March 10, 2022 • 45 mins
This week we talk about auditions, Free Guy, and round things out with a mash-up that boldly goes where no hobbit has gone before.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of My
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider
podcast podcast. That's all about the geeky things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
about them. I'm aerial casting and with me as always
(00:31):
is self aware. Jonathan Strickland, Where am I? And who
am I? Now? I was trying to build you up,
my friend, I hear you, but you're on the internet.
You're recording a podcast. Yeah, why do you build me up?
Butter cut only for me to tear me down. I'm
(00:52):
gonna reverse this whole thing. I'm gonna reverse this whole
thing because I have a question for you now, Ariel.
My question for you this week is, uh that you
know we know that you pursue various acting gigs. You've
pursued acting gigs on all forms of media, not just
(01:15):
the stage, but also on the videos and the films
and the TVs. And I was wondering if you could
share with us perhaps one of your positive audition experiences
and what made it a good one. Sure, so I
really want to give a film example, but I can't. Generally,
for me, a positive positive audition experience is one where
(01:38):
like I just go in and I'm able to I've
prepped and I've done my work, and then I'm just
able to let go and enjoy it and just whatever
will be will be um which I found letting go
is much easier in film than it was on stage.
But I think my best audition experience that I can
talk about is was for How to Succeed in Business
(01:59):
without really trying. It was a a community theater play
I did. I auditioned for Heavy LaRue. I went in
with my generic like Audrey slash, Harley Quinn slash makes
my husband want to peel his ears off, like New
York Jersey Ish accent, and just had fun, Like I
(02:22):
just owned it. I just I didn't even get like
I cared, but I didn't worry about it, and it
was so easy and I left feeling amazing and I
got a call back and then I got the role,
and just like the entire process was because I didn't
put that pressure on myself, it was just fun. You
get so much rejection in acting that you have to
(02:43):
have fun doing it or there's no point, right, You
just really have to love doing it and certainly many
times I've gotten in my own way trying to be
too perfect and not having fun so around about answer,
but it was an answer. No, I I get it. Yeah,
I totally understand, and I feel what you're saying, because
like I think of some of the auditions I've done,
(03:04):
and I've only I've probably done like a fifth of
the number of auditions that you've done. Um. But like
I think of the auditions I've done, and I think
about the ones where I got into my head too
much and I started to doubt myself and undermine myself
and then worry about what it was they were looking for.
And ultimately I've come to the conclusion that it's best
(03:29):
to kind of develop your own sense of what that
character is to you, to go in an audition with
that in mind, and if that happens to be what
they're looking for, that's awesome and you're doing well. And
if it's not what they're looking for, it's probably the
best for everybody, because if they had cast you and
they were trying to make you do stuff that you're
(03:49):
not really good at doing or you're not comfortable doing,
you're gonna have a bad experience, right, Um, like you're
gonna resent being in the production, whether it's a show
or a TV series or whatever it is. So I
was gonna tell the story of my worst audition experience
because this one, this one was brutal, and it was
(04:15):
for a production of the Rocky Horror Show. Uh. It
was a local theater company, again, a community theater kind
of company, but it was actually a college based one,
but they were casting outside of just the college students,
and on a whim, I decided to go an audition.
And the way these auditions worked is they were bringing
(04:36):
in auditioners and groups of five, uh four or five,
and they would bring in the group and they you
would sit backstage, like literally behind the curtain, and then
one by one you would go in front of the
curtain and do your singing audition. And that's really all
they were looking at at this point was just singing.
(04:56):
They weren't really looking at anything else. I don't even
remember if we did monologues, might have, but but you'll
understand what my memory is seared on the singing. So
we're each assigned a number, and I'm given the last
number in the group. I'm four or five, whatever it is.
So the first person gets up, walks in front of
the curtain and starts singing, and they have like Broadway
(05:20):
caliber chops. Like it just sounds amazing. Now I'm a
character singer, like I can carry a tune kind of
despite That's what I'll say, despite the evidence to the
contrary in the show, I can carry it tune, and
I can do it. I can do character voices, but
I am not, like, I do not confuse myself with
(05:43):
like a really good singer. So then the second person
goes up. They're even They're just as good, if not
better than the first one. Third person goes up, same thing,
fourth person goes up, same thing. Four in a row,
just knocking it out of the park, having these crystal
clear voices, being able to hit these incredible ranges and
belt and everything. Granted, Rocky Horror is not really about belting.
(06:06):
It's a rock and roll kind of show, not a
like show tune kind of show. But even so I
was I was so intimidated, and then I go out there. Now,
the piece of music I had chosen for my audition
was what would Brian Boitano do from the South South
Park film? Uh, which I was ready to do, except
(06:26):
for the fact that I didn't I didn't play piano,
and I didn't have anyone who played piano who was
available to work with me, so I was unaware that
the key it was in was about oh half an
octave too low for me to sing, or if it
were played up, an octave too high for my range
to sing. So then I struggled through an audition song
(06:49):
that's outside of my range. So I'm not able to
get project at all, and I'm barely able to hit
some of those notes. They have me do scales after that.
The only one who had to scales first, those who
don't la la la la la la la that kind
of thing. At least they liked you enough to do that.
They didn't just say thank you next well, and then
at the end of it they say, okay, we want
(07:12):
everyone to come to callbacks, uh to do this. But
at this point I felt the worst I have ever
felt in my life after any kind of stage thing,
which is saying something because I was once in a
Renaissance Festival performance where one of our actors didn't show
up and we still had to try and do the show.
This was worse than that. So I go home I'm like,
(07:35):
I am not going to go back to the callback
because I am convinced that the only reason they told
me was because all the other four were so good
that it would have been even more of a brutal
stab to say, we want everyone to come to the callback.
Not so fast, Jonathan. So I go home. I'm miserable
I skipped the callbacks. I don't even go to the
show when it opens. I feel just I cannot disassociate
(07:58):
that terrible feeling with what happened and skip ahead by
another like half a year. I'm in a little murder
mystery show, Ariel. You've done some of those murder mystery
shows too, right, Yeah, So I'm in it. Um and uh.
A former King of the Renaissance Festival, Danny is in
the show, playing playing the detective, and he had played
(08:22):
King Henry when I was when I first started off
at the Renaissance Festival. And I get into a conversation
with him, and I happened to tell this story about
the audition, and he said, wait, wait, what song was
it that you saying? I said it was What would
Brian Boitano do? He says, I know the people who
did that show, They loved your audition. They were so
sad that you didn't come back. And I'm like, Danny,
(08:44):
there's probably only one thing in the world you could
have said that would have really like twisted the knife,
and that was it. I mean, but I mean, it
just goes to show that we really are our own
worst critic, like having been and I think you've been.
I know you've been on the side where you're auditioning
people as well. You want to see people succeed. You're
(09:06):
expecting and hoping for the best from them, and that's
really important to to remember whenever you're auditioning or even
interviewing for anything, like for even for a job, right like,
they're talking to you because they want to see you
succeed and they they want to see how awesome you are.
So uh, there have been plenty of times who have
(09:26):
been like I didn't get this, I didn't get this,
and then I got it um, and plenty of times
are I've been like, man, I nailed this audition and
then crickets. So it just goes to show that you
can't judge yourself by other people's standards because you don't
know what their standards are. I think it's also great
that you you pointed out like, this is not an
adversarial relationship, this is not you versus them. They want
(09:48):
you on the team. And yeah, and so you know,
because that's easy to forget too. Like you, there's always
like the vision of the hardest nails casting director who's
like like like somehow like the Russian ballet uh uh owner,
who is who is just an absolute taskmaster. That's not
(10:10):
the way it is, at least not in my experience. Well,
and I tell you because Uh, I auditioned for Disney
once with a good friend of ours, Jen. We drove
down we auditioned for Disney. We went to the Adventurers
called that night and then we drove home that night,
so twenty four hour trip. Uh and I went in
and the auditioners like we got there at like six
three in the morning. Some maybe not that early, but
(10:32):
it was ungodly early for me. And like we stood
in line. We were not early in the line despite
getting there super early. There were tons of people before
us and I got in there and the auditioners are like, Okay,
what do you have for us and kind of just
like going through the paces, and I said, you know, what,
I'm just gonna have fun and do it. And like
my monologue excited them because I just said I'm just
(10:56):
I'm just gonna have fun. Like I'm here, I drove
eight hours to do this. I'm just gonna have fun,
And in return, they had fun. Now I bombed on
my on my singing audition because I just picked a
song I wasn't familiar with and I tried to hit
notes that were too high for me at the time. Um,
I am a decent singer, but I am also I
would not say I'm an amazing singer, So I'm also
(11:18):
kind of more of a character singer. Yeah, you know what,
I long for the old days of Broadway when character
singers ruled the earth. You listen to like classic Broadway
soundtracks and you're like, this person has a very like
their their voice has a lot of personality to it.
It is not what you would call the most technically
(11:39):
correct voice or has the strongest breath control or the
roundest sounds or whatever it may be, but you listen
to it like you listen to like classic soundtracks from
things like Chicago and stuff like that, and you're hearing
things that wouldn't pass in a lot of today's Broadway
productions where you get you get the sort of focus
(12:02):
on uh, vocal perfection, and a lot of people can
do both right, A lot of people hate them, but
they can be vocally perfect and also have a lot
of character in their performance. But I feel like a
lot of times I lose the character. I'm getting like
these beautiful voices, but I'm not. I don't feel that
it's necessarily reflective of the character they are, except if
(12:23):
it happens to be a comedy character, because they usually
you know, then they'll dial up the whatever comedic aspect
in order to make that a reflection of the personality. Otherwise,
it's just, oh, these are people who can sing real well.
