Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Neverending Story with Jana Schmieding

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Neverending Story with Jana Schmieding · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the bell cast, the questions asked if movies have
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in best start
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: changing it with the beck del cast written on the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: pages is the answer to the never ending podcast? That's
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of them. That's some of ours. I mean
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: episodes that never end, and then the podcast itself never ending.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'd be lying if a few different titles didn't come
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to name when you said the never ending podcast. And
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: there's care to share, No, of course, not okay, but
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: um but I that was beautiful singing. I kind of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: miss and I really enjoy when a movie starts with
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a whole entire song playing and you just know who
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: everyone's name is. For some reason, that's very satisfying. I
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm being like lowered into a warm baths. Well.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: This was also the era when there would be a
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: like three or four minute credit sequence where it's just
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the credits and maybe some like vague images from the world,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: but really just people's names on the screen, like the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: first Tim Burton Batman movie, similar vibe, it's just the
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: bat signal and four minutes of credits and music, and
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: you're like yes, for some reason, I think maybe I'm
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: just like my either my brain is just slowly shrinking,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, wow, less stimulation. That was awesome. I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: loved that. You're good. I'm so excited for today's episode.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bactel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: my name is Caitlin Darante, and this is our show
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the back test simply as a jumping off point to
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: initiate a larger conversation. Sure, as, Jamie, what is the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Bechtel Test. Well, it's a media metric created by queer
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: cartoonist Alice and Bechdel, originally in her comic Dikes to
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Watch Out For started kind of as a one off bit,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: but has since become a commonly accepted media metric. Sometimes
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it's called the Bechtel Wallace Test. A lot of versions
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of the test. Oh, I'm like kind of feeling good
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: about how this ended. Sky, You're on a roll, Jamie.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: A lot of versions of how this test go. Here's
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the one we use. We require that there are two
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: each other about something other than a man for two
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: lines of impactful dialogue. What does impactful mean? Well, like
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: it just open to interpretation, not nothing, you know. And
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: today we got a bit of a hit scratcher today. Um,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: but we have an incredible movie, incredible returning guests, and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I'm very excited to get started. Yes, we are covering
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the never ending story with our guests. Who is a
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: writer and performer. You know her from Rutherford Falls and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: more famously our episode on the Vitch. It's Janish meeting.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back. Thank you, thank you. I love
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: this podcast and I am so delighted an honor to
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: be a guest again. Oh my godness, We're so honored
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to have you back, especially for one of my childhood hits. Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Quite honestly, I'm so excited to hear you. What what
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: what's your like history and experience with this movie? Um, deep,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: it's deep history. I grew up. I was born in
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: eighty one, so I grew up in the eighties with
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you know, I think I might start a podcast about
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: this because I am so fascinating. I'm still fascinated by
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: how maccobb and and dark and like sci fi fantasy ish.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: The eighties were in terms of cinema, like especially for kids,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: like for children's content, trusting that kids can deal with
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: serious content and and grand grandiose content like high concept
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: stuff high concept like and like the practical effects of
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the eighties like I mean so like I was born
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and raised in that era of just like throwing all
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: kinds of insane shit at kids, And this was one
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: of my favorites. It was sort of like always in
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the Library, along with Willow and The Last Unicorn and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you know, Legend and other weird, freaky things from the era.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I was getting pretty strong Labyrinth vibes as well as
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Princess Bride upon Rewatching This God. That is a lot
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: of weird eighties kids movies. I I feel cheated, Oh,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: as a child of the nineties, you mean, yeah, I
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: just got a bunch of really loud cartoons. Not that
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: I do, but but I do love a really loud cartoon.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I do feel like the nineties sort of switched in
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: terms of like children's media. I feel like it made
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a hard turn into like why a social drama. Like
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it just it wasn't as like fantastical
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: as the eighties were. And I'm so interested. This is
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: why I need to do a podcast about this, because
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I'm so interested in why it was this way, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: it has to have something to do with you know,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Reagan era politics and you know the space wars and
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: you know all of that. What is it called not
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Cold war? The same thing. But also I feel like
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: there was probably some space wars happening. There's like Sputnik,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: there was certainly star wars happening, spaces space space right,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: space wars. I kind of fem wondering. I'm like, I
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: wonder when that's going to come back around too, because
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that does seem like the sort of thing that will
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: come back around if it hasn't already. And I just, um,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: don't know any children right same? Um so so, Janna,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: you just this is one of the movies. It was
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: just like in your rotation as a child, Yes, watched
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: it once a month probably Jamie, what about you? What's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: your history? I had nothing. I knew the song, I
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: knew the kind of the basics of like it was
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: like a fantastical eighties kids movie. But I didn't grow
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: up with this one. Um. I don't know why, Like
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I lived in a sci fi avoidant house. I resent
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that UM and and have had to like sort of
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: do the sci fi um work on my own as
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: an adult. But yeah, I I just never came into
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: contact with this one. And you know, normally it takes
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a couple of hours to prepare for a Bucktlecast episode,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: but it took up like an entire day because I
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: watched it two times and then I wanted to know
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: about the writer, and the writer had this like kind
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of really beautiful and inspiring marriage that was making me cry,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and I just like really went to another UM. I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: went to Yeah, yeah, in a way I did, Caitlin,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: in a way I did beautiful. But I just had
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: like the best time. UM. I journaled about it. It
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: was like a whole thing. I'm so excited to talk
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: about this movie. It really affected me. I'm a new
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: but enthusiastic convert. Caitlin, what about you. I did see
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: this movie as a child, but it wasn't in my rotation. Really.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I think I saw it like probably once or twice
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: as a kid, but if I'm remembering correctly, Falcore freaked
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: me out. I could not I do see that, and
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I was reminded of this when I was rewatching it
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to prep for this episode, and I was once again
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: freaked out by Falcore. So freaky. If it's not Falcore,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it's the rock Bighter. If it's not the rock Bighter,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it's the bad guy. If it's the Oracle who shoots
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: lasers out of her tips, like this movie is terrifying.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: It is. I think it would have been the bad
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: guy for me if I was a kid. Falcor though
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it sort of like I had a moment where I'm like,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: they don't make him like this anymore, and maybe that's
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: for the best, where like they where a tray is
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: like really getting in there scratching falcoor and Falcor is
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: making these kind of like he's making he's enjoying it
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: too much, and it just kind of goes on for
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: a little while. And then later when he gets like
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that like shot, that huge shot or whatever, I'm like, yeah,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: and there's like a cracking noise. I was like, oh,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Falcore is in it. Yeah. I don't know, but I
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: did love Falcore, but he was a little too into
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the scratches. Not my best agree, And I also did
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: not enjoy that they basically made no effort to have
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: his mouth movements match up with his dialogue, very like
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: opening and closing of his mouth, and but he's like
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: speaking in full complex sentences. And I was also like,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I don't like this. I was kind of very charmed
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: by that. That's like there's like a needlessly detailed piece
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: about that somewhere because I used to be I feel
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: like I've talked about it on the show before. I
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: feel like, like animal mouths and how they move in
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: like practical effects or CG stuff has has such because
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it's like foul core, there's no sync, and that doesn't
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: scare me. In the nineties, it kind of changes and
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: there's like an era where it's like real looking animals
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that never blink, but their mouths are going like ma,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and that really scared me. I remember telling my uncle
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I needed to leave a screening of cats and Dogs.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: He's just gonna say, I was like freaking me out.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I was so disturbed by that overly active mouth I felt.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And now you have CG mouths that are kind of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: like people mouths, and that's also kind of like this movie.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It's no one's quite gotten the whole mouth think correct.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: No one can figure it out or then you have
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: like the live action remake of The Lion King, where
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you have these like photo realistic animals who are just
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: also kind of like flapping their mouths open and closed
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and just no one. The only talking animal in a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: movie that looks awesome is Paddington. So and even then, sorry, Caitlin,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: not always like now there sometimes, especially when he's wet.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So I feel like I'm like being on I'm just
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: being honest with you. I don't like how Paddington when
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: he's wet. I choose the best animal. I choose t
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Rex from Jurassic Park. T Rex isn't speaking, and and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it's that's how it should be. Yeah, he's he's roaring
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and it matches up and it looks good. Excuse me,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: don't you mean she is roaring? Clever girl? Okay, you're
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: afraid of Falcore. And that's your history. That is my history.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And and I haven't seen there are two sequels which
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: we all kind of learned within the past ten minutes
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: before recording, and I haven't seen those. And there is
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a novel that this movie is adapted from, which I
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: also have not read. So there's like source material. There's
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a whole trilogy of movies, but I have pretty limited experience.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I would like to talk about the I mean I
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: did a little bit of research on the novel. AT
