December 16, 2020 • 40 mins
A look at how the pandemic has affected our favorite media and when it's coming back and the precautions being taken to bring it to us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of My
Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider Podcast,
the podcast that's all about the kiki things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
(00:28):
about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me, as always
is podcast brilliant person Jonathan Strickland. Hey, Ariel, I've got
a question for you. My question to you is you
have the power to cast your beloved co host in
(00:51):
any role in any musical. What role do you cast
me in? In? Which show the dude from chess? Because
you like chess. When you say the dude from Chess,
there are I will have you know, multiple dudes in chess.
Do you mean the one night in Bangkok dude? Do
you mean the Okay? All right, you mean I got you?
(01:13):
You mean the American got it bankok? Oriental in they
don't know what? That is an acceptable answer, and I
happily accept the role. I will start training now and
start singing Abba or the lead dude in music man,
never mind pumping any water to your parents. Are caught
with a sister and empty on a Saturday night, and
(01:33):
that's trouble yes, you got lots and lots of trouble. Okay,
that's also excellent. I mean I I do like to
tell people that they've got trouble right here in River
City with a capital T that runs with P and
that stands for pool. Yes, and that's kind of what
what what what we're talking about today? Yeah? Would you
would you like to know what I would cast you in?
(01:54):
I do. I would cast you as Audrey from Little
Shop Horrors. Oh, I love that. It's as good. It
is a good role. I want. That's on my bucket list.
I was baiting when you asked me giving you a
(02:16):
silly answer, but then it would have given away, uh
something coming up later in the episode. Yeah, well that's
that's kind of why I chose this question, is that
it is foreshadowing, but you'll have to stick to the
end to find out what the heck I shadowed for.
So we are entering into our our first official first
segment where we're going to talk about news now however,
(02:41):
transparency for you guys out there in listener land. We're
recording this well before the show goes up, So rather
than pick news that will be stale, we thought we
would talk a little bit about trends that have happened,
particularly over the pandemic, and and you know, stuff that
we would have talked about, wanted to talk about prior
(03:01):
to the launch of ellen C version two. Yes, So
the first part is, I mean, these are all the bummers, right, like,
the pandemic has hit everyone super hard, and that does
not exclude the entertainment industry. The first thing I was
going to bring up, and in fact it does lead
right back from the musicals thing, is that live theater
(03:25):
is essentially on hold right now. Apart from some creative
uses of like streaming media and some very limited performances,
but by and large, live theater has been put on hold.
Broadway is on hiatus at least until May of t one,
(03:45):
but even more than that, the Met Opera isn't even
starting back till September. I would actually be shocked if
we see Broadway open in the spring. Right now, most
of the projections I see when it comes to vaccine
nations and herd immunity are pointing to this time next year.
But you know what, it's okay because during this time,
(04:07):
we've just got so much good TV out there that
we can watch. How a bunch of new shows happening,
not not that many new ones, not that many, not
that many returning ones either. Yeah. So this leads into
our other part of talking about the bummers of COVID,
and that would be that a lot of television series
(04:28):
were affected by this, either going into a kind of
limbo or postponing a season because obviously the the risks
of production were very high, especially early on when we
still were learning about the transmission. Arguably we're still learning
(04:50):
about the transmission of of COVID nineteen, but back in
the beginning, no one was really sure under what situations
it was particularly, yeah, exactly, so, so everyone was shutting
down so yeah so um, and a lot of the
shows that shut down were in production um when they started.
(05:13):
Yeah so, so we we saw things like shows like
Stranger Things season four had just started production when the
pandemic hit. I think they were in production for two
weeks and then the pandemic shut them down. They had
planned on being finished with their production by late August,
(05:33):
and they didn't even get started again until late fall
of this year. They are back in production, um, but
obviously it's a much more controlled approach than what they
were looking at when they were first starting in the
early part of the year. Yeah, the film industry has
some pretty stringent COVID regulations going on right now. Um,
(05:54):
you know, they were lucky and and so were some
other shows. Uh, Atlanta and Fargo were postponed to the
pandemic that are planned to come back. Some are not
coming back. Glow and Drunk History, we're both filming when
the pandemic hit and then got canceled. And it was
sad for Glow, a dramedy about the old show Glow
(06:17):
about female wrestlers, because it was their final season. Yeah,
the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling will not get their final
season because the budget just wasn't there to keep things
kind of treading water indefinitely, and so the decision was
made to pull the plug, which is a bummer, especially
(06:38):
since that's a Netflix series. And you see some of
the stuff that Netflix green lights and you start to wonder.
Because Glow was one of those that got critical acclaim,
it was popular and it had good, good critical response.
There are some things that Netflix funds that you start
to question, like who is who's actually paying stuff out.
(07:02):
I mean, granted, a lot of those are probably much
lower budget productions so they don't cost as much. But yeah,
you know, it wasn't just it wasn't just filming. Um,
it wasn't just budgeting. It was also scheduling. So like
Society was another Netflix show that did really well and
I haven't watched it, but the trailer looked funny. Um,
(07:25):
but they were doing really well. But when