I've I've definitely I've definitely experienced that with some musicals
(12:43):
as well. Well, you know what, this this conversation went
on so long, Aeriel, that we're gonna we're not gonna
get into any of our discussion. By the way, for
those who are listening, this is not going to be
a news episode. We should have said that off the
off the top, because uh, as you listen to this,
I'm currently on vacation, so we pre recorded it and
(13:03):
because of that, you know, we don't want to pre
record news items because they'll be way out of date
by the time you hear it. So instead we're gonna
take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna
talk about the movie Free Guy. We figured that occasionally
we're gonna chat about films, and we'll also talk about
other movies that share a quality that is present in
(13:25):
Free Guy. But first we're gonna take this quick break.
All right, So we're back and we have both watched
Free Guy. Thanks to my mom for watching it and saying, hey,
(13:49):
this is awesome, because that reminded me to chat with
Jonathan about it, who said he had watched it, and
so I watched it too. I technically watched it twice.
I watched it once on a plane, but I didn't
have headphones, so I watched it in silence, and then
I watched it with all the dialogue and it made
marginally more sense. So from that comment, Jonathan, I am
(14:14):
going to assume that you were nonplussed by this movie.
I thought it was fine. I thought I thought Free
Guy was fine. It is an entertaining diversion um. But
you know, also I would argue it's very Forgettable from
I'm sure that in a year I'll have very little
(14:35):
memory of this movie. I am. I also thought it
was fine. Um. I liked the world building, and I
liked the characters, but I felt like the third act
was too rushed for me and made some logic bounds
(14:58):
that m she didn't hit home because the rest of
the character building kind of hit home enough for me. Um,
I could definitely tell that this was a movie that
had some rewrites over the pandemic. Yeah, So for those
who aren't aware of what Free Guy is, just in
case you haven't seen it, you're not aware of it.
It's the It's it's kind of two storylines going on
(15:19):
at the same time. You've got this game world that's
kind of like Grand Theft Auto meets Fortnite. And in
that game world you have Ryan Reynolds who's playing a
character called Guy and he's an n PC, but of
course he's not aware of that. He's just a resident
of this where all the crazy stuff that happens in
video games that's just day to day activity. He's never
(15:41):
part of that, or at least never directly part of
that because he's in PC. But like, no one thinks
it's strange that this stuff happens. Then you've got the
storyline that's unfolding in the real world, where you have
these folks who created a program that was designed to
create artificially intelligent Umka actors who would evolve over time
(16:02):
and would exist within a virtual world, and that this
um Giant game company ended up secretly incorporating that code
into this game without the creator's permission, and so they
are on a quest essentially to uncover evidence that that's
(16:23):
what happened so that they can get their game back.
So these are the two storylines that are going at
the same time. And of course the big reveal is
that the NPC character it comes to the realization that
he inhabits a game, that it is a virtual world
that he is in, and that the people who are
these superpowered creatures flying around with sunglasses on are real
(16:46):
humans who are controlling characters within the game. And then
the plot goes from there. So did you find the
Because I really loved the first half of the movie.
I love I was. I thought it was a really
cool idea that these characters, even though they were having
the same conversation every day with their their scripted lines
(17:07):
had memories of their previous day conversations. Um, I really
liked that. I loved the detail of like the characters
who were just jumping every five steps down the street,
because that's how I play a video game like the one,
Like you look in the background and there would be
someone who's just running into a wall, like they're just
trying to run, but there's a wall in the way,
and you're like, yeah, that's when someone like someone's little
(17:30):
sister got hold of the controller or something. Yeah, So
I really like, I really felt like I was in
this world. I felt like they had a great attention
to detail, and I loved watching the characters developed. The
real world stuff didn't interested me as much. That's where
I felt it was rushed and honestly, tycho A TV
plays the villain, and I felt like he was the
(17:51):
villain in the wrong movie, a villain in the wrong movie.
It was a little weird like he because he comes
across so car tunish in many ways, but like you
start questioning things, a lot of things like how did
he get to where he is? Right? Like, how did
he get to this point? He presumably at some point
(18:12):
was a developer, unless he was just uh, you know,
rich from the start and just bought a company and
then paid people to make stuff. But he seems also
very ignorant of a lot of basic stuff if he
was a developer. Um yeah, it was very weird. Uh,
because I cover technology for my other show. There were
(18:35):
a lot of things there where I was like, well,
this this is I know it's a movie, but this
isn't how this works. Like that happened to me a lot.
But um, but at the same time, yeah, but at
the same time, you're like, it's a movie. You know,
you gotta again suspend disbelief or whatever. Um. I think
the in game stuff was the strongest stuff in the movie.
(18:56):
I agree with you, Ariel. I think I think that
was where uh. I mean, it's definitely where the heart
of the movie was. And also I liked the first
I liked the first part of the movie better than
the second part. Yeah. So I'm saying the end game
not end game, but end game. Oh I heard end game? Okay, yes, no,
I I apologize for my annunciation. Yeah. No, I think
(19:17):
the stuff that was happening inside the game was way
more interesting, and I do agree. I felt like the
first half was more fun than the second half, with
the exception of some you can't and call them Easter
eggs because they were so blatant. But some of the
references that were being made towards the very end of
the game into the movie because one of the other
things that happened while this movie was being developed is
(19:40):
that Disney acquired Fox and so suddenly that meant that
the movie potentially had access to some Disney assets that
it wouldn't have otherwise, and they made use of them
and other video game assets. I liked the meta and
free guy that in a movie about using other people's
i P, that they just leaned heavily into using other
(20:02):
people's i P and various points of the movie. I
also think that as far as using other characters, other actors,
and product placement, it was done better than let's say,
Ready Player one, which is a similar movie. UM and
I like I like that they had guest stars and
they were all like exception of Channing Tatum, they were
(20:23):
all pretty minute like John Krasinski was in it, The
Rock was in it. There was an actual twitch streamer, Pokemone.
There are several twitch twitch streamers because Jack Septicai is
in there too, Okay, I wasn't sure, Like I'm not
as familiar with Jack Septicai, but I am familiar with Pokemon.
So they had all these references that meant things to
like video gamers and popular culture people. But I felt
(20:45):
like they put it in better than Ready Player one,
which was just like hey reference, hey reference, or even Shrek,
which is like hey reference, hey reference. Yeah. No, the
stuff that they were doing like, they were doing references
the way Fortnite does, which is I mean again, they
were kind of playing a Fortnite right the content some
Fortnite stuff in there, yeah, yeah, but yeah, especially like
(21:08):
the dancing stuff and everything. But but this also got
us to thinking about what is called in trope world
medium awareness, as in when you have a story where
you have at least some character or something involved in
that story that appears to be aware that it is
(21:28):
in a story. Medium awareness can take a lot of
different forms. Sometimes it is blatantly obvious, like Deadpool is
a great example of a character who has medium awareness,
and only that. It's medium awareness that depends upon whichever
form of medium you're looking at, right, Like in a
comic book, Deadpool is aware he's in a comic book
(21:48):
and also can manipulate things because the way comic book
structure is, he can work with that, whereas when he's
in a film, he's aware he's in a film. That's
the whole gag we saw in the first two Deadpool movies.
Um ye, not in Wolverine Origin, sure, I think also
their slapstick who literally is that somebody who literally becomes
(22:12):
a cartoon character in the model world who does similar stuff. Yeah,
and there are there are other ones that are a
little more like. It's not as it's not as overt like.
There's some that are over, but it's not that's not
like the point where it's not a through line. For example,
if you watch any of the Muppet movies, typically there's
at least some point where they're talking about the fact
(22:34):
that they are in a movie, and the characters are
aware that they're in a movie. It doesn't happen over
and over and over again, but it will happen like
you know, you know, you'll have a bit where Rizzo
will say this one, this is supposed to be a
kids movie, like in in the The Treasure Island Muppets,
um or Tim Curry will say, upstage, lads, this is
(22:57):
my only number, thus acknowledging the this is a a
construct a story. Um and then yeah, that almost feels
I mean, it rides the line. It almost feels more
fourth wall breaking the medium awareness because something like Free Guy,
they come to the realization like you watch that journey, Well,
(23:17):
sure that's the thing. Though medium awareness can take those
different different aspects, like you can have it where it's
a like within the story, it's a character who becomes
aware that they're in a story, and that leads to conflict, right,
it might lead to some sort of existential drama for
the character. For example, the Truman Show is a film
(23:40):
where you have the main character realizing that everything around
him is a fiction, that it's all been constructed, and
that his life is the subject of a reality show,
and that everything else around him is not real, like
it's all actors who are performing the part of his
friends and family and things of that nature, and that uh,
(24:04):
all of his actions are constrained because of this. He
is he is highly um restricted from being able to
explore beyond his small town because that would mean that
he would discover that he's not in a real situation
and the show would go away. So that's an example
of medium awareness, where a character becomes aware that they're
(24:28):
in a show within a show. Obviously, he doesn't get
to a point where he realizes he's in a movie
that's about a guy who finds out that he's the
subject of a show. It doesn't go that far. I
feel like at least most of the film's intelligence should
shows that I'm familiar with personally that play with that,
like Matrix, West World, Trument Show, Stranger than Fiction, don't
(24:50):
lose the plot as much as Free Guy. Like there's
a better end point, sure, a better overall story. Free
Guy was so much fun, But it's kind of the
way I write mash ups where I have a great
concept and I don't know how to resolve it. I
don't know how to get out. No, I totally understand that. Yeah,
(25:10):
I think there are good ways of doing it, and
there are bad ways of doing it. And it's again
like sometimes it's just limited. Like sometimes you're literally using
medium awareness in order to do a joke, and it's
not to It's not something where the character just remains
perpetually aware that they're in a fake setting. One of
the examples I put in our notes was a fire.