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: love to talk about it when you both once we've
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: recapped the movie, because it's it's really interesting. I can't
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: wait to hear it. Well, let's take a quick break
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: and then we'll come back for the recap. And we
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: are back. Okay. We meet Bastion. He's a little boy.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: He tells his dad about another dream he has had
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: about his mother, who has died recently, and his dad
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: is like, Bastion, it's time to move on. Stop daydreaming,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: stop thinking about unicorns, and start facing your problems. Meanwhile,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Bastion is like eight years old, and his dad like,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I know, I resent this term even though I've used
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: it so heavily, But like, his dad is a girl boss.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: It's hard to explain because he gets your ass to work, Bastion,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Y do ye? Then his dad up and work. Then
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: his dad proceeds to drink a bunch of raw eggs
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that he blended in the blender and then just drinks
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: as a drink. Now that is what scares me, the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: dad and the raw eggs. That has always always gotten
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: my goat since I was a kid. I was like,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: what the hell is he making? What is this? He
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: is into Jordan Peterson. Now wherever that dad is he
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: found Jordan Peterson and is eating raw meat somewhere. Yeah.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I was like I had to rewind to make sure
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that is what in fact happened. There is like something
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: so I think, like again, just like, there's so many
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: elements of this movie that feel like rare of like oh,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: you never see anything like that, Like a parent that
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: just like or just an adult who's like refusing to
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: grieve in a way that is like alarming, which is
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: so common. But you're like, oh, and this guy it's
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: manifesting in going to work and drinking eggs. Like all right,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: potential homophobia I was getting. I had never read read
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: into this deeply, but when I was watching yesterday, I
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: was like, Bastia is showing some very clear signs of
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: being like a young gay boy who is really into fantasy.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And not to like position him as that, but like
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: the dad being like, come on, what about sports? Yeah,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: you're not going to gym class anymore. It's like, oh God,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: why aren't you drinking eggs? With your pops, Like, yeah,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I did feel like he was like really pushing like
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a hyper masculine like I was trying to articulate in
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that my notes, because I was just like, it's not
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: that like reading books or an interest in fantasy is feminine,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: but that's the way that dad was framing it. So
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: it was bizarre. Yes, well it also seemed in my
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: sorry to harp on this, but to me, like when
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I was watching it yesterday, I was like, oh, I
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: get it. Like the death of the mom is sort
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: of like the death of the imagination of the household,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: like the death of dreams, the death of like self acceptance,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: like all of these magical, sort of ethereal things like
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I had I had even forgotten that Fashion's mom had
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: died and that that's what was going on in his life.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: It's so quickly skimmed over in this movie that like
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: it is glossed over, but then it comes back hard. Yeah, right,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: because he's like, my mom had a name, and that's
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: going to be the new name of the Empress. And
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: then it was like his mom's name was Moonchild. That's
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: so cool, that's awesome. Is that what it is? Yeah,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: because that's what he yells out what he has he
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: has moonchilds I've never known what it is all my life.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: I have never known what the name is. I can't
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: understand what he's saying, and the in the subtitles did
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: not say they just said yelling. I had to google it.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like maybe they keep it intentionally low so
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: you can like project whatever you want onto it, because
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I couldn't understand it either. And then I googled it
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: and it said Moonchild. And then it was like earlier
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: he was like, my mom had the most beautiful name.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I was like, damn, Bastian, you're right, Yeah, that's an
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: awesome name. Child Child. Yeah. I watched it twice, and
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the first time I think it was on maybe HBO Max.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: But since then, within the past week, it has been
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: taken off of that platform. But whatever platform I watched
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: it on initially, the subtitles are there and it says Moonchild.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I think I watched it on I
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: rented it on Apple and that it almost seemed like
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I was reading another dialects interpretation subtitles. Yeah. So anyway,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: so the point is Bastion's mom has passed away. I
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: think we're to understand that, like his immersion in like
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: books and fantasy is like a way that he's coping
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: with his loss. I'm not totally sure, but anyway, he
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: reads a lot of books and his dad hates it.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Um he's like math and eggs and Jim class. So
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: on his way to school, some bullies chase Bastion and
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: he goes into this building to hide, where he meets
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: a man who is reading a particular book. It's his Santa. Basically,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: it's how I was because it's like the role and
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: maybe it's just because we just did our like holiday
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: segment from like, oh, mysterious older man with white hair
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: who gives you a critical prop and then never shows
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: up again. It's his Santa, yes, exactly, and so Santa
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: is like, kid, the books you read are safe and yeah,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: sure you can escape into the story, but you can
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: close the book and become a little boy again. But
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the books I read aren't like that, and passions like
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: what And then the man gets up to answer the
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: phone and Bastion takes a closer look at this book
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: he's reading called The Never Ending Story. Hey, that's the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: name of the movie. And then Bastion steals the book
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and runs off. He heads to school, but he's late
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: for the math test, so he just skips it and
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: goes to the attic and starts reading The never Ending Story.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: What a legend and iconic I wish I wouldn't. I
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: would never but it's because I'm not. I'm not as
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: brave as him. He's so brave. Once he starts reading,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: we are transported into the world of Fantasia. We are
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: in this dense forest where a couple peculiar people and
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: creatures are gathered round a fire, and then this huge
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: guy made of stone comes crashing in, but he's friendly
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and he wants to join them, and he eats rocks,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and he's describing how a nothingness is spreading across the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: land where like a place used to exist, but now
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: there's nothing there. So he is going to the Ivory
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Tower to talk to the Empress about it. And then
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the other people are like, we are on that exact
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: same mission. Let's go right fucking now, So they get
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: on their racing snails and their bats and they set
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: off and arrive at the Ivory Tower, only to learn
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: that the Empress has fallen ill. So now they're only
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: hope of stopping this spreading of the nothingness. Is a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: warrior named a tray You who lives among the plains.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: People who hunt purple buffalo are arguably, you know, some
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: heavy cultural appropriation that as a Native person, I'm gonna
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: go ahead and just ignore it, right, I'm gonna I'm
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: gonna forgive it immediately, Okay, because as the characters are
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: describing a tray You, we cut back to Bastion and
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: he looks at his like book bag or something, and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: then there's like a Native person hunting a buffalo and
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: he's like, it's the same, yeah, and it is. It's interesting.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: It's I forgot I always there's so many things about
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: this movie that I forgot about or just truly it
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: just didn't ever ring any alarms growing up. But I also,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: like have recently been having this like really annoying discussion
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: in my peer group and my native peer group about
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: like Avatar and the way that like Native Indigenous people
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: are like mythified and and sort of like romanticized in media.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And this is like a fucking direct exampit. Yes, for sure, Yeah,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it's but you know what a Trayo is, um, you know,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Lakota warrior, I whatever. I don't care who what Italian
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: country you hail from or your ancestors do you're in
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, I kept looking for, like,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: any um like the author of the book, Michael Endy,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: who is German making any like clear like and this
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: is where I was pulling from. But he didn't seem
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to ever say anything specific, and so any critics like
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: any like reviews or in positive or negative of the book,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: or just like Endy appears to be pulling from what
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: he may have once heard or possibly remembered about Indigenous Americans.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And you're like, yes, yeah, it sounds like a vague
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: remembering appropriative. I don't know, Well, this is something that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: you might find very interesting, Jamie and um listeners is
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: especially the Lakota Nation, Like the Lakota Nation has so
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: much lower like pop like media lore around it, especially
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: because I think they're depicted in a lot of Westerns
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: and what have you. But in the seventies and eighties
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: German people like weird sort of hippie fringe groups started.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know how the transference happened, whether it was
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: somebody who came over and was invited to Sundance or something.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: But German people started putting on Powow's full regalia, uh,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: singing in drum groups like completely and they started putting
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: on Sundance, which is like a very like sacred ceremony
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: that like a lot of Native people have never been
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: invited to Sundance, Like it's just like so exclusive and
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: it's exclusive to like the planes nations. And there's this
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: really big language Lakota language issue happening right now with
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: this organization that is founded by a German Man who
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: it basically took stories and language from Lacoda elders and
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: re like patented it and sold it back to the tribes.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Sucking insidious. And you can find videos of German people
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: like on YouTube, like German people doing specifically Lakota practices
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: in their way of course, completely bastardized and they don't
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: have any you know. But there is this really weird link,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: especially in the seventies and eighties, where Indigenous people have
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: been truly like romanticized by German folks especially. That's so
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't know any of that. That's really fucked and
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: like and would totally line up kind of with Michael.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: I mean this the book was published in seventy nine,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: so that makes total sense. Oh my god. Okay, well then,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and then I find it kind of even more baffling
