to go to the movies and how am I supposed to tell my 47-year-old son, Pelagiusax, how am I supposed to explain to him that Helen of Troy is Black? And that was like, I don't know, I feel like that was kind of like a lot of people were just like, oh, you got to see this movie because it was like 2016 again. It's a multiracial cast. And you gotta go, like, I've, like, I think that it's like media is way more nefarious than everyone puts it, like, gives it credit for. Like, I don't like the, like, culture war bullshit of, like, the weird lib or conservative brushes. But if you guys don't mind, I'll do a little culture war here.
50:17
Go for it.
50:20
Because a lot of conservatives seem pissed that, that it was like a multiracial cast, like it's historically inaccurate or something, which is the most brain-dead thing around, because it would be more historically inaccurate to have white people there. We should get the fucking honkies out of this fucking movie. Everyone should be swarthy at best. Like, what's his name? Stavros Halkias has a, has a joke that I'm gonna steal where like, Greeks are Greeks are basically Arabs. Like, white people wanted to steal it, steal Greek culture, and like integrate it into the Western world because they want ancient Greece on their resume. It's just stat padding for like, we want the Olympics, we want democracy, we want philosophy. Like, like, Greece had more interplay with Africa than it did with the Celts or whatever, and a lot of people are really invested in grooming the West's image It's such stat-padding, antisocial loser shit. It flattens and erases real cultures. Greece now is just kind of the borderlands of Fortress Europe. It's treated quite badly by the EU. It's very openly the worst state in the EU by their own admission, financially fucked over big time, yet are still kind of vying more and more for the benefits of Westernness. Greek history and myth is very important to the West's idea of itself. Western interests are still, mostly Israel, are out there buying up land all over Greece and the neighboring areas, notably Exarchia, to try and gentrify the more ungovernable regions of Athens. Israel just signed a $4 billion defense contract with them. And after Lebanon, They will probably be going after Turkey and trying to reenact the Trojan War. It's all an active project, and this myth-making and attempts to claim these shared stories and history in the name of people who look like Matt Damon is very important to that project. So if this is the new canon for the Odyssey, I'm at least glad that they made most of the cast look like they would have in Thrace and the Outer Levant. want way back when, and they didn't help this white supremacist historical revisionist project along.
52:44
I was looking at Letterboxd reviews to be like, what are people saying about this movie other than do not ever under any circumstances travel anywhere with Matt Damon? Um, and it's funny because like there's this review that's like 39,000 likes that's just like, here is like a 25-paragraph essay about how much I hated this movie. And then there's like right above that one with 40,000 likes that is like, I am at a major loss for words. Several times I felt my body having a physical reaction to the pure filmmaking magic. My eyes watered, my body began shaking. I could feel an overwhelming visceral reaction consume me as the composer's poetic composition flowed through my being. Christopher Nolan, thank you for making this film. And I'm just like, okay, so the audience is seeming split because we're getting—
53:30
Quite split.
53:30
We're getting sort of 50/50 on This sucked, and I had an orgasm in the chair.
53:36
Yeah, we're getting Amish people. A lot of Amish people on Rumspringa went to see their first movie.
53:43
I think people just have to watch more movies, and then I feel like on balance it'd be like it was a spectacle.
53:50
I mean, I will say like yeah, there it is. Sorry, I walked all over you naming the podcast.
53:56
Um, I.
53:59
I think about like you know when you're in a an airport and you look at the books they're selling and they're bad mostly, and then there's like one good one and you're kind of like how did that get in there? I think just like a lot of the most popular books are airport-ass books, like they're dog shit to read, and then every once in a while a good one sneaks in. And similarly, like a lot of blockbusters are dog shit, and then every once in a while a good one sneaks in. But like that doesn't mean. that, uh, people are generally, uh, having taste. Not to say that I have taste, but I know that some people out there have taste, and it's not the majority of people.
54:34
No.
54:36
So I don't know.
54:38
I am thinking, like, because this, like, this is a sort of, um, the way people were treating it was sort of like an elevated blockbuster just because The Odyssey is like part of the classics, one of the OG classics.
54:52
They weren't reciting the poem The Odyssey, you know, like dialogue. So it's not heightened in that way. They're just in an olden place. There's plenty of movies there. Yeah.
55:04
What, what of the, like, because I don't know, I did really want to— I like, I took the edible because I knew, because I wanted to turn off my brain for this movie. I knew I wasn't gonna be like, I like the— like, I'm not I'm not, you know, a scholar by any means, but I really like Greek myth and I like Greek culture, and I wanted to go into it like just scraping the walls for any little bit I could get out of it and just having a good time. And I got enough, but I got mostly a blockbuster. Like, has there ever been like a summer blockbuster type film that I've never seen a movie, so it's really hard to know.
55:52
Mackenzie, you've seen a movie.