(25:32):
Signed Theater, which is a radio comedy group that was
out of California. They used to do these shows where
they would do things like a detective series kind of
similar to old style radio detective series, and they would
have jokes in the show that referenced radio stuff, where
(25:53):
like there's a point where you you hear like they're
supposed to be getting close to a fire. This is
a just put your mucklocks over by the cell pane
and let them dry out because the cellophane being the
how they're making the sound effect of the fires, and
get your bucklucks out of the cellophane before they scorch
um or a bit where is this it had been
snowing since the top of the page, And like little
(26:14):
jokes like that where they're making references to the fact
that these are actors who are reading a script and
not like an actual story playing out um. But again
it's done for comedy. It's like deconstructing the radio play.
That was the whole purpose of it. Uh. And then
there are also examples of this like in television the
TV series Community, the character of a bed obviously has
(26:36):
some level of medium awareness and they use it to
make a lot of jokes and to suggest that abed
needs to think about life in terms of television and
movies in order to make sense of it. But they're
also using it as an excuse to deconstruct their own
shows format. Mhm. I tend to love as as long
(26:57):
as they use it sparingly when a TV show does that, true, um,
because yeah, it makes it. It makes me feel personally
loved in that episode of that show. I don't know why,
I know, I know it's a gimmick. Um, as long
as it's you sparingly agreed. I mean like, if you
overuse it, then it starts to become a thing where
there's this thing called lamp shading. Lamp shading is when
(27:19):
you call attention to when you are making use of
a particular trope, but you're by calling attention to it,
you're kind of giving yourself the excuse of making use
of that particular trope. Um, and that if you do that,
it's almost like you've released the tension that the audience
would have where they would otherwise say, wait, that doesn't
(27:42):
make sense. How would the character know that or react
that way within the character's world. It's kind of a
way of of smoothing that over. But if you use
it too much, eventually people are gonna be like, come on,
come on with this. Yeah, I mean, but it's that
way with any joke unless you're Steve Martin really or
(28:05):
the Muppets. Good grief, I mean, yeah, but Steve Martin, like,
I associate Steve Martin often with the Muppets, uh, for
their similar style of bring it, just keep doing it
till it comes back around to funny. Plus, he was
in the first Muppet movie. Yes, well that was fun
So end comment on Free Guy. Would you recommend people
(28:27):
watch it? Jonathan, Uh, if you don't have other stuff
that you feel like you really should be watching, It's
it's a fun diversion. I think tycho a Tit is
funny in it. I agree with you that he kind
of feels like he belongs in a different movie. But
um yeah, I give it a weak recommendation. How about you? Um,
I do give it a recommendation again. And I love
(28:49):
taco A TV and I love the things he's created.
Jojo Rabbit is brilliant and I love Thor Ragnarok, but
he was the weak point for me. I did not
enjoy watching him. I felt like he was too over
the top and disconnected from reality in a story about
a sentient video game character, um and not sonic UM.
(29:11):
But I still enjoyed it. It was feel good and
it was fun and if you like video games, it'll
make you chuckle. Just for there. You can tell that
the people who created this also love video games. So,
uh I would I would give it a lazy Saturday
afternoon recommend Fair enough. Well, that's our discussion of Free
(29:31):
Guy and medium awareness. I'm sure we'll touch on stuff
like that again in the future. Uh. Now, we're going
to take another break, and when we come back, we've
got a mash up for you. All right, we're and
(30:00):
this mashup was a listener suggestion from Clara. Thank you, Clara.
Uh it was great to hear from you and get
this recommendation. We hope you enjoy it. And uh, I
guess we should tell you what the mashup actually is.
That usually helps One of them is Lord of the
Rings is a little fantasy series this Tolking Guy made.
(30:23):
I got a tattoo that relates to Lord of the Rings. Yeah,
if you don't know what Lord of the Rings is,
I don't know how you found this podcast. Yeah. Well
also we've talked about it before so recently ish, so
go back and listen. And the other property is Star
Trek the Next Generation, which also if you don't well,
(30:46):
I guess it's old enough now that if you don't
know what the Next Generation is, that's that's maybe okay,
but you should know what Star Trek is. Um. Yes,
it's the one with Patrick Stewart, Profess Sir X as
the captain. UM Jean Luc Picard. Yeah, it's the it's
the Piccard series before Picard, Yes, which the you know,
(31:10):
the second season of Piccard just came out and uh
was a little bit of an inspiration because they are
using one of my favorite characters in it, which is Q.
Spoiler alert, I also use Q. Oh. Well, I'm gonna
let you go first, just in case mine and being
the same exact as yours. All right, Well, here here's mine,
(31:30):
which is called Trek of the Lord of the Rings.
Jean Luke Baggins has a problem. Part of him very
much wishes to be back in his native Hobbiton, tending
to vineyards and spending his evenings curled up by a
fire in his little French hobbit hole, or as the
French say, is true de obeit, but duty calls after
(31:51):
the wizard q Dolf arrives one day with a curious
message that Jean Luke's uncle left behind a communicator of
incredible power, the one communicator, Cutoff called it, and that
this communicator was, in all actuality a device engineered by
the evil Romulin named Sauron, and if Sauron were to
possess this communicator, he would be unstoppable and all of
(32:15):
the Middle Federation would fall under his control. So cut
Off says to Jean Luke, you need to take this
thing to the Rivendale Quadrant. And Jean Luke is like, wait,
you're an all powerful wizard, dude, why don't you take it?
And Cutoff says, uh, it's a test, yep, it's a
test to make sure Hobbits are um worthy. And then
he disappears before anyone can question the plot hole further.
(32:38):
So Jean Luke gets ready to set out, but he
needs his away team, so Sam wise Riker joins as
his number one. Then you got Mary LaForge, sweet intelligent, inventive,
blind Hobbit, and then there's Data the Android, and they
all set out on the Enterprise, which isn't just a
way of saying that they got to work, but also
that they used a starship called the Enterprise to do it,
(32:59):
because is I'm clever Excelsior. Before long, the group finds
themselves pursued by Klingon Raiths, which are these wicked small
Klingon fighter ships that can disappear and stuff. But they
managed to meet up with someone who is really capable,
and that's Warfa Gorn, a brilliant warrior and would be
king of the Klingon Empire, which in ages passed was
(33:20):
known as the kingdom that guarded the Middle Federation against
the forces of Salon. So Warfa Gorn joins the crew
and there's a bit of a scuffle with the Klingon
Raiths and the Neutral Zone on the way to the
Rivendale Quadrant, and Jean Luke cops a phaser blast to
the shoulder, but his friends managed to get him away
to the Rivendale Quadrant, where he is treated by Vulcan
medics who look a bit like elves because they have
(33:41):
pointy ears. Anyway, then there's this big meeting where everyone
decides the only way to get rid of the one
communicator is for someone to go all the way to
the doom hole, which sounds about as pleasant as it is,
and to fire the one communicator directly into it. So
a group consisting of Jean Luke, Sam Wise, Mary, Data, Warfagren,
(34:03):
cut Off and newcomers Gimli Troy, the empathetic Dwarf, Legoless
Crusher and irritating Elf who is for some reason good
at everything, and the walking phaser sponge known as Lieutenant
bore Yar Mirror. Okay, Lieutenant bore Yar here. So their
first task is to make their way through the treacherous
Maria Nebula, where cut Off pieces out after seeing a
(34:24):
bow rock class Cardassian worship. But don't worry, he'll pop
up again later in the story. The rest get through Maria,
but not far off. After they get to the other side,
Lieutenant bore Yar Mirror is unceremoniously killed by a gooped monster.