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: than he that he never said anything specifically. That's oh
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: my god. Yeah, it just might have been in there,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: in there zeitgeist a little bit, like it just was
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: something that they kind of cared about, maybe not predominantly,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: but like it was there. Weirdly interesting because I know
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: that Endy was like a humanist, like he and his
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: wife were really into the heat like it it seems okay,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: so like maybe it wasn't just like a vague like
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: it's possible that he actually had attempted to learn about
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: indigenous culture in an insidious, fucked up way maybe, or
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: it just might have been in his might have just
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: been around like osmosis kind of thing. That's so bizarre.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Why I want to know more about that? Interesting? Well,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: so a tray you shows up to the Ivory Tower
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: and he is a child, and everyone's like, we weren't
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: expecting a child, but I guess we have no other options.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: So hey, I try you go find a cure for
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the Empress and save our world from the nothing. So
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I try sets off on his quest and he searches
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: high and low and can't find any cure or solution,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: so he decides to seek out more Law, a wise
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: being who lives on shell Mountain in the swamp of Sadness,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: for help, and along the way his horse are attacks,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: succumbs to the sadness of the swamp and sinks and
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: dies in a really devastating moment. Yeah, saddest eighties cinematic
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: moment short of et almost dying on the ship. And
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: that happened so early in the movie. It's like the
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: sad and and and it's like there's plenty of sad
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: moments later, but I was, um, I was not prepared
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: for it. I mean, I like, it's weird to be like,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I loved that, but like it's just so miraculous and
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: wild to me that they put that in the movie
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: at all, because it feels so clearly like an allegory
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: for like losing someone to depression and like to suicide.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: And then you're just like, but it's a horse, and
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I'm crying so much like it. That was a beautiful,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: really dark, funked up up. Jenny, you should make this podcast.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like, how did they do that how is that allowed?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I know, the ship that they were showing us kids
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: in the eighties was wild. But the horse gets too
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I was, like I wrote down in mys like horse
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: gets so depressed it dies question mark Like uh, and
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: then you and then a tray You was like begging,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: like please don't give into the sadness, like keep going,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you can do this. And then it doesn't work. You
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: expect in a kids movie, Sure there's gonna be tension.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: You're you think, maybe, oh no, the horse might die,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: but you know, in the back of your mind like
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: probably not though probably it's gonna be fine. Probably they're
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: not going to kill an animal in a children's movie,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: but nope, are attacks. The horse dies in the first
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: acts or early in the second act. And it's also
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: like in talking in like opening it up to the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: idea of you know, depression and suicide. Like the evil
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: force at play here is called the nothing and like
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the fact that what they are fighting is this unstoppable
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: wave of nothingness, lack of meaning, Like lack of meaning
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: is going to overcome us and dislocate us and like
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: destroy everything in its wake. And and it is such
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a huge allegory, you know, for I think like a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: lot of different things. Like I think there's so many
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: interpretations my kind of like first and possibly the most
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: simple one that occurred to me was like a coming
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: of age allegory and this idea of you know, maintaining
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: your childlike imagination and curiosity being a good thing even
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: though society encourages you to lose those things as you
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: get older and more mature. There's like a shades of
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: like climate change and you know, like climate crisis and
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: these bigger concepts that I didn't read into when I
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: was a kid. I just accepted like The Nothing as like, oh, yeah,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the Nothing creepy a villain. Yeah, I mean it's and
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: it I liked how the movie I don't know, maybe
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: this is like why I like knocked me on my
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: ass was it was like, oh, the movie can kind
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of like meet you where you're wherever you're at. And like, however,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: like it's very open to interpretation. Where I was reading
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: it as like a grief story and like Fantasia as
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: like representing the memory of his mom, and so when
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the Empress is calling out to him at the end,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: it's like if he doesn't actively engage with her memory,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: then it disappears, it goes away, and like you have
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: to rebuild it, and there's so many crying, crying, crying ship.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: It's heavy, it's heavy. Okay, So a tray you finds
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: shell Mountain in the swamp, but more La doesn't live
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: on shell Mountain. More La is shell mountain because he's
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: a giant turtle. Also, we are periodically cutting back to
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Bastion in the attic as he's reading this book, and
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: when Bastion learns about the giant turtle, he screams. He's
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: like startled and scared and he screams, and it seems
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: like a trey. You and more La can hear Bastion's scream.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: What's all that about? Do you think? And then they
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: just kind of go back to what they were doing.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Morla is like, anyways, I'm allergic to young people, which
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: is sometimes how I feel. And more La is grumpy Auntie.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: I love a fan of mor La. I I love her.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like she is a huge bitch and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it was clearly ruining her life to be such a
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: huge bitch all the time. But I also felt seen,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: wait more okay, I I thought more Law was a
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: male turtle. I guess I misinterpreted that voice. No more
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: was definitely a gal a lady turtle gender non specific
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: in my opinion. Either way, Bitchy Energy was like, well,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I certainly can't help you, because even being near your
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: youthful optimism is making me basically ill. Morla is a man,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: he's giving gay grandpa who never wanted to have kids.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: It still doesn't good for Marla, but also you know
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: their loss in life. I guess, um, okay, So a
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: tray You is like, hey, Morla, can you help? But
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: more La is like no, But I guess you could
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: go to the Southern Oracle for help. But the Southern
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Oracle is ten thousand miles away, so good luck with that.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: But really you should just give up. But a tray
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: You is not about to give up. He sets off again,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: and unbeknownst to him, this scary wolf creature Go Mork
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: is tracking him along the way. A tray You is struggling.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: He's about to sink into the swamp of sadness. Go
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Mark is about to eat him. But just then a
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: dragon dog thing that really upset me as a child,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: named Falcore the luck dragon flies in and scoops a
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: tray you up, and then he wakes up a few
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: days later and Falcore is like, hey, what's up. I
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: will take you to the Southern Oracle slash where already
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: almost there, but first a tray you meets these small people,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: a married couple who hate each other named Angie Wook
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and Ergyle Get out of My Light Wench is kind
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: of like how he enters the story. Yes, he calls
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: his wife and his wife a wench so many times.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: They hate each other. They hate each other, and they
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: eat worms. I think, which I'm more insupportive there. I
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: feel like it's very very possible that I was. Um.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: I liked her so much that I was like overly
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: like trying to be like this is awesome, but I
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: liked that, Like okay, was it Angie Wook and who
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Ergyle Ergyle? So like Angie Wook's whole thing is He's like,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I'm a scientist, Get out of my life, wen and
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: she is like, she makes home remedies, she's making medicine.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: So they are doing the same thing. They're both doing science.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And she appears to know that her husband obviously doesn't,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and she's like, that's a waste of time. To explain
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: it to him whatever, And I was like, I wonder,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I want to believe that that was
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: like pretty intentional of like they're doing the same job.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: He just thinks his work is worthy of respect and
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: hers isn't. Yes, that's the vibe I get. He has
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: always in my mind, even as a child, I was
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: always like, why does this guy think he's such a
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the fucking cockital walk Like she's the one who's holding
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the ship down. All you did was make a telescope,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Like I mean, not that I could do that, but
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: also like she makes like she she heals falcor, she
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: gives him that big scary shot that cracked his spine
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: open or something. She heels a tray you, and and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: also it seems like in the scene a tray you
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: is very much more like with her of like, yeah,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: this guy, like angy book is kind of ridiculous, but
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: here him out. He's got this plot telescope that you need,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: that he needs to spy on people who are trying
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: to cross the Southern Oracle, but not do nothing for them.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Just just watch how is that science? I just was like,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: just watches they get electrocuted and then gets excited about
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: it either way, right, and then he got mad because
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: he couldn't watch someone get electrocuted. I like, what is
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: your what is your life like? Relax wicky book or
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: whatever the funk? Your name is inky Dick Dick. Also
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: interesting that also in um Princess Bride there's like a
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: cromudgeny couple too, you know, played by Billy Crystal and um,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: what's that comedian's name that I love? Um, I know
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: exactly never going to remember Carol Kane, Carol Kane Kane.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I was getting similar similar vibes there as well. Um, okay,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: so we've got Andie wooking Urgle and Andy Wooke is
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: all like, okay, tray you, you're going to have to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: pass through these gates to get to the Southern Oracle,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: and to tray You was like, cool, I'm going to
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: try it, even though he just saw another guy get
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: zapped by the first gate, but he's like, I got this.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: And he goes to the first gate and these two
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: like sphinx statues with huge boobs nipples. They're very sexy statues. Yeah,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: and it was like, again, good for you eighties, those
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: are really sexy statues you put in the kids movie,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: and as a kid, I was just like, oh my god,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the boobs big real one and tray You manages to
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: get through the first gate because he stays confident. Then
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: at the second gate, the magic mirror gate, a trey
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: You has to face his true self, and a trey