55:53
I've seen— I've been known to see movies, and like, there's certainly like blockbusters that are fun, that have like, you know, they're, they're tonally consistent. Um, I, I don't know. What's the last blockbuster that I saw in theaters that I really liked? What is a movie? You know, I'm, I'm back with Tucker.
56:16
For a dollar, uh, the, the, The Dark Knight Rises.
56:22
Oh, it was a— that was a bad, bad movie.
56:25
Yeah. Wait, was that the one with, with, uh, with Mr. Jokes? With the jester?
56:31
Yes.
56:32
Oh, I like that movie.
56:34
No, I like The Dark Knight Rises also.
56:37
I was just, uh, No, that's just The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight Rises is the third one. Yeah.
56:42
Oh, that was a bad movie.
56:45
The Joker's not in that one.
56:46
Oh, is that the Bane one?
56:48
Yeah, that's the Bane one that ends with him saying, what's your middle name? It's Robin.
56:54
Awesome. Yeah, really good. Really cool.
56:57
Great one, Chris.
57:00
Uh, does, does the, does the Naked Gun remake 2025 count as a blockbuster? Because that was a fun movie.
57:06
That movie fucking kicked ass.
57:07
I love that movie. Um, sure. I don't know. There's movies.
57:13
Dune.
57:14
Dune.
57:15
Dune is there.
57:16
You guys want to come over to my house before, before Dune 3 comes, comes out and fucking back to back Dune 1 and 2?
57:24
Hell yeah.
57:24
It's gonna be 6 hours.
57:25
Oh, um, I don't know, like 28 Years Later, that was a blockbuster. I thought it had a lot to say. I thought it had themes. I cried. And that is a 3rd movie in a horror franchise, and it was great. I was terrified of Teletubbies, and like, so it's possible.
57:46
Tune in in a couple— in, in some amount of time, we're gonna have a bunch of death duelists on to talk about 28 Years Later and, uh, The Moon Temple.
57:58
My answer is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem came out in August, and so I'm defining it Summer, and the budget was $70 million, which I guess is not really a blockbuster. How much did it make?
58:10
I—
58:10
don't ask me, probably not a lot, but I'm counting it because I don't know what else my answer is gonna be. Um, no, it made $182 million. Okay, that's my answer.
58:18
All right, the teen— the, the turtles stay winning. Why do you think they wear masks?
58:23
Oh, so no one can tell who they are.
58:25
Mm, asked and answered.
58:28
That makes sense.
58:29
Yeah, I should know.
58:32
Oh, Final Destination's Bloodlines. I think that was a blockbuster. That was a hoot. I love that movie. They had a lot of fun with it.
58:39
Yeah, Final Destination's girly. I should get on that.
58:44
Yeah, I'll give you a StackRank list, but I don't know. That's a movie. It was The Odyssey, for those who didn't catch it the whole time we were talking about No.
58:57
So yeah, this, this podcast is about The Odyssey.
58:59
A better time.
59:00
Oh yeah. Who would you ca— who would you cast besides John? Robert Pattinson would've been fun as Odysseus. As Odysseus. Yeah. He's a great liar.
59:10
He's a little trickster.
59:11
Yeah.
59:12
I want it. I want a lying, rude little trickster. Yeah.
59:18
It's tricky. I mean, it's coming back to, for a dollar, name a movie. Like, I'm like, I can't think of a single actor, but But yeah, I wouldn't— I definitely wouldn't put Matt in sort of a classic Odysseus role. But who would I? Who's a guy out there? Well, have y'all seen, um, Brother, Where Art Thou?
59:35
Yeah.
59:37
Yeah. I haven't, but I've heard that it's way better. And also The Odyssey.
59:42
So it is both of those things.
59:43
So in a political vacuum, would you put George Clooney in that role?
59:47
He seems like a trickster Honestly, yes, because he is Odysseus functionally in that movie.
59:53
Yeah. Does he do a good job?
59:54
Yeah, because he's just— he is a trickster trick. And like, he's like— he has charisma. And like, he fucks up, but he owns it in a way that's not like, I don't know, the wettest of paper towels.
1:00:08
Yeah, he fucks up and he gets himself out of it. I do think it was like— because I I do like— I like Matt Damon a lot as just a guy. I love, I love his, uh, I love his audiobook reading of A People's History of the United States. Whenever I like need, need a good cry, I will watch Good Will Hunting.
1:00:26
Mm-hmm.
1:00:27
Um, so he can like play these roles. He can play like emotional. I do think it was a writing problem in this, in this movie, but he's also a Boston guy. He's not right for the role. No one was right for any of the roles in this movie, pretty Um, the, the other notes I had— what do we got? Uh, Agamemnon is kind of Darth Vader. Not feeling that. Um, how is there any food left on Ithaca?