Turns out the actor playing bore Yar Mirror wasn't really
satisfied whereas part was going, and negotiations broke down, so
he got written out anyway. Around this point everyone splits
(34:48):
up anyway. Jean Lucan number one head off to the
Moore Door sector, where the doom Hole is unbeknownst to them,
but beknownst to us, they are pursued by Borgam, a
pathetic creature that at one point had been assimilated by
the Great Communicator but then lost the Great Communicator to
Jean Luke's uncle half a century earlier. Anyway, bored Um
(35:09):
follows from a distance for a while, but eventually Sam
Wise and John Luke catch on to that fact and
they set up a little ambush to find out what's
going on, and after Borgam is brought aboard the Enterprise,
they decide that he's valuable because he knows the way
to the doom Hole, but he seems pretty slimy, and
despite all that, Jean Luke seems to trust bored Um
way more than he trusts Sam Wise, which creates some
(35:30):
dramatic tension on the ship. But that really upsets Gene
Roddenberry because he thought there shouldn't be any conflict between
crew members because we would have evolved beyond that by then,
har har heart. Anyway, Jean Luke eventually names Boredam his
new number one, and that really upsets Sam Wise a lot,
and when Borgam really turns out to be a narsty well,
Jean Luke doesn't even take time to apologize, as Sam Wise,
(35:51):
but because Sam Wise has to stick by Jean Luke
to have any hope of promotion, he sucks it up
and just sticks it out. Meanwhile, most of the rest
continue on to Deep Moment, a heavily fortified star base
where they work to unite people's against Son and fight
off a Romulan invasion. And it's very cinematic, but Legolis
Crusher keeps doing unrealistically incredible things, so we all hate
(36:12):
him by the end of it. Oh and cute Off
shows up again because he just can't shake that guy,
but now he's dressed all in white for some reason. Anyway,
we get these branching storylines, and it gets even more
complicated because then Mary and his best friend Data also
split up, but I can't remember which is which and
the story so one of them goes to the Horsey
people and the other one goes to the Big City people.
(36:32):
And then we get to this point where Jean Luke,
having managed to take the communicator all this way, finally
feels it weighing on him. Plus and I totally forgot
to mention this many years earlier. Jean Luke was briefly
assimilated into the Communicator group, you know, the board group
that's the same one that Borgam was in, and so
that kind of gnaws at him. Also, he gets really
confused as to where to throw the Great Communicator once
(36:54):
they get to the doom Hole, because Sam Wise is like,
just throw it into the light master Jean Luke, and
Jean Luca is like, are four lights and if you
get that reference, let us know at Ellen c at
iHeart Media dot com. Anyway, that's all a moot point
because Jean Luke collapses and then Borgam rushes up and
grabs the communicator and starts to communicate with everybody, except
(37:15):
he totally doesn't look where he's going and he falls
right into the doom Hole and that ends up ripping
so Ron into little bitty pieces. Sam Wise Ryker get
Jean Luke, Baggins loaded up onto the Enterprise and they
fly off or listening to the Eagles. And you might say, well,
why didn't they just listen to the eagles at the
beginning of the movie, And I would say, listen, this
all had to happen. This way for there to be
a story. Okay. Anyway, after they take it easy Eagles reference,
(37:41):
they end up flying back to Shire Space, where Jean
Luke can recover from his ordeal, and he retires from
ship captain ing and Sam wise takes over and has
some adventures, and eventually Jean Luke decides to go on
a boat ride. It's all really bittersweet, and then the
enterprise blows up because apparently that has to happen in
every Star Trek story now. But don't worry. There's a
lot of letters in the Elvish alphabet, so we'll just
(38:02):
end up with another one later on the end. I
loved it. I was trying to quietly laugh at my
mic um not into my mic throughout the entire thing. Uh,
there is one thing in particular that uh we used
exactly the same, but I'll get to that, Okay. My
(38:26):
episode is called to Boldly Troll. One particularly quiet day
in space, Captain Jean Luc Picard decided to take some
time for himself and enjoy a nice picnic in the
French countryside. Via the hollow deck. He grabbed a bottle
of real wine, as well as some cheese and grapes
from the replicators and off he went. Sadly, many of
the other members of the crew had the same idea,
(38:47):
so when he got to the holideck, Data Diana, Troy, Beverly, Crusher,
Commander Riker, and Warf were also there. They're a bit surprised,
but being good friends, they sat and ate a meal together. However,
about halfway through the meal, Que popped into their delight
all afternoon and said, good, you're all here. My plan worked.
Let's ditch these eleven seas and visit some fun history.
And with that he snapped his fingers and everyone disappeared
(39:09):
from the hollow deck. When the days cleared, the crew
found themselves on what looked to be a mountain pass.
They could hear the sound of an angry mob, growling
and yelling and running towards them. The mob sounded vaguely
like Klingons, but Warf confirmed that they weren't. He didn't
recognize the language at all. The card said this is
not funny. Que, return us to our picnic, but Q refused.
(39:29):
Picard clicked his communicator badge and commanded the computer to
stop the simulation, but the computer didn't respond. Data confirmed Captain,
it looks like we're no longer on the ship, but
on something resembling a medieval Earth's New Zealand. Just then,
Picard's communicator fell off and onto the rocky ground below.
When John Luke picked it up, it turned into a
ring and slipped onto his finger, and he disappeared. The
(39:50):
crew was shocked. Data tried to scamper pcard, but his
triquarter turned into a bow and arrow, and all of
a sudden Data realized his already impeccable hearing was even better.
He reached up and found that his ears were now pointed.
He turned to the crew and saw that they had
changed to Troy also had pointed ears. Richer and Beverly
were still human, but in like armor with swords. And
then there was Wharf, who had shrunk to like nearly
(40:13):
half his height and was holding an axe. They all
turned to find Q and yelled at him to fix this,
but he quickly disappeared, just as the angry mob they
had heard round in the corner and they were face
to face with an army of orcs and trolls. Away
they went, with their primitive weapons, fighting through grotesque army.
Just then Picard reappeared, but it was the child version
of of himself. Not again. Riker yelled, but he quickly
(40:36):
turned his attention back to the incoming onslaught. As capable
and skilled as this crew was, even with a child picard,
they still were not prepared for a battle like this,
and very quickly things looked very bleak. Suddenly Q reappeared
in gray robes with a long gray beard, holding a
large staff and said, I'm disappointed at you. Fine, I'll
do this myself, and he stamped his staff on the ground.
(40:59):
A bright light ashton. The entire army was felled. Everyone
fell to the ground, battered and bruised, except Wharf, who
was sad to find the fighting had stopped. Q called
it a failed experiment and sent the entire crew, no
worse for wear, back to the Enterprise. That night, John
Luke was sitting in his drawing room when all of
a sudden it dawned on him that their situation seemed
awfully familiar. He went to his bookshelf and pulled out
(41:22):
a frail, dusty book and opened it to the middle.
It read Q Dolf single handedly defeated the evil armies
of helms Deep and saved the Fellowship from certain death.
The card rolled his eyes and debated whether he had
to scold que for changing history or fantasy or literature.
He wasn't actually sure what category this fell into, but
(41:42):
that would be a problem for another day. Back in
WARF's room, we see Warf that lift attached to a
long pole, beard longer than larger than normal, dressed in
chain mail, holding a Holidack program disk with a card
on it. The card read, have fun, my little Dwarf
love Q. A smile slowly builds on WARF's face as
(42:02):
the enterprise theme comes up and out the end, I
am so proud of you for the dwarf joke, and
I am so disappointed in myself for not coming up
with it. Well, let me tell you, I wrote the
entire thing, and it wasn't until I was writing that
last line that I thought of it. So I made
(42:23):
him a dwarf and didn't even realize that it sounded
like his name. Yeah, because I made him Aragorn, because
I was like, I make his Aragorn. I've already made
Rych or Sam Wise, So I was running out of options.
It wasn't gonna bring Chief of Brian in there or anything.
That was fun. It was it was like I had
(42:44):
a lot of fun poking fun at some of the
complaints people often have a Lord of the Rings, like
the whole thing about why didn't they just have the
Eagles take them to Mount Doom at the beginning and
all that kind of stuff. I love, as you know,
I love using these mash says an opportunity to kind
of poke fun at the at the materials we're using
(43:05):
to mash up. Yeah, Like, if you can't have fun
with something and make fun of something, then do you
really love it? Yeah? I don't actually know the answer
to that question. You know that, you know, I you know,
I am having a good time when I'm sitting there
making references to the Eagles the band because I'm like,
I'm like the Big Lebowski or actually the little Lebowski.
(43:26):
I'm like the dude. I am not an Eagles fan.
I was both the dude. Because that's a line that
doesn't pass on a family friendly podcast. Well, our family
friendly listeners appreciate that, Jonathan. Well, we should wrap this
(43:47):
up by saying, if you have suggestions for mashups, or
maybe you have your own thoughts about a Lord of
the Ring star Trek mash up that you know you
want to share with us, or just anything else, like
maybe there's something else you want us to chat about.
Maybe there's specific movie you would like us to kind
of talk about. Uh, it helps if we've both seen it.
I mean, we will go out and seek out movies
that we haven't seen before. Yeah, yeah, within limits. I mean,
(44:10):
Ariel is not a horror fan, so let's not make
or watch horror movies, y'all. Um. I mean, but it
depends on the movie. But yeah, don't test me. Yeah,
it sounded like a challenge. It wasn't. It wasn't. I'll
put to this way, She's not gonna be watching Hostel, Okay,
I will not let that happen. Um. Anyway, y'all, let
us know. One way to do that is, as I
(44:31):
mentioned in my mashup, emailing us. The email address once
again is l n C at i heeart media dot com. Yep.
You can also reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram. On Twitter where l n C Underscore Podcast
on Facebook and Instagram. We are large and or drunk Collider.
Please please please If you like the show, make sure
to tell your friends, share episodes, write reviews, rate us.
(44:54):
All of that really does help to get a larger
audience and more fun things to talk about. That's true,
And until next time, I am Jonathan, there are full
life Strickland and I am Ariel Uh. I want some
fishies casting really bad at this m m m m
(45:33):
m m. The Large New John Collider is the production
of I Heart Radio and was created by Ariel Casting.
Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited,
and published by Tory Harrison. For more podcast on my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(45:54):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The Large Nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of My
Heart Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider
podcast podcast. That's all about the geeky things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
about them. I'm aerial casting and with me as always
(00:31):
is self aware. Jonathan Strickland, Where am I? And who
am I? Now? I was trying to build you up,
my friend, I hear you, but you're on the internet.
You're recording a podcast. Yeah, why do you build me up?
Butter cut only for me to tear me down. I'm
(00:52):
gonna reverse this whole thing. I'm gonna reverse this whole
thing because I have a question for you now, Ariel.
My question for you this week is, uh that you
know we know that you pursue various acting gigs. You've
pursued acting gigs on all forms of media, not just
(01:15):
the stage, but also on the videos and the films
and the TVs. And I was wondering if you could
share with us perhaps one of your positive audition experiences
and what made it a good one. Sure, so I
really want to give a film example, but I can't. Generally,
for me, a positive positive audition experience is one where
(01:38):
like I just go in and I'm able to I've
prepped and I've done my work, and then I'm just
able to let go and enjoy it and just whatever
will be will be um which I found letting go
is much easier in film than it was on stage.
But I think my best audition experience that I can
talk about is was for How to Succeed in Business
(01:59):
without really trying. It was a a community theater play
I did. I auditioned for Heavy LaRue. I went in
with my generic like Audrey slash, Harley Quinn slash makes
my husband want to peel his ears off, like New
York Jersey Ish accent, and just had fun, Like I
(02:22):
just owned it. I just I didn't even get like
I cared, but I didn't worry about it, and it
was so easy and I left feeling amazing and I
got a call back and then I got the role,
and just like the entire process was because I didn't
put that pressure on myself, it was just fun. You
get so much rejection in acting that you have to
(02:43):
have fun doing it or there's no point, right, You
just really have to love doing it and certainly many
times I've gotten in my own way trying to be
too perfect and not having fun so around about answer,
but it was an answer. No, I I get it. Yeah,
I totally understand, and I feel what you're saying, because
like I think of some of the auditions I've done,
(03:04):
and I've only I've probably done like a fifth of
the number of auditions that you've done. Um. But like
I think of the auditions I've done, and I think
about the ones where I got into my head too
much and I started to doubt myself and undermine myself
and then worry about what it was they were looking for.
And ultimately I've come to the conclusion that it's best
(03:29):
to kind of develop your own sense of what that
character is to you, to go in an audition with
that in mind, and if that happens to be what
they're looking for, that's awesome and you're doing well. And
if it's not what they're looking for, it's probably the
best for everybody, because if they had cast you and
they were trying to make you do stuff that you're
(03:49):
not really good at doing or you're not comfortable doing,
you're gonna have a bad experience, right, Um, like you're
gonna resent being in the production, whether it's a show
or a TV series or whatever it is. So I
was gonna tell the story of my worst audition experience
because this one, this one was brutal, and it was
(04:15):
for a production of the Rocky Horror Show. Uh. It
was a local theater company, again, a community theater kind
of company, but it was actually a college based one,
but they were casting outside of just the college students,
and on a whim, I decided to go an audition.
And the way these auditions worked is they were bringing
(04:36):
in auditioners and groups of five, uh four or five,
and they would bring in the group and they you
would sit backstage, like literally behind the curtain, and then
one by one you would go in front of the
curtain and do your singing audition. And that's really all
they were looking at at this point was just singing.
(04:56):
They weren't really looking at anything else. I don't even
remember if we did monologues, might have, but but you'll
understand what my memory is seared on the singing. So
we're each assigned a number, and I'm given the last
number in the group. I'm four or five, whatever it is.
So the first person gets up, walks in front of
the curtain and starts singing, and they have like Broadway
(05:20):
caliber chops. Like it just sounds amazing. Now I'm a
character singer, like I can carry a tune kind of
despite That's what I'll say, despite the evidence to the
contrary in the show, I can carry it tune, and
I can do it. I can do character voices, but
I am not, like, I do not confuse myself with
(05:43):
like a really good singer. So then the second person
goes up. They're even They're just as good, if not
better than the first one. Third person goes up, same thing,
fourth person goes up, same thing. Four in a row,
just knocking it out of the park, having these crystal
clear voices, being able to hit these incredible ranges and
belt and everything. Granted, Rocky Horror is not really about belting.
(06:06):
It's a rock and roll kind of show, not a
like show tune kind of show. But even so I
was I was so intimidated, and then I go out there. Now,
the piece of music I had chosen for my audition
was what would Brian Boitano do from the South South
Park film? Uh, which I was ready to do, except
(06:26):
for the fact that I didn't I didn't play piano,
and I didn't have anyone who played piano who was
available to work with me, so I was unaware that
the key it was in was about oh half an
octave too low for me to sing, or if it
were played up, an octave too high for my range
to sing. So then I struggled through an audition song
(06:49):
that's outside of my range. So I'm not able to
get project at all, and I'm barely able to hit
some of those notes. They have me do scales after that.
The only one who had to scales first, those who
don't la la la la la la la that kind
of thing. At least they liked you enough to do that.
They didn't just say thank you next well, and then
at the end of it they say, okay, we want
(07:12):
everyone to come to callbacks, uh to do this. But
at this point I felt the worst I have ever
felt in my life after any kind of stage thing,
which is saying something because I was once in a
Renaissance Festival performance where one of our actors didn't show
up and we still had to try and do the show.
This was worse than that. So I go home I'm like,
(07:35):
I am not going to go back to the callback
because I am convinced that the only reason they told
me was because all the other four were so good
that it would have been even more of a brutal
stab to say, we want everyone to come to the callback.
Not so fast, Jonathan. So I go home. I'm miserable
I skipped the callbacks. I don't even go to the
show when it opens. I feel just I cannot disassociate
(07:58):
that terrible feeling with what happened and skip ahead by
another like half a year. I'm in a little murder
mystery show, Ariel. You've done some of those murder mystery
shows too, right, Yeah, So I'm in it. Um and uh.
A former King of the Renaissance Festival, Danny is in
the show, playing playing the detective, and he had played
(08:22):
King Henry when I was when I first started off
at the Renaissance Festival. And I get into a conversation
with him, and I happened to tell this story about
the audition, and he said, wait, wait, what song was
it that you saying? I said it was What would
Brian Boitano do? He says, I know the people who
did that show, They loved your audition. They were so
sad that you didn't come back. And I'm like, Danny,
(08:44):
there's probably only one thing in the world you could
have said that would have really like twisted the knife,
and that was it. I mean, but I mean, it
just goes to show that we really are our own
worst critic, like having been and I think you've been.
I know you've been on the side where you're auditioning
people as well. You want to see people succeed. You're
(09:06):
expecting and hoping for the best from them, and that's
really important to to remember whenever you're auditioning or even
interviewing for anything, like for even for a job, right like,
they're talking to you because they want to see you
succeed and they they want to see how awesome you are.
So uh, there have been plenty of times who have
(09:26):
been like I didn't get this, I didn't get this,
and then I got it um, and plenty of times
are I've been like, man, I nailed this audition and
then crickets. So it just goes to show that you
can't judge yourself by other people's standards because you don't
know what their standards are. I think it's also great
that you you pointed out like, this is not an
adversarial relationship, this is not you versus them. They want
(09:48):
you on the team. And yeah, and so you know,
because that's easy to forget too. Like you, there's always
like the vision of the hardest nails casting director who's
like like like somehow like the Russian ballet uh uh owner,
who is who is just an absolute taskmaster. That's not
(10:10):
the way it is, at least not in my experience. Well,
and I tell you because Uh, I auditioned for Disney
once with a good friend of ours, Jen. We drove
down we auditioned for Disney. We went to the Adventurers
called that night and then we drove home that night,
so twenty four hour trip. Uh and I went in
and the auditioners like we got there at like six
three in the morning. Some maybe not that early, but
(10:32):
it was ungodly early for me. And like we stood
in line. We were not early in the line despite
getting there super early. There were tons of people before
us and I got in there and the auditioners are like, Okay,
what do you have for us and kind of just
like going through the paces, and I said, you know, what,
I'm just gonna have fun and do it. And like
my monologue excited them because I just said I'm just
(10:56):
I'm just gonna have fun. Like I'm here, I drove
eight hours to do this. I'm just gonna have fun,
And in return, they had fun. Now I bombed on
my on my singing audition because I just picked a
song I wasn't familiar with and I tried to hit
notes that were too high for me at the time. Um,
I am a decent singer, but I am also I
would not say I'm an amazing singer, So I'm also
(11:18):
kind of more of a character singer. Yeah, you know what,
I long for the old days of Broadway when character
singers ruled the earth. You listen to like classic Broadway
soundtracks and you're like, this person has a very like
their their voice has a lot of personality to it.
It is not what you would call the most technically
(11:39):
correct voice or has the strongest breath control or the
roundest sounds or whatever it may be, but you listen
to it like you listen to like classic soundtracks from
things like Chicago and stuff like that, and you're hearing
things that wouldn't pass in a lot of today's Broadway
productions where you get you get the sort of focus
(12:02):
on uh, vocal perfection, and a lot of people can
do both right, A lot of people hate them, but
they can be vocally perfect and also have a lot
of character in their performance. But I feel like a
lot of times I lose the character. I'm getting like
these beautiful voices, but I'm not. I don't feel that
it's necessarily reflective of the character they are, except if
(12:23):
it happens to be a comedy character, because they usually
you know, then they'll dial up the whatever comedic aspect
in order to make that a reflection of the personality. Otherwise,
it's just, oh, these are people who can sing real well.