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: You seems to see Bastion in the reflection, which freaks
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Bastion out and he throws the book across the room.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: But then he's like, you know what, I'm going to
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: keep reading. Let's see what happens. It's already seven pm,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I've already missed dinner. I know my dad's care about me,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to spend the night in this school
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: at it my dad chugging a dozen eggs at home,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: like he's like not, that's how he's handling the grief somehow,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: that means he's not sober um because I just think
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: it's like he doesn't drink, but he gets really fucked
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: up on the eggs. I that was one of my questions.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: I was like, does Bastion stay there all night reading
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: this book? And if so, does his dad not care
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: where he is? That's the implication I feel like, and honestly,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: based on how Bastion's dad was coming off at the beginning.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I wasn't like super bumped by that. I was like, yeah,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: this is the kind of parent that um is not
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: really thinking about where their kid is. And also I
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, maybe that like it's a it's a
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: like late twentieth century thing where your kids could just
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: kind of be out and around and you're like, man,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: I'll be back. I mean, I was a latchkey kid
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: kind of. So there's there's a heavy sort of latch
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: key vibes going on with Bastion. Sure, So he keeps
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: reading the book and tray You finds the Southern Oracle,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: which are two more statues also with big boobs, who
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: tell a tray You that in order to save the Empress,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: she simply needs to be given a new name. But
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: no one from Fantasia can do that. They need a
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: human boy from Earth to give her a new name.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Bastions like, they should ask me, my mom had an
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: awesome name. Then a tray You heads back to the
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Ivory Tower on Falcore, but on the way the nothing
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: blows a tray You off Falcore's back and he ends
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: up in like the land of the rock biters, which
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: we saw one of the rock biters at the beginning.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: He talks to one of them and then go Mork,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the scary wolf thing is there and he's about to
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: eat a tray you. And he's like, yeah, Fantasia is
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: this human fantasy and it's dying because humans started to
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: lose their hope and that's why the Nothing is erasing everything. Yeah,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: he he states the themes of the movie. He's like,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: this movie was in a way about authoritarianism. If you
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: didn't pick that up, I'm a wolf puppet. It was
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: about fascism and it's dangers. So like I love that
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: scene and and is like an agent of the Nothing.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: So a tray you is like, well, fuck you. And
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: he stabs in another scene that I was surprised as
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: in a children's movie because it's violent. It's bloody, you see,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: like lots of blood. Badass. It's badass. Have have I
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: not been saying for years now? Is like, we should
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: be allowed to kill the evil villain if they're truly,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: truly profoundly evil in the way that Gomor is. It's
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: so satisfying. Yeah, it's like, we don't need a we
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: don't need a like a redemption arc for Gomork. No,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: that's why I can't stand like Marvel movies and Ship.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: I'm like, kill these motherfucker's sorry, it's fantasy. Also, I
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: just want to say, before the Mork slaughter, we can
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: call it a fight, it's not a slaughter. Um attacks
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: and then he just happens to be holding the knife. Um.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: But when he has the conversation with the rock Biter,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it's also another tier jerky moment in the movie. I
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: found when the rock Bier, this big unstoppable beast of
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: made of stone, is like all of my friends are gone,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Like all of the people I love are gone, and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: there's nothing left of us, like even the rocks have disappeared.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: It's just like God, why, Yeah, that that scene really
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: sucked me up. It's it's so like it's so heavy
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: and it's and it's like a traio is fully engaging
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: with it, and it's just like there's no real solution
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: to the scene. They're both just like talking to each
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: other about like how they feel that they have failed
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: others and how the world has failed them. And that's
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: just like the whole scene. Yeah, it's really beautiful. I
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: really I love the rock eater. I mean, I think
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: because it's he really did everything he could. He did
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: his damn best, and I hated to see him down
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: at the end. I mean, he'll be spoilt, he'll be back,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: He'll be fine riding his big stone wheelbarrow power wheel. Try.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: It reminded me of like when you're like, if you're
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: ice skating as a kid, it's like the little penguin
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: that you hold so you don't fall over it like that.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I thought of it as you know, as an eighties kid.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: A big wheel, like a rock big whale, and that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: is way more likely than the very obscure ice skating
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: thing I was describing. Well again, that's the beauty of
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: this movie. There are so many ways to interpret it.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Think is possible? Yeah, okay, So a Trey You has
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: killed more. Falcore shows back up and a tray You
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: and Falcore returned to the Ivory Tower and a tray
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: You is like, hey, Empress, I'm so sorry, but I failed,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: and she's like, no, you didn't. You brought the human
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: earth Boy with you, and he's like what I did?
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: And Bastions like what are they talking about? Me? And
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the Ivory Tower is crumbling and there's chaos and to
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: try you was like, well, where the hell is this boy?
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: And Bastion finally realizes that he needs to do something.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: He needs to give the Empress a new name, so
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: he like goes to the window. It's like lightning and storms,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: and he screams something that's pretty indiscernible, but everyone's like,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: my mom's name, Like I feel like that. I feel
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: like that's why you can't hear it. Well, is you're
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: supposed to be projecting something else onto it? Yeah, but
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: canonically he says moon Child, so he screams it out,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and then we cut to a scene with Bastion and
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: the Empress in darkness. Fantasia has disappeared, but it can
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: be reborn from Bastion's wishes and dreams and imagination, so
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: he uses that to rebuild Fantasia. And so then we
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: see all the characters that we've seen throughout the movie,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Tray You and his horse, the rock biter, deep Roy
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and his snail, et cetera. And then we see Bastion
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: riding on Falcore and he's like, what else do you
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: wish for? And passions like I want to go and
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: funk up those bullies from the beginning of the movie.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: So he does that. He has a realistic child in
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: paulse He's like, I want to ride a dragon and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: murder everyone who's ever been mean to me. Like, yeah, yep,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: and that's the movie. So let's take a quick break
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: and we will come back to discuss. And we're back.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Before we get into the discussion, can I tell you
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: what happens in the of the book? Would love to hear.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: It was really really interesting to me. So I'm pulling
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: heavily from an article by a writer named Helen Decruz.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: The article is called what we can learn from the
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: never Ending Story Authoritarianism, Fascism, and the Power of Imagination.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: It's like, buckle up, wait what you said. The book
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: was written in the seventies and was a big hit
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: in Germany and then was like translated, and so the
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: kind of production history is that Michael Endy, the author,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: was originally very very excited that they wanted to make
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a movie of his work. He sold the rights to
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the work for fifty tho dollars, which is not nothing
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: even in nine eighties money. That's nothing for the amount
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: of like times, I feel like that's just my viewing
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: that He's bath is my it's so and I feel
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: like we've covered I'm trying to think of a comparable example,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: but it's like writers get screwed all the time in
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: ways like that, or people with life rights, or like
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: any sort of adaptation stuff like you hear so many
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: stories like that. But he was originally like, this is great,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: like a German director wants to adapt my work. This
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: is amazing, not realizing I think what happens in a
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: lot of those cases, which is that once you have
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: sold the rights, you have very little control over what
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: they do with it. So he's assuming his whole book
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: is going to get adapted. He's thrilled, as is Um.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: His wife. He has like this is like very ancillary,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: but I enjoyed reading about it. He had this like long,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: it seems like kind of very beautiful relationship with a
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: German actress named Ingeborg Hoffman, who Um was a pretty
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: successful German actress and had a had a huge hand
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: in in kickstarting his career. I feel like you often
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: hear the story in their verse, but she like used
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: a lot she thought he was a really talented writer
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: and used a lot of her connections to like kind
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of get him his start writing, and they had a
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: very close collaborative relationships. So even though India is the
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: credited author, he would always say like, well, but like,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: none of my work would exist if I wasn't in
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: this relationship with this amazing person, which I thought was
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: very nice. But anyways, he grows to really hate the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: fact that this movie is being made because they're like, Okay,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: it makes the most sense for the three acts structure
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: and for like the ethos of Hollywood in the eighties
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: to just adapt the first half. So the movie we
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: see is just the first half of the book, which
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I think kind of leaves it ending on this very
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: optimistic note of like, you know, Bastion is going to
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: rebuild Fantasia, which is called Fantastica in the book. Who
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: knows why, But I just want to quote Helen dacruzz
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: recap of the second half of the book because it's
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: quick and it's good. So the differences in the book,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: as far as as I can tell, it's very very similar,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: except a big difference that it seems like Andy was
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: very intentional about was that Bastion was bullied because he
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: was fat and because he was like considered to not
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: be traditionally intelligent. So in the book, like it's constantly referenced,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: especially that like Bastian has extreme issues with his own
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: body and how people talk about him, including his father
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: and including his bullies. That's like inherent to the character
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: in a way that is not adapted in the movie.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Um so here's the recap quote. In the second half