1:00:54
No, that's just— that was a great question.
1:00:56
I was just wondering that. That's just kind of a note for Homer, I guess.
1:00:59
Um, he's still alive. I have some thoughts for him.
1:01:06
Yeah.
1:01:07
No, how did they make it on the beach that long? Makes no sense.
1:01:11
sense.
1:01:11
Okay. Well, in conclusion, Odyssey in theaters now, everybody. Go get it while you can.
1:01:18
Run, don't walk to go see Chrissy Knowles' The Odyssey. It's the sound of the summer, everybody. Have you guys seen or read anything that you like better than The Odyssey recently you want to recommend to the folks?
1:01:36
Most things that I've seen or read are better than The Odyssey. I am gonna do a book that I ended up reading because of Tuck Woodstock's wonderful podcast Gender Reveal. I read, uh, Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, which is—
1:01:52
Mm.
1:01:53
A beautiful, really, really, really sad Colombian queer book about somebody who refuses the call to transition functionally. And how it places a literal curse on him and his entire family for generations. And I finished that book not feeling good about anything because it ends really sad, but I kept thinking about it for weeks afterwards, and I don't normally feel that way about books.
1:02:22
Yeah, completely could not be further away from The Odyssey. I just read this book called The Sexuality of Catechumene. MKUltra. And I'm sure they've never heard that once. And, um, it's a book by a, uh, South Asian nurse who— it also— it's about nursing, it's about kink, it's about violence, it's about consent. It's also about like a future where there's no hospitals. Like, what will it look like if we could abolish hospital? What would that look like? It is a lot of memoir from their time working as an ICU nurse, and it's really, really, really good. And I learned so much from it. And we actually just spoke with that person, MKUltra, uh, for the Gender Reveal podcast. So that will be out in a couple weeks, and I'm really excited. They're so fun. And then if you don't want to read a book about nursing and kink and abolishing hospitals, you can read Welcome to the Family, the book about Fast and Furious that I keep recommending. Because if you're listening to this, you're a sicko who liked the movies. And I was sent this 400-page history of the Fast and Furious franchise, and I said there's no way I'm reading all that. And then I did read all of it because it was— can't stress enough, I don't care about those movies, but the book was really good. Made me care about the movies.
1:03:35
But you should— made you care about the movie finally.
1:03:38
Finally.
1:03:39
After— I would recommend Two Trans, Two Furious.
1:03:42
Thank you.
1:03:43
Um, a great, a great book. Great, a great time with the movies.
1:03:47
And can I recommend Sex Change in the City, a book that we need to sell more of?
1:03:51
Yeah, please. Yeah, go buy that. It's good. It's good. I I like the bits I've— I haven't watched Sex and the City, so I haven't read all of it because I don't know what anyone's talking about, but everyone is a good writer in it, so it's worth a peek.
1:04:06
Yeah. And coming up, Dune.
1:04:10
Coming up, Dune. Look out for all of my nom de plumes because I'm going to write 1,000 essays for that thing.
1:04:19
It was worm erotica, I assume.
1:04:21
Yeah. I wrote my first ever erotica that'll probably be in that thing.
1:04:25
Hell yeah.
1:04:26
I would, I would recommend Circe and Song of Achilles. If you like Greek myth, um, it's really breezy. Like the, the, the elevator pitch is Song of Achilles is like a gay retelling of the Iliad and Circe is like, not really, but close enough to like a feminist retelling of the Odyssey. It's way more than that. It's way better than I just made it sound. They're really good. I read them both on like beaches and on trains. It really hooks you. It's like, not if you're like, if you haven't read, I get, I get into ruts every so often of like, I'm just too busy to like read my little books. And these ones like got me back into just like, like a book every 2 months at the very least type, type of a clip. Very good and related to this thing. And, um, A Bullet for the General. Me and Vicki just watched that movie. Klaas Kinski's crazy. A quirked-up white boy inserts himself in the Mexican Revolution. It's great.
1:05:27
Great.
1:05:29
Yeah. And go listen to Gender Reveal.
1:05:32
Thank you.
1:05:33
Go listen to Gender Reveal. It's a good podcast.
1:05:34
Kenzie's on there all the time. If you like Kenzie, you'll love the Gender Reveal podcast. Yeah, it's so true. And IO has an iconic episode where we, uh, an IO- iconic episode, an IO- iconic episode, uh, where we share the definitive history of PK Yeah, it's Be Gay, Do Crime Origins. Be Gay, Do Crime Origins.
1:05:55
Yeah.
1:05:56
Yep. All right, thanks for having me.
1:05:58
Oh, thank you so much for joining. This was a really fun episode. Mackenzie, do you want to take us out?
1:06:04
Yeah, this has been another beautiful piece of content on The Spectacle, and if you're still here, we hope you're still queer. Great.