I've I've definitely I've definitely experienced that with some musicals
(12:43):
as well. Well, you know what, this this conversation went
on so long, Aeriel, that we're gonna we're not gonna
get into any of our discussion. By the way, for
those who are listening, this is not going to be
a news episode. We should have said that off the
off the top, because uh, as you listen to this,
I'm currently on vacation, so we pre recorded it and
(13:03):
because of that, you know, we don't want to pre
record news items because they'll be way out of date
by the time you hear it. So instead we're gonna
take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna
talk about the movie Free Guy. We figured that occasionally
we're gonna chat about films, and we'll also talk about
other movies that share a quality that is present in
(13:25):
Free Guy. But first we're gonna take this quick break.
All right, So we're back and we have both watched
Free Guy. Thanks to my mom for watching it and saying, hey,
(13:49):
this is awesome, because that reminded me to chat with
Jonathan about it, who said he had watched it, and
so I watched it too. I technically watched it twice.
I watched it once on a plane, but I didn't
have headphones, so I watched it in silence, and then
I watched it with all the dialogue and it made
marginally more sense. So from that comment, Jonathan, I am
(14:14):
going to assume that you were nonplussed by this movie.
I thought it was fine. I thought I thought Free
Guy was fine. It is an entertaining diversion um. But
you know, also I would argue it's very Forgettable from
I'm sure that in a year I'll have very little
(14:35):
memory of this movie. I am. I also thought it
was fine. Um. I liked the world building, and I
liked the characters, but I felt like the third act
was too rushed for me and made some logic bounds
(14:58):
that m she didn't hit home because the rest of
the character building kind of hit home enough for me. Um,
I could definitely tell that this was a movie that
had some rewrites over the pandemic. Yeah, So for those
who aren't aware of what Free Guy is, just in
case you haven't seen it, you're not aware of it.
It's the It's it's kind of two storylines going on
(15:19):
at the same time. You've got this game world that's
kind of like Grand Theft Auto meets Fortnite. And in
that game world you have Ryan Reynolds who's playing a
character called Guy and he's an n PC, but of
course he's not aware of that. He's just a resident
of this where all the crazy stuff that happens in
video games that's just day to day activity. He's never
(15:41):
part of that, or at least never directly part of
that because he's in PC. But like, no one thinks
it's strange that this stuff happens. Then you've got the
storyline that's unfolding in the real world, where you have
these folks who created a program that was designed to
create artificially intelligent Umka actors who would evolve over time
(16:02):
and would exist within a virtual world, and that this
um Giant game company ended up secretly incorporating that code
into this game without the creator's permission, and so they
are on a quest essentially to uncover evidence that that's
(16:23):
what happened so that they can get their game back.
So these are the two storylines that are going at
the same time. And of course the big reveal is
that the NPC character it comes to the realization that
he inhabits a game, that it is a virtual world
that he is in, and that the people who are
these superpowered creatures flying around with sunglasses on are real
(16:46):
humans who are controlling characters within the game. And then
the plot goes from there. So did you find the
Because I really loved the first half of the movie.
I love I was. I thought it was a really
cool idea that these characters, even though they were having
the same conversation every day with their their scripted lines
(17:07):
had memories of their previous day conversations. Um, I really
liked that. I loved the detail of like the characters
who were just jumping every five steps down the street,
because that's how I play a video game like the one,
Like you look in the background and there would be
someone who's just running into a wall, like they're just
trying to run, but there's a wall in the way,
and you're like, yeah, that's when someone like someone's little
(17:30):
sister got hold of the controller or something. Yeah, So
I really like, I really felt like I was in
this world. I felt like they had a great attention
to detail, and I loved watching the characters developed. The
real world stuff didn't interested me as much. That's where
I felt it was rushed and honestly, tycho A TV
plays the villain, and I felt like he was the
(17:51):
villain in the wrong movie, a villain in the wrong movie.
It was a little weird like he because he comes
across so car tunish in many ways, but like you
start questioning things, a lot of things like how did
he get to where he is? Right? Like, how did
he get to this point? He presumably at some point
(18:12):
was a developer, unless he was just uh, you know,
rich from the start and just bought a company and
then paid people to make stuff. But he seems also
very ignorant of a lot of basic stuff if he
was a developer. Um yeah, it was very weird. Uh,
because I cover technology for my other show. There were
(18:35):
a lot of things there where I was like, well,
this this is I know it's a movie, but this
isn't how this works. Like that happened to me a lot.
But um, but at the same time, yeah, but at
the same time, you're like, it's a movie. You know,
you gotta again suspend disbelief or whatever. Um. I think
the in game stuff was the strongest stuff in the movie.
(18:56):
I agree with you, Ariel. I think I think that
was where uh. I mean, it's definitely where the heart
of the movie was. And also I liked the first
I liked the first part of the movie better than
the second part. Yeah. So I'm saying the end game
not end game, but end game. Oh I heard end game? Okay, yes, no,
I I apologize for my annunciation. Yeah. No, I think
(19:17):
the stuff that was happening inside the game was way
more interesting, and I do agree. I felt like the
first half was more fun than the second half, with
the exception of some you can't and call them Easter
eggs because they were so blatant. But some of the
references that were being made towards the very end of
the game into the movie because one of the other
things that happened while this movie was being developed is
(19:40):
that Disney acquired Fox and so suddenly that meant that
the movie potentially had access to some Disney assets that
it wouldn't have otherwise, and they made use of them
and other video game assets. I liked the meta and
free guy that in a movie about using other people's
i P, that they just leaned heavily into using other
(20:02):
people's i P and various points of the movie. I
also think that as far as using other characters, other actors,
and product placement, it was done better than let's say,
Ready Player one, which is a similar movie. UM and
I like I like that they had guest stars and
they were all like exception of Channing Tatum, they were
(20:23):
all pretty minute like John Krasinski was in it, The
Rock was in it. There was an actual twitch streamer, Pokemone.
There are several twitch twitch streamers because Jack Septicai is
in there too, Okay, I wasn't sure, Like I'm not
as familiar with Jack Septicai, but I am familiar with Pokemon.
So they had all these references that meant things to
like video gamers and popular culture people. But I felt
(20:45):
like they put it in better than Ready Player one,
which was just like hey reference, hey reference, or even Shrek,
which is like hey reference, hey reference. Yeah. No, the
stuff that they were doing like, they were doing references
the way Fortnite does, which is I mean again, they
were kind of playing a Fortnite right the content some
Fortnite stuff in there, yeah, yeah, but yeah, especially like
(21:08):
the dancing stuff and everything. But but this also got
us to thinking about what is called in trope world
medium awareness, as in when you have a story where
you have at least some character or something involved in
that story that appears to be aware that it is
(21:28):
in a story. Medium awareness can take a lot of
different forms. Sometimes it is blatantly obvious, like Deadpool is
a great example of a character who has medium awareness,
and only that. It's medium awareness that depends upon whichever
form of medium you're looking at, right, Like in a
comic book, Deadpool is aware he's in a comic book
(21:48):
and also can manipulate things because the way comic book
structure is, he can work with that, whereas when he's
in a film, he's aware he's in a film. That's
the whole gag we saw in the first two Deadpool movies.
Um ye, not in Wolverine Origin, sure, I think also
their slapstick who literally is that somebody who literally becomes
(22:12):
a cartoon character in the model world who does similar stuff. Yeah,
and there are there are other ones that are a
little more like. It's not as it's not as overt like.
There's some that are over, but it's not that's not
like the point where it's not a through line. For example,
if you watch any of the Muppet movies, typically there's
at least some point where they're talking about the fact
(22:34):
that they are in a movie, and the characters are
aware that they're in a movie. It doesn't happen over
and over and over again, but it will happen like
you know, you know, you'll have a bit where Rizzo
will say this one, this is supposed to be a
kids movie, like in in the The Treasure Island Muppets,
um or Tim Curry will say, upstage, lads, this is
(22:57):
my only number, thus acknowledging the this is a a
construct a story. Um and then yeah, that almost feels
I mean, it rides the line. It almost feels more
fourth wall breaking the medium awareness because something like Free Guy,
they come to the realization like you watch that journey, Well,
(23:17):
sure that's the thing. Though medium awareness can take those
different different aspects, like you can have it where it's
a like within the story, it's a character who becomes
aware that they're in a story, and that leads to conflict, right,
it might lead to some sort of existential drama for
the character. For example, the Truman Show is a film
(23:40):
where you have the main character realizing that everything around
him is a fiction, that it's all been constructed, and
that his life is the subject of a reality show,
and that everything else around him is not real, like
it's all actors who are performing the part of his
friends and family and things of that nature, and that uh,
(24:04):
all of his actions are constrained because of this. He
is he is highly um restricted from being able to
explore beyond his small town because that would mean that
he would discover that he's not in a real situation
and the show would go away. So that's an example
of medium awareness, where a character becomes aware that they're
(24:28):
in a show within a show. Obviously, he doesn't get
to a point where he realizes he's in a movie
that's about a guy who finds out that he's the
subject of a show. It doesn't go that far. I
feel like at least most of the film's intelligence should
shows that I'm familiar with personally that play with that,
like Matrix, West World, Trument Show, Stranger than Fiction, don't
(24:50):
lose the plot as much as Free Guy. Like there's
a better end point, sure, a better overall story. Free
Guy was so much fun, But it's kind of the
way I write mash ups where I have a great
concept and I don't know how to resolve it. I
don't know how to get out. No, I totally understand that. Yeah,
(25:10):
I think there are good ways of doing it, and
there are bad ways of doing it. And it's again
like sometimes it's just limited. Like sometimes you're literally using
medium awareness in order to do a joke, and it's
not to It's not something where the character just remains
perpetually aware that they're in a fake setting. One of
the examples I put in our notes was a fire.