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: of the book, Bastian creates Fantastica, a new he can
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: do what he wishes. Oh. The other difference is that
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: when people in Fantasia or Fantastica die or are lost
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to the Nothing, they turn into lies in the human world,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: which is not It gets very like philosophical, and I'm like,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not smart enough to understand what he's trying to
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: say here, but like, if you are a dragon that
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: is consumed by the nothing, you turn into a lie
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: that is told on earth. That is how you. So
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: there's like a direct consequence to the real world, Like
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: you become fake news, you become a Tucker Carlson episode
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: in the real world. It's really like it's clear that, like,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and he's trying to like do something, but anyway, Okay,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: So Bastian creates fantastic A new he can do what
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: he wishes, protected by the ambulant r in, which gives
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: him amazing strength and ability. It also gives him the
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: physical shape he believes he wants. He is no longer
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: short or fat, but tall and athletic. Clearly, Bastian loathes
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: himself as he truly is, and this self loathing distorts
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: his relationship to fantastic Tka. His wishes are clear wish
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: fulfillment that slowly erode his sense of true identity. Each
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: wish he makes, he loses part of his memory. Soon,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Bastian falls under the spell of a cunning witch who
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: aims to use him for her own purposes. He loses
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: his friends, including a tray You in the luck dragon Falcore,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: as he turns against them. Bastian's lack of memories and
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: proper self respect ultimately propel him to almost crown himself
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the Emperor of Fantastica after the childlike Empress disappeared without warning,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: has given him the orne and all of his wishes
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: came true. He believes this is a sign that he
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: is her successor um so it totally undoes the work
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: that happens in the first movie, and it becomes this,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Like I think that the way it's written about is
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: that this is an authoritarian kind of like cautionary tale.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: The way that it's written and the moral as I've
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: read it, it goes on. It goes on for a while,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: but like Bastion, by acquiring power and then like altering
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: himself to look the way that he believes he should
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: and like exerting power over others ends up ruining Fantastica
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: a second time. And it's not until he can accept
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: himself as he truly is and love himself as he
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: truly is physically, emotionally and everything else that he's able
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: to truly like engage with this fantastic world he's created responsibly.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: So the it's a real Kardashian tale. It's wild, yeah,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and I I mean i read it, I was like,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: that's really interesting. I'd be interested to read it. But
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I get why that's not in the movie. That's so depressed,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Like it's really, um, I don't know. Yeah, the second
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: half of the book is wild. So Endy was really
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: angry that they only adapted the first half and he
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: believes that seeing the movie killed his wife, which is
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: another while his wife did see the movie and went
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: home and went to bed and never woke up. Are
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: you kidding me? No, it is so bizarre. Yeah, she
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: saw a screening of it and she was like, I
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: didn't like it, and then she died. First of all,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: happen to not like it first, and most importantly ingrid
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: but yeah, fascinating, Um I too. And then to supplement
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: your research, Jamie, And I'm pulling this from scholarly journal Wikipedia. Yet,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the second half of the book was eventually used as
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: a rough basis for the second film, never ending story
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: to the next chapter released in n UM. I have
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: not read the book, nor have seen that movie, so
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: I and speak god how that adaptation goes. I have watched,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: I have seen the second movie, and I have very
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: few memories of it. It certainly was not as impactful
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: as the first. I remember feeling like Jonathan Brandis is
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: trying to take the place of my bastion played by
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: uh Barrett Oliver, and I couldn't handle it. I hated it.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: It's like when when the older sister in Roseanne comes
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: back as a different actor. I would just like rejected it,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: feel like I refuse. Yeah, no, I I enjoyed reading
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: about Barrett Oliver because he was like one of the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: kind of child stars that he was like in a
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: bunch of stuff in the eighties, and then he was like,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: wait a second, highly recommend that everybody watches another movie
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: that Barrett Oliver. Barrett Oliver is like of my time,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Like the movie Darryl is another one of these eighties
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: mind fux. It's terrifying and strange. I've ever heard of it.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: What is it about? I think it was like a
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Disney made for TV movie. But it's about this kid
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: that he's found and abandoned in a mountain by a
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: family and they sort of like take him to scientists
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: because he has all these special abilities. And I can't
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: remember why he has special abilities. Perhaps he's like psychic
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: or just like he's just like a kid who is magical,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: and it's just a very strange orphan fantasy. I don't know.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: He's also in Cocoon. Yes, yeah, this kid, this kid
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: was little. I just love when a child stairs extremely
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: prolific and then they're like I'm out of here, because
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: then what he does is he then becomes a really
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: specific scholar. He's like a scholar on in like nineteen
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: century photography processes. Now that's yeah, that's he's he's just chilling,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: yeah for him, I know, yeah, I I didn't know
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: any of that until like doing a little bit of
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: prep for this episode about all of that adaptation stuff
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and how the author of the source material got screwed
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: over and then his wife died after he did kill
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: his wife that he loved so much, and then but
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: I would side. I mean, honestly, I think that like
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: the worst part of this is that he got so
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: financially sucked over, because it sounds like they continued to
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: use his work in future adaptations. I don't imagine he
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: was paid again. But as far as like the portion
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: of I feel like the story, the half of the
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: story they adapt is like it works. I don't know,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful. What studio produced it? Like? Where did it? Good? Question?
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: It was like it was shot in a lot of
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: it was shot in Germany because it's German. It's a
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: German director of Germany. Peterson, Yeah, because he directed a
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: movie I've only heard set out loud. Does Boots Boot
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: is very famous German film. Yeah, it's like that's the
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: germanist film I could think of a war movie, I think, so. Yeah.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, why did they give him the never
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: ending story? I don't really understand. But he did a job. Oh,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: and then he went on to I didn't realize that
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: he's the director of Air Force one and Outbreak, and
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: so he like it seems transitioned at least partially into
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: like American cinema. He also directed The Perfect Storm. Oh
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: and Troy Okay Poseidon there was a time on the
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: action adventure. Yeah. The Perfect Storm goes down in history
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: for me as one of the worst movies I have
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: ever seen. It. It was so bad that I was
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: laughing aloud for the entire second half of the movie
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: in the fucking theater, like, oh my god, horrble. I'm
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: just fascinated by people with the first name Wolfgang. I
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: that's cool, how did you get here? Also, every time,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I confused Wolfgang Peterson and Wolfgang Puck all the time,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, oh, yeah, Wolfgang Peterson. He has some restaurants.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: He has a line of really heavy duty cook wear. Yes,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: and I have some. I have it. I used to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: have a boss named Wolfgang Hammer, and I was like,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: that's not a real man. How was he standing before
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: me when that couldn't be true. But he's real, you know,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: the real award and never ending story I think goes
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: to the production design and the costumes and the makeup.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: My god, and I think that the beautiful the youth
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: performances are really good in this Like I thought, I
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: thought a Tray was really amazing, and as as was
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Bastion I really, I mean, and the child like Empress,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: she's pretty good for the four those gigantic, like those
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: plate sized eyes. I was like she I looked her
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: up as well. She's like a professor, and then she
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: later became like a lyrical dancer. Everyone in this movie
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: seems to have gone on to like live their truth.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it amazing interesting as far as what we
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: tend to focus on discussion wise, um, I couldn't help
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: but notice that almost all of the characters are male
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: or male coded. There's not that much in the way
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: of women or girls, and if they are present in
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: the story, they're like the Empress, who is not on
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: screen until the very end of the movie. There's she's dying,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: and she's dying and she yeah, she like kind of
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: needs to be rescued, like that's something. Yeah, for sure,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: that's yeah. That's the kind of like the thrust of
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: the narrow. If I keep saying thrust in recent episodes
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: and I've yeah, I can't explain it. Which of us
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: started it, but one of us needs to stop. Well,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna be me thrusting. I said that out
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: loud yesterday and our Shrek three episode. I was like,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: why are we saying thrust right now? This is not okay. Look,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: what's not okay is that the term has been, you know,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: really manipulated to mean something. You know it's inappropriate. I
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: saw it all. I don't know what I was watching,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: but I saw like an old timey clip of something
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: of like a grown man talking to a child where
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: he's like where he said, I'm so thrilled I might bust.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: You used to just be able to like say kind
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: of whatever. I don't think bust meant this, No, probably not.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: I hope. I hope that it was like an adult
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: man talking to sure Tumble or something. I don't know
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: what the funk I was watching, but he's like, I
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: might bust and you're like, oh my god, she's seven.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Don't say bust gross anyway, so sorry for my vocabulary,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: but the Yeah, the premise of the movie is that
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: a tray You needs to save you know, this young
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: girl who, for our purpose is literally a female character
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: that needs a man to give her a name. Yes, yes,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: which I think does remove a lot of important context,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: but on its face that is true. Yes, so there's her.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Then you've got the um what is her name? Argyle?
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Who is his wife? Character of this science guy who
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: is given much more I wouldn't even say he's given
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: more narrative significance because like, all he really does is
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: show a tray you where the gates are to get
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: to the Southern Oracle. But he's given way more screen
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: time because there's just a few moments where this may
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: a couple are on screen together. They're horrible to each other.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: They clearly hate each other. He is throwing very gendered
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: insults her way. He calls her a wench several times,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: like we mentioned, and then she's not allowed to be
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: in the movie after that because the movie kind of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: values his knowledge and skills more than hers. Yeah, he
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: just seems like more eager to be on screen than
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: she does when she is like slamming her out of
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: the way to be like my science, which I was
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: like kind of I was honestly kind of like a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: little surprised that that happened because the way they're introduced,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: he looks like the buffoon and she looks like like,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: oh well, I actually keep ship running here. I'm just
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: not respected due to society also in Fantasia apparently still
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: a very patriarchal society there. But then it like kind
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: of changes, and then by the end she's the one
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: that is like, yeah, very odd a frame. And then
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: angle Wook is like stating themes of the movie in
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: a very profound way, and I'm like, I wish that
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Urgell was saying this and not him, because it's like
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: she was positioned as the person who was like smarter.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: And but then I was also was I not moved
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: when I heard you know, angle Wook described the like
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: mirror of like who you truly are, Like kind people
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: find they are cruel, like courageous people find their cowards. Um,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I just felt like he didn't earn it in the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: way that she did. I wish she had had those lines.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I agree so like a white man's fantasy. To me,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: like so much of what we know about fantasy, especially
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: in film and in cinema, is it is from a
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: white male, patriarchal point of view, so you really rarely
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: get you know. I feel like we see it as
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: recent as like Game of Thrones and Ship and it's like, oh,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: you still cast the own people as wild and like
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: stupid and savage and enough like the black people as slaves,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: like come on, yeah, it's pervasive. Yeah, And and also
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: like like you're saying Janet has not gone away in
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: a way that is like fucking infuriating that that goddamn
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: series sounds like. I will say that the movie had
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: more diversity than I would have expected, especially from a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: movie from the eighties, at least for the first minutes
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: of the movie, because you've got Deep Roy playing the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: guy with the snail, whose name, according to I am
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: dB is teeny weeny. Okay, that seems respectful. They never
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: refer to each other by their names on the movie.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't think, so, okay. Deep Roy is extremely iconic, though,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, like genderry, I love a character actor. I
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: salute him forever and ever. Though his voice is dubbed
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: over by another actor doing I think I couldn't remember
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: if it was an American accent or British accent, so
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Deep Roy's voice was not used in the movie and
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: his voice got dubbed over. I wonder why. Yeah, I'm
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: not sure. And then you have the character of I
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: also don't know if this was this character's name was
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: spoken aloud. But Chiron Karen, I'm not sure, played by
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Moses Gunn. He's the character who's like, we summoned to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: tray you to the Ivory Tower, like the spokesperson for
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: the Empress. Yeah, exactly right, And I believe he does
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: not come back right like he No, I don't think so,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, Like I don't usually do this
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: for beastl Class episodes, but like I went really deep
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: and because I just hadn't seen most of these actors before,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: like I recognize deep Roy, but that might have been it.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's giving like Canadian TV movie, yeah, like,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: And so I ended up kind of like doing some
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: some reading on on everyone and the actor who plays Kai.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: I think it's like Chiron Karen whatever it is, he's
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: really fucking fascinating, like he was, like I think kind
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: of like a forgotten character actor who once I looked
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: at his filmography, I was like, oh yeah, Like for
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: some reason, I watched Little House on the Prairie when
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I was home alone when I was a kid, and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: he does have kind of a very memorable arc on
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Little House on the Prairie. He plays like a boxer,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: but now he's a farmer and he's hanging out with
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the kids. And like his name is Moses Gunn. He
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: won like an Obie Award. He was like a very
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: famous theater actor and then he pops up in this
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: movie for not enough time. But like he just was
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: kind of a an overlooked character actor as many character
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: actors are, so shout Moses gun I think I remember
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: him from either Little House as well, or I don't
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: know the Cosby Show. I think he was also on
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: The Cosby Show, Yeah, which I mean I was like
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: I was a naked night kid. I watched I did
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It's like we don't talk about it now,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: but I did watch The Cosby Show when I was
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: a kid. Yeah, he was in he was kind of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: like a he was in everything. Um, he was in
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: you know Hawaii five, oh, the original one. He was
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: in Roots, he was in Little House, he was in Amityville,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: Horror to the Possession. You know, he was in everything.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: He was in Shaft. Yes, no, what a legend, So
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: like shout out to Moses gun Um. And I think
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: that he was like even more regarded on stage than
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: he was in movies and TV. Yeah, I mean it's
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: like and again it's like that's not a lot of
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: diversity at all, and those characters is could be removed
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: from the story, but I am happy that they're there.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I don't, like, I was I'm curious what you both
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: think because I was kind of like struggling with the
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: many different reads you can have of this story where
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: there's no need for it to be so driven by
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: young white boys and men, which it absolutely is. And
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: and so sometimes I'm like, Okay, Like the whole kind
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: of arc for Bastion is like he needs to become
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: confident enough in himself and like a stand in his
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: own sort of identity enough in order to be like
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: I am the protagonist, which is like not really a
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: problem that white men have historically had. However, I was
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: like with with the read of like this is a
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: grieving child who is not being given the support that
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: he needs from anyone in his support system and anyone
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: who's supposed to be looking out for him. There was
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: also a read of it where I was like, good
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: for that kid, you know, like he the way that
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the movie is sort of laid out made me think
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a lot about like, oh, this kid really needed to
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: like see himself somewhere as someone who could be empathetic
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: and impactful and navigate a difficult situation and survive it,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: which is like what Bastid needs to do. And he
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't have that support from his dad or from his
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: math here. I think that's his entire support system, is Yeah,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: his bully is his dad and his math test. And
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: so there's ways I don't know, like I was seeing
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: in all these different ways the puzzle. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: I think it would be far more impactful if it
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: had been a character who is largely under or unrepresented
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: in media and literature reading in this book and seeing
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: that or being able to plug themselves into the story
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: or seeing themselves in the story then like developing that confidence.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like you said, Jamie, that has never been
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: a problem for cis hett white boys and men. So
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: it's it's not as impactful as it could have been.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Certainly and I feel like, ultimately this is a movie
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: about how reading is good and cool, and since we
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: famously don't read on this podcast, I don't support the
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: message of I have was this like I was like
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: a vague I have like very very vague memories of
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: like maybe some of the only imagery I saw of
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: The Never Ending Story as a kid, because I didn't
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: see the movie was like posters at the library about
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: how reading is awesome. Would that have happened? Yes, I
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: think that there was, like in the early eighties, I
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: remember being again, I'm so interested and fascinated by what
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: was happening in the eighties with sort of this. Uh
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: I think the Reagan's had a lot to do with it,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, Barbara was or not Barbara Nancy Reagan
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: was such a pro like family person, so she was
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: really into like literacy and parenting kind of stuff, and
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: so there's a lot of like propaganda about how to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: raise your kids correctly and um writ in like in
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: like a very like rigid family dynamic and very republican,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: uh way. And I think that we see a lot
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: of media from this time that is about the loss
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: of imagination and like the like Princess Bride, For better
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: or worse, It is also the a similar sort of
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: set up and concept where it's a boy being told
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: a story by his grandpa and it's about this adventure
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: and and and he's he's in the beginning of Princess Bride.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: He's playing a Nintendo. He's playing at any us and
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: like is and his grandpa comes and he's like, gosh,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't you don't know what real stories
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: are about, you know, just like never ending stories. Santa
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: is like, my books beat me up, and you're like,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: and that makes them awesome. You know. It's like, sir,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: have you ever played Zelda Breath of the Wild, Because
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: that's truly some of the best storytelling is happening via
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: video games now. Jokes on you fuckers. But I also
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: do think that like I attached myself to that messaging
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: because I was raised with it. Like there's a part
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: of my brain that is like actually like ignited by
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: that kind of messaging. It's like I was indoctrinated with
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: that messaging that like video games are bad, they teach
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: you how to kill, they rip away your imagination. Books
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: are where the real answers are and and I believe
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: that it's so fucked up, but I like I bought
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: into it, and sure, yeah, of course I still playing
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: video games. But like I but it's like it's boom.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: It's almost as if there's some great storytelling in video games,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: in movies and television and books, I guess, but I'm kidding.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: Books are cool, Um, I know how to read, okay,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: but there's also like bad storytelling across all of these mediums.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: So it's just like it depends on the quality of
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the story. Yeah, book bookheads really kind of obscure how
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: many terrible books there are out there, much like there's
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: a million terrible movies and video games, Like there's if
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: there's an art form, there's a lot of bad versions
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: of that art form. If you've been to a stand
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: up show, you understand that. Um, but yeah, I mean
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: I was so while I do think it is like
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: very you know, it's hard to even say of the
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: era because it's still very much happens all the time
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: where it's like there is a you know, little white
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: boy who has put into like the role of pretend
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: agonist who needs to believe he's the protagonist when there's
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: so many people and groups who are never told their
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: the protagonists, and it's like reinforced over and over and
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: over and so on that end, you're like, well, there's
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: actually not very much being challenged. But I also do
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: like have a lot of love for and like really
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: felt I don't know, just like watching a kid find
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: a character that they're like, I, you know, if this
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: character can do it, then so can I. Because I
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: remember feeling that way a ton when I was a kid,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: and like I was like going back to my Lemony
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Snicket books where I always all roads lead back to
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: my Lemony Snicket books, where it's like, oh yeah, like
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: just a specific character or book or memory that you
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: know exactly where you were at and your kids squishy
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: brain life when you were going through it and it
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: was like a moment or whatever it was that helped
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: you push through it. And it's like those are some
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: of the most know, like intimate and like formative memories
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: you can have. And it's cool that there's a movie
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: that like tracks that exactly of like and tells Bastian
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: at the end like you are important to your favorite
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: character too, Like that's who makes me emotional. It's very nice.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I really love it On top of that, this is
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: a story where I mean it's kind of hard to
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: say who's the protagonist if well, it's like obviously like
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: it's bastions story, Matt Max Fury Road story, it's Bastian's story.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: And then he's sort of like living vicariously through the
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: other protagonists, which is a tray you. Both characters are
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: little boys who are openly expressing emotion, openly crying. They
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: are struggling, they're being vulnerable, they're struggling. They don't feel
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: emasculated by their struggle. They're failed by people around them
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: who have the intentions constantly, which is always something that
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I feel like is underrepresented in kids media. Is like
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: it's always like villain, the guy who's failing you intentionally
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: and maliciously, when I feel like it's far more common
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: for kids to be what happens with Bastion's dad, with
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: like someone that I'm sure that if his dad could
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: show up for him the way that he needed to,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: he would want to, but he can't, and so like
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Bastions totally isolate it. Yeah, and so and with Bastions specifically, again,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: he's this little boy who is a gentle book loving
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: boy who gets very emotional with the art that he consumes.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: And then it's the relationship that he had with his
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: mother and the grief that he's feeling, uh towards his
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: mother's death that like kind of saves the day where
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: he's like, oh my gosh, Like my mom's name was
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: moon Moonchild and that's your name. So like the kind
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Moonchild and that man end up getting married, Like that's
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: what That's what I'm saying, Like when when Moonchild died,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: that house went to ship. Yeah, why did Moonchild marry
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: this guy who guzzles raw eggs every morning? Like he's like, God,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I think Moonchild used to make this for me when
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: she was alive. But but how did she cook them?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know. She probably scrambled them and didn't drink
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: them raw. Just a thought, but anyway, um, but um yeah.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: So it's like his connection. And you know, we were
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: just talking Jamie about like we're always talking about so
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: many movies being about a relationship between father and son,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: and while this is that to some degree, it's about
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: how Bastion's dad is failing him and he cannot look
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: to his dad for any type of support, where a
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: lot of movies about fathers and sons. The father is
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: failing the son, but the movie is saying like this
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: dad is teaching his boy how to be a man
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: and how to repress his feelings, and isn't that awesome
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: like celebrating the resilience of a child, because the child
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: has to be resilient, right, And this movie doesn't go
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: in that direction. Um, it shows like this father is
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: like failing his son in his like moment of most
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: dire need and and he has to turn to books
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: for comfort. So yeah, I just I liked that. I
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: think it's it's so rare to see a story where
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the protagonist is a boy or a man and have
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: that character be vulnerable and crying on screen and like
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: things that you that are perceived by society to be
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: like emasculating and yeah, and have those qualities be like celebrated.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: And I love that, like exactly. I mean, I love
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: that he gets to stab Mark a tray does, but
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: that this sort of like I felt like the underlying
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: message there. And I guess like I am like currently
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: kind of in like grief mood, so I was like
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: really leaning heavy into the grief reading of this movie.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: But I really I really appreciated how it seemed like
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: Bastian was being encouraged by the book and a Trey
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: was as well to just like look it in the
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: face and confront it and as painful as it clearly is.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: It's like, that's why I don't know. I was back
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: and forth because it's like I rarely want a male protagonist,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: but I thought it was. It was rare to see
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: like a young boy encouraged to confront an extreme emotion
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: as a positive and that's just like not common. I
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: liked it. I think for me, as much as I
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: want women and girls at the center of stories that
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: I consume, I also want boys who are challenging masculinity.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: I also I the desire like knows no gender. It's
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: sort of like the same for me, Like that journey
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: feels the same because perhaps it is the same that
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: like a woman is central is the anti masculine you know, Yeah,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: I see what you mean, rust if you will, okay,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: got another person on board, Yeah, I I totally agree. Like,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know, And I feel like the central as
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: much as it's like the childlike Empress, which what a
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: character name, um, but the child like Empress she is
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: so not a part of the story until the very end,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: but then she ends up being this embodiment of his
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: mom's memory, and that was something. Again I think it
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: was just because we covered a million holiday movies where
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: dead mom is so part and parcel to every holiday
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: movie that's ever come out. Oh my god, that we
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: thought about that, But like Disney Renaissance and every holiday
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: movie ever, Mommy's they're gone, they're gone, and it's vague
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: because Santa isn't a mommy. Santa is a daddy figure,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: so we can't be having So I think I was
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: like that trope has been on my mind recently anyways,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: and so at first I was like, oh, dead mom troupe,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: Like what are what are we going to do with this?
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: But I think again, I'm just like it ended up
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: kind of working for me because so often, even though Moonchild,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: the dead mom is extremely vague and we don't know
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: a lot about her, I thought it was like, really,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know, like I just it really like hit
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: with me. I feel like so often when you see
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: a parent has passed on, and like specifically a mother,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: it's always very like gentle and I'm thinking of I
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: think Casper where like the mom comes back as an
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: angel and she tells sexy Bill Palman and little Christina
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: Ricci like I just want you to be happy and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: I want you to like move on, and it's still
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a very like maternal like don't worry about it. Yeah,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: I died at like thirty four. It's it's all good
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: like and it's very like unselfish in the way I
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: think that mothers are often kind of type cast as
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: like the unselfish mother, but with the childlike empress who
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: are like I think like symbolizes his mom. She is
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: like begging him to remember her, and I was like
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: that was I don't know as far as dead moms go.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: That felt very very active of like no, don't just
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: fucking never speak my name again, because all your dad
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: can do is not have a feeling and drink eggs
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: like if you don't like it feels like coca where
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: you're like, if you don't talk about me, if you
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: don't remember me, I disappear, So fucking say my name
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: and talk about me and like rebuild this. I don't know.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: I was really into that scene. Yeah, and then they
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: get to be together and it's like he's with his mom,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and she just is able to tell him like it's
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: not too late, just like you know, lovingly, get your
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: ship together, kid, like deal with your feelings and you
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: can rebuild everything. But then when he does in the
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: book and it turns him into a fascist, so it's
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: it's complicated a thin fashion. Yes, an athletic fascist. Scary.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, Well, I just like just let that
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: movie be the movie author, like, you did something weird,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: you did something weird that God does anyone have anything
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: else to say about the flim I feel like I
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: could go on and on about this movie, but I
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: want to spare my stupid thoughts and let people enjoy it.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: Because also, like there is something about like breaking this
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: movie down and how hard it is that I'm like, yeah,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: the the intentions were so simple. We're pulling, we're trying
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: to pull things from it that are like very much
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: clearly in the book, like something was lost in translation
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: between the book and the movie. They aren't matching up here. Um.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: But it was also so moving as a kid, truly
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: swept me away every time I watched it, and even
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: when I watched it yesterday. High as a kite just
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: only way shoveling popcorn into my mouth was transported by
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: this stupid costumes, makeup and practical effects. It's some of
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: which when you're talking about foul core scary to me.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Falcor was it was it the Falcourt did Felcore blink?
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: I was trying to fair. I was like, what about
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: foul core? Maybe it was the mouth. I was focused
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: on the eyes because they seemed really wet and they
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: weren't blinking, and I was like, buddy, but it was like,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: it's not real. I feel if they were blinking, but
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: maybe not necessarily in unison. Maybe it was Maybe that
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: was another thing. Maybe what it was it was like
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: blinking like a chucky cheese animatronic woud where it's like
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: blinking really loudly, where it's like like you know yeah,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: or there's like eyelashes that are like sort of like yes, yes,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: you can hear it from ten feet away and you're like,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't be able to hear someone blink like that.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: I also do want to encourage you both to look
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: up foul core behind the scenes falcore on YouTube because
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: I believe that there is footage of Bastion writing or
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: a tray you writing Falcore against a green screen or
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: like a movie. It's kind of cool. Whoa, Oh that's amazing.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: I would love to know how more because there it's
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: like there is some very like you know, dated green
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: green effects, but for some reason, like not to the
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: point where I was like taken out of it to
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: an absurd degree. I was just like, yeah, that's I guess.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: It's like, who, who care? I don't know. It's still
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: the story was good enough that you're just like whatever.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: And I did kind of laugh when Basting at the end,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: He's like he just had this profound like breakthrough in
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: his life. And then they're like, what do you want
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: to do next? He's like, ride a dragon and kill
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: some kids, and you're like, yeah, I love that for him.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: The Disney Channel had to show up somewhere exactly, Um, well,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: does the movie pass the Bechtel test? Oh? No, I
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: really don't think it does. It doesn't. It doesn't, it doesn't,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: But you know, we're in a pickle. If only Falcre
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: was a girl dog, That's what I'm saying, like a girl.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: There was no reason that almost every character that a
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: tray you encountered needed to be male or male coded.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: So The only one aside from like the Empress is
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: more La the Turtle, who, again I was not sure
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: the gender of the person who voiced more La, and
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: I do think was coded as a woman all the
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: all the summaries I found you she she I don't know,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: got it? Okay, maybe it was just like a very
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: grumbly smoker's voice. That yeah, I was always sort of um.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: I used to put her and Ursula the Sea Witch
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: in the same sort of smoking anti character, A celebrated
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: a celebrated character. I love the character. I just like, yeah,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: you're wrong to hate children, but I like how you
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: do it, uh on their faith. It's kind of are
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: you mommy? Like great? Um? But yeah. And then so
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: there's more La, and then there's the Wench basically according
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: to her husband and yeah, I mean again, like I
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: I wonder how much more impactful this movie could have
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: been if, like the Bastion character and the Atrey You
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: character were like a little black or brown girl rather
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: than a little white boy, which is what so many
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: children family movies historically have been. So anyway, um No
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: does not pass the Bechtel test, but our Nipple scale,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: in which we rate the movie on a scale of
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: zero to five nipples based on examining it through an
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: intersectional feminist lens um. It's hard because I've only said
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: nice things. But for I guess this is gonna be
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna use the backtel cast cheat code, which is
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: to split down the middle give it to it a
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: half because while I do appreciate that it's a story
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: about a boy who loves reading and he expresses his
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: emotions and he like wants to grieve or he's trying
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to grieve, and his like toxic
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: egg dad is like no soun focus on math class
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: and uh it's and it's it's like about like young
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: boyhood vulnerability to some degree, and I appreciate that, But
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: there also is no reason that more of the characters
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: couldn't be girls, women female coded also no reason more
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: characters couldn't be people of color. There also could have
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: been more body diversity, especially since in the source material,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Bastion is fat and you almost never get to see
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: a fat kid as the hero of a movie. I
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: think there just could have been more diversity across the board.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, it's it's it's tricky. This is
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: a complicated one, but I'll stick with two and a
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: half and I will give one to deep Roy, I'll
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: give one to Deep Roy's racing Snail, and I'll give
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: my half my half nipple to Moonchild moon Child. I
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm honestly like, for our medric, I'm tempted
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: to go more like two, which bums me out because
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: I do think that there. I mean, if I was
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: doing it on a personal enjoyment, how it made me
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: feel and how much I want to watch it again,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: it would be like four to five, like it really
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: really hit for me. But I mean in terms of
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: like intersectionality, there's not a lot of it. I think
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: that like the strongest thing that this movie has going
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: for it was what you were describing so well a
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: couple of minutes ago, Jana, which is like encouraging young
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: boys to confront not just like traditional expectations of masculinity,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: but like confront their own emotions and have that be
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: a positive way to move through your life and have
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: that become a heroic quality. Because I think that that
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: is like a really really powerful thing that and and
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: also it's like basition. I don't think we've talked, but
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: I think that Bastian, like more so than a lot
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: of like little white boy protagonists that I've encountered throughout
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: my life, feels very like plug in able of like
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: he's I don't know, like it's just like I found
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: it easy to like put myself in him because you
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: don't know that much about him until the very very end.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: So he is kind of like like I can't think
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: of a better term than Avatar, which is poor cultural timing, um,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: but like he is a good character to kind of
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: plug yourself into. UM. But I mean in terms of
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: like how much of this movie is pushing back, I
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: think it pushes back on masculinity, but kind of not
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: very much else. And like Grusenkuli and there there were
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: there was no reason this movie had to be as
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: white as it was and as male dominated as it was.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: I do kind of in general think that Bastian as
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: a boy character really did work for me. But outside
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: of that character, like it would have been really cool
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: to see Bastian see himself in a character of another
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: gender or like there there were all these different ways
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: it could have gone. Um. And I really loved the
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: movie and I can't wait to watch it again and
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: I want to share it with people, so multitudes. For
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: this one, I'm going to go to I'm gonna give
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: one to Urgell, who was a woman in stuff and
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: you can't tell me different. And then I'm giving one
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: to the to the titty statue that could kill you
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: if you if you didn't believe in yourself about how
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: I like to feel like I am in really ation chips.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: I do now recall that the lasers come out of
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: the eyes, but boy, do they seem like they come
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: out of the tits though, right, because that would have
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: been too far, that would have been too far. That
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: totally Oh god, Um, I give it one point five,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: I think, and I for all the reasons that you've
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: already said, I don't even need to expand upon it. Um,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: I'm taking a half a point for a tray you. Unfortunately,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: I have to do that. Now. Do I love this movie? Yes,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: but on that scale, um, you know, and a lot
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: of the eighties movies that I grew up with, boyl
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: Up really really celebrating young boys, young white boys in
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: a way that is unnecessary. Um, But that was the
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: I guess important thing to discuss at the time for
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: some fucking reason. Yeah, but also helped to develop what
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: I believe to be the act of imagination that I
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: have now. Was highly encouraged by the never Ending story
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: and movies of its in its genre and of the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: time and of its caliber. Like I really felt like
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: I was raised by these movies and they were so
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: strange and bizarre and wild, but I love them. Yep.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: I want this podcast, Janna. Yes, I know I'm gonna
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: make it. Want it, I know I'll do it. I'll
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: do it, And please come back anytime to our show.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: Would love and thank you so much for being here.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: Where can people find you? Check out your stuff, follow
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: you online, et cetera. Well, I have, for the most
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: part laid off Twitter because it's just under hard to
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: be there now. But I'm on Instagram still and you
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: can see me on Rutherford Falls. You can see me
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: on the TV show Reservation Dogs, which is on FX
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: on Hulu. And also you can um listen to my
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: podcast that I'm going to be making about the maccabre
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: media content of the eighties for children. Can't Wait. Um.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: You can follow us on social media at Bechtel Cast.
• 1:33:12
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• 1:33:17
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• 1:33:22
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• 1:33:26
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• 1:33:31
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• 1:33:41
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• 1:33:51
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• 1:33:54
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  Speaker 1: Bechtel Cast. We've got some new designs that that Jamie designed,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: such as Shrek I in as it, such as feminist
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• 1:34:10
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• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: we jump on our our horny puppet dragon and get
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: out of here. Let's go Bye Bye,