(25:32):
Signed Theater, which is a radio comedy group that was
out of California. They used to do these shows where
they would do things like a detective series kind of
similar to old style radio detective series, and they would
have jokes in the show that referenced radio stuff, where
(25:53):
like there's a point where you you hear like they're
supposed to be getting close to a fire. This is
a just put your mucklocks over by the cell pane
and let them dry out because the cellophane being the
how they're making the sound effect of the fires, and
get your bucklucks out of the cellophane before they scorch
um or a bit where is this it had been
snowing since the top of the page, And like little
(26:14):
jokes like that where they're making references to the fact
that these are actors who are reading a script and
not like an actual story playing out um. But again
it's done for comedy. It's like deconstructing the radio play.
That was the whole purpose of it. Uh. And then
there are also examples of this like in television the
TV series Community, the character of a bed obviously has
(26:36):
some level of medium awareness and they use it to
make a lot of jokes and to suggest that abed
needs to think about life in terms of television and
movies in order to make sense of it. But they're
also using it as an excuse to deconstruct their own
shows format. Mhm. I tend to love as as long
(26:57):
as they use it sparingly when a TV show does that, true, um,
because yeah, it makes it. It makes me feel personally
loved in that episode of that show. I don't know why,
I know, I know it's a gimmick. Um, as long
as it's you sparingly agreed. I mean like, if you
overuse it, then it starts to become a thing where
there's this thing called lamp shading. Lamp shading is when
(27:19):
you call attention to when you are making use of
a particular trope, but you're by calling attention to it,
you're kind of giving yourself the excuse of making use
of that particular trope. Um, and that if you do that,
it's almost like you've released the tension that the audience
would have where they would otherwise say, wait, that doesn't
(27:42):
make sense. How would the character know that or react
that way within the character's world. It's kind of a
way of of smoothing that over. But if you use
it too much, eventually people are gonna be like, come on,
come on with this. Yeah, I mean, but it's that
way with any joke unless you're Steve Martin really or
(28:05):
the Muppets. Good grief, I mean, yeah, but Steve Martin, like,
I associate Steve Martin often with the Muppets, uh, for
their similar style of bring it, just keep doing it
till it comes back around to funny. Plus, he was
in the first Muppet movie. Yes, well that was fun
So end comment on Free Guy. Would you recommend people
(28:27):
watch it? Jonathan, Uh, if you don't have other stuff
that you feel like you really should be watching, It's
it's a fun diversion. I think tycho a Tit is
funny in it. I agree with you that he kind
of feels like he belongs in a different movie. But
um yeah, I give it a weak recommendation. How about you? Um,
I do give it a recommendation again. And I love
(28:49):
taco A TV and I love the things he's created.
Jojo Rabbit is brilliant and I love Thor Ragnarok, but
he was the weak point for me. I did not
enjoy watching him. I felt like he was too over
the top and disconnected from reality in a story about
a sentient video game character, um and not sonic UM.
(29:11):
But I still enjoyed it. It was feel good and
it was fun and if you like video games, it'll
make you chuckle. Just for there. You can tell that
the people who created this also love video games. So,
uh I would I would give it a lazy Saturday
afternoon recommend Fair enough. Well, that's our discussion of Free
(29:31):
Guy and medium awareness. I'm sure we'll touch on stuff
like that again in the future. Uh. Now, we're going
to take another break, and when we come back, we've
got a mash up for you. All right, we're and
(30:00):
this mashup was a listener suggestion from Clara. Thank you, Clara.
Uh it was great to hear from you and get
this recommendation. We hope you enjoy it. And uh, I
guess we should tell you what the mashup actually is.
That usually helps One of them is Lord of the
Rings is a little fantasy series this Tolking Guy made.
(30:23):
I got a tattoo that relates to Lord of the Rings. Yeah,
if you don't know what Lord of the Rings is,
I don't know how you found this podcast. Yeah. Well
also we've talked about it before so recently ish, so
go back and listen. And the other property is Star
Trek the Next Generation, which also if you don't well,
(30:46):
I guess it's old enough now that if you don't
know what the Next Generation is, that's that's maybe okay,
but you should know what Star Trek is. Um. Yes,
it's the one with Patrick Stewart, Profess Sir X as
the captain. UM Jean Luc Picard. Yeah, it's the it's
the Piccard series before Picard, Yes, which the you know,
(31:10):
the second season of Piccard just came out and uh
was a little bit of an inspiration because they are
using one of my favorite characters in it, which is Q.
Spoiler alert, I also use Q. Oh. Well, I'm gonna
let you go first, just in case mine and being
the same exact as yours. All right, Well, here here's mine,
(31:30):
which is called Trek of the Lord of the Rings.
Jean Luke Baggins has a problem. Part of him very
much wishes to be back in his native Hobbiton, tending
to vineyards and spending his evenings curled up by a
fire in his little French hobbit hole, or as the
French say, is true de obeit, but duty calls after
(31:51):
the wizard q Dolf arrives one day with a curious
message that Jean Luke's uncle left behind a communicator of
incredible power, the one communicator, Cutoff called it, and that
this communicator was, in all actuality a device engineered by
the evil Romulin named Sauron, and if Sauron were to
possess this communicator, he would be unstoppable and all of
(32:15):
the Middle Federation would fall under his control. So cut
Off says to Jean Luke, you need to take this
thing to the Rivendale Quadrant. And Jean Luke is like, wait,
you're an all powerful wizard, dude, why don't you take it?
And Cutoff says, uh, it's a test, yep, it's a
test to make sure Hobbits are um worthy. And then
he disappears before anyone can question the plot hole further.
(32:38):
So Jean Luke gets ready to set out, but he
needs his away team, so Sam wise Riker joins as
his number one. Then you got Mary LaForge, sweet intelligent, inventive,
blind Hobbit, and then there's Data the Android, and they
all set out on the Enterprise, which isn't just a
way of saying that they got to work, but also
that they used a starship called the Enterprise to do it,
(32:59):
because is I'm clever Excelsior. Before long, the group finds
themselves pursued by Klingon Raiths, which are these wicked small
Klingon fighter ships that can disappear and stuff. But they
managed to meet up with someone who is really capable,
and that's Warfa Gorn, a brilliant warrior and would be
king of the Klingon Empire, which in ages passed was
(33:20):
known as the kingdom that guarded the Middle Federation against
the forces of Salon. So Warfa Gorn joins the crew
and there's a bit of a scuffle with the Klingon
Raiths and the Neutral Zone on the way to the
Rivendale Quadrant, and Jean Luke cops a phaser blast to
the shoulder, but his friends managed to get him away
to the Rivendale Quadrant, where he is treated by Vulcan
medics who look a bit like elves because they have
(33:41):
pointy ears. Anyway, then there's this big meeting where everyone
decides the only way to get rid of the one
communicator is for someone to go all the way to
the doom hole, which sounds about as pleasant as it is,
and to fire the one communicator directly into it. So
a group consisting of Jean Luke, Sam Wise, Mary, Data, Warfagren,
(34:03):
cut Off and newcomers Gimli Troy, the empathetic Dwarf, Legoless
Crusher and irritating Elf who is for some reason good
at everything, and the walking phaser sponge known as Lieutenant
bore Yar Mirror. Okay, Lieutenant bore Yar here. So their
first task is to make their way through the treacherous
Maria Nebula, where cut Off pieces out after seeing a
(34:24):
bow rock class Cardassian worship. But don't worry, he'll pop
up again later in the story. The rest get through Maria,
but not far off. After they get to the other side,
Lieutenant bore Yar Mirror is unceremoniously killed by a gooped monster.
Turns out the actor playing bore Yar Mirror wasn't really
satisfied whereas part was going, and negotiations broke down, so
he got written out anyway. Around this point everyone splits
(34:48):
up anyway. Jean Lucan number one head off to the
Moore Door sector, where the doom Hole is unbeknownst to them,
but beknownst to us, they are pursued by Borgam, a
pathetic creature that at one point had been assimilated by
the Great Communicator but then lost the Great Communicator to
Jean Luke's uncle half a century earlier. Anyway, bored Um
(35:09):
follows from a distance for a while, but eventually Sam
Wise and John Luke catch on to that fact and
they set up a little ambush to find out what's
going on, and after Borgam is brought aboard the Enterprise,
they decide that he's valuable because he knows the way
to the doom Hole, but he seems pretty slimy, and
despite all that, Jean Luke seems to trust bored Um
way more than he trusts Sam Wise, which creates some
(35:30):
dramatic tension on the ship. But that really upsets Gene
Roddenberry because he thought there shouldn't be any conflict between
crew members because we would have evolved beyond that by then,
har har heart. Anyway, Jean Luke eventually names Boredam his
new number one, and that really upsets Sam Wise a lot,
and when Borgam really turns out to be a narsty well,
Jean Luke doesn't even take time to apologize, as Sam Wise,
(35:51):
but because Sam Wise has to stick by Jean Luke
to have any hope of promotion, he sucks it up
and just sticks it out. Meanwhile, most of the rest
continue on to Deep Moment, a heavily fortified star base
where they work to unite people's against Son and fight
off a Romulan invasion. And it's very cinematic, but Legolis
Crusher keeps doing unrealistically incredible things, so we all hate
(36:12):
him by the end of it. Oh and cute Off
shows up again because he just can't shake that guy,
but now he's dressed all in white for some reason. Anyway,
we get these branching storylines, and it gets even more
complicated because then Mary and his best friend Data also
split up, but I can't remember which is which and
the story so one of them goes to the Horsey
people and the other one goes to the Big City people.
(36:32):
And then we get to this point where Jean Luke,
having managed to take the communicator all this way, finally
feels it weighing on him. Plus and I totally forgot
to mention this many years earlier. Jean Luke was briefly
assimilated into the Communicator group, you know, the board group
that's the same one that Borgam was in, and so
that kind of gnaws at him. Also, he gets really
confused as to where to throw the Great Communicator once
(36:54):
they get to the doom Hole, because Sam Wise is like,
just throw it into the light master Jean Luke, and
Jean Luca is like, are four lights and if you
get that reference, let us know at Ellen c at
iHeart Media dot com. Anyway, that's all a moot point
because Jean Luke collapses and then Borgam rushes up and
grabs the communicator and starts to communicate with everybody, except
(37:15):
he totally doesn't look where he's going and he falls
right into the doom Hole and that ends up ripping
so Ron into little bitty pieces. Sam Wise Ryker get
Jean Luke, Baggins loaded up onto the Enterprise and they
fly off or listening to the Eagles. And you might say, well,
why didn't they just listen to the eagles at the
beginning of the movie, And I would say, listen, this
all had to happen. This way for there to be
a story. Okay. Anyway, after they take it easy Eagles reference,
(37:41):
they end up flying back to Shire Space, where Jean
Luke can recover from his ordeal, and he retires from
ship captain ing and Sam wise takes over and has
some adventures, and eventually Jean Luke decides to go on
a boat ride. It's all really bittersweet, and then the
enterprise blows up because apparently that has to happen in
every Star Trek story now. But don't worry. There's a
lot of letters in the Elvish alphabet, so we'll just
(38:02):
end up with another one later on the end. I
loved it. I was trying to quietly laugh at my
mic um not into my mic throughout the entire thing. Uh,
there is one thing in particular that uh we used
exactly the same, but I'll get to that, Okay. My
(38:26):
episode is called to Boldly Troll. One particularly quiet day
in space, Captain Jean Luc Picard decided to take some
time for himself and enjoy a nice picnic in the
French countryside. Via the hollow deck. He grabbed a bottle
of real wine, as well as some cheese and grapes
from the replicators and off he went. Sadly, many of
the other members of the crew had the same idea,
(38:47):
so when he got to the holideck, Data Diana, Troy, Beverly, Crusher,
Commander Riker, and Warf were also there. They're a bit surprised,
but being good friends, they sat and ate a meal together. However,
about halfway through the meal, Que popped into their delight
all afternoon and said, good, you're all here. My plan worked.
Let's ditch these eleven seas and visit some fun history.
And with that he snapped his fingers and everyone disappeared
(39:09):
from the hollow deck. When the days cleared, the crew
found themselves on what looked to be a mountain pass.
They could hear the sound of an angry mob, growling
and yelling and running towards them. The mob sounded vaguely
like Klingons, but Warf confirmed that they weren't. He didn't
recognize the language at all. The card said this is
not funny. Que, return us to our picnic, but Q refused.
(39:29):
Picard clicked his communicator badge and commanded the computer to
stop the simulation, but the computer didn't respond. Data confirmed Captain,
it looks like we're no longer on the ship, but
on something resembling a medieval Earth's New Zealand. Just then,
Picard's communicator fell off and onto the rocky ground below.
When John Luke picked it up, it turned into a
ring and slipped onto his finger, and he disappeared. The
(39:50):
crew was shocked. Data tried to scamper pcard, but his
triquarter turned into a bow and arrow, and all of
a sudden Data realized his already impeccable hearing was even better.
He reached up and found that his ears were now pointed.
He turned to the crew and saw that they had
changed to Troy also had pointed ears. Richer and Beverly
were still human, but in like armor with swords. And
then there was Wharf, who had shrunk to like nearly
(40:13):
half his height and was holding an axe. They all
turned to find Q and yelled at him to fix this,
but he quickly disappeared, just as the angry mob they
had heard round in the corner and they were face
to face with an army of orcs and trolls. Away
they went, with their primitive weapons, fighting through grotesque army.
Just then Picard reappeared, but it was the child version
of of himself. Not again. Riker yelled, but he quickly
(40:36):
turned his attention back to the incoming onslaught. As capable
and skilled as this crew was, even with a child picard,
they still were not prepared for a battle like this,
and very quickly things looked very bleak. Suddenly Q reappeared
in gray robes with a long gray beard, holding a
large staff and said, I'm disappointed at you. Fine, I'll
do this myself, and he stamped his staff on the ground.
(40:59):
A bright light ashton. The entire army was felled. Everyone
fell to the ground, battered and bruised, except Wharf, who
was sad to find the fighting had stopped. Q called
it a failed experiment and sent the entire crew, no
worse for wear, back to the Enterprise. That night, John
Luke was sitting in his drawing room when all of
a sudden it dawned on him that their situation seemed
awfully familiar. He went to his bookshelf and pulled out
(41:22):
a frail, dusty book and opened it to the middle.
It read Q Dolf single handedly defeated the evil armies
of helms Deep and saved the Fellowship from certain death.
The card rolled his eyes and debated whether he had
to scold que for changing history or fantasy or literature.
He wasn't actually sure what category this fell into, but
(41:42):
that would be a problem for another day. Back in
WARF's room, we see Warf that lift attached to a
long pole, beard longer than larger than normal, dressed in
chain mail, holding a Holidack program disk with a card
on it. The card read, have fun, my little Dwarf
love Q. A smile slowly builds on WARF's face as
(42:02):
the enterprise theme comes up and out the end, I
am so proud of you for the dwarf joke, and
I am so disappointed in myself for not coming up
with it. Well, let me tell you, I wrote the
entire thing, and it wasn't until I was writing that
last line that I thought of it. So I made
(42:23):
him a dwarf and didn't even realize that it sounded
like his name. Yeah, because I made him Aragorn, because
I was like, I make his Aragorn. I've already made
Rych or Sam Wise, So I was running out of options.
It wasn't gonna bring Chief of Brian in there or anything.
That was fun. It was it was like I had
(42:44):
a lot of fun poking fun at some of the
complaints people often have a Lord of the Rings, like
the whole thing about why didn't they just have the
Eagles take them to Mount Doom at the beginning and
all that kind of stuff. I love, as you know,
I love using these mash says an opportunity to kind
of poke fun at the at the materials we're using
(43:05):
to mash up. Yeah, Like, if you can't have fun
with something and make fun of something, then do you
really love it? Yeah? I don't actually know the answer
to that question. You know that, you know, I you know,
I am having a good time when I'm sitting there
making references to the Eagles the band because I'm like,
I'm like the Big Lebowski or actually the little Lebowski.
(43:26):
I'm like the dude. I am not an Eagles fan.
I was both the dude. Because that's a line that
doesn't pass on a family friendly podcast. Well, our family
friendly listeners appreciate that, Jonathan. Well, we should wrap this
(43:47):
up by saying, if you have suggestions for mashups, or
maybe you have your own thoughts about a Lord of
the Ring star Trek mash up that you know you
want to share with us, or just anything else, like
maybe there's something else you want us to chat about.
Maybe there's specific movie you would like us to kind
of talk about. Uh, it helps if we've both seen it.
I mean, we will go out and seek out movies
that we haven't seen before. Yeah, yeah, within limits. I mean,
(44:10):
Ariel is not a horror fan, so let's not make
or watch horror movies, y'all. Um. I mean, but it
depends on the movie. But yeah, don't test me. Yeah,
it sounded like a challenge. It wasn't. It wasn't. I'll
put to this way, She's not gonna be watching Hostel, Okay,
I will not let that happen. Um. Anyway, y'all, let
us know. One way to do that is, as I
(44:31):
mentioned in my mashup, emailing us. The email address once
again is l n C at i heeart media dot com. Yep.
You can also reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram. On Twitter where l n C Underscore Podcast
on Facebook and Instagram. We are large and or drunk Collider.
Please please please If you like the show, make sure
to tell your friends, share episodes, write reviews, rate us.
(44:54):
All of that really does help to get a larger
audience and more fun things to talk about. That's true,
And until next time, I am Jonathan, there are full
life Strickland and I am Ariel Uh. I want some
fishies casting really bad at this m m m m
(45:33):
m m. The Large New John Collider is the production
of I Heart Radio and was created by Ariel Casting.
Jonathan Strickland is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited,
and published by Tory Harrison. For more podcast on my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(45:54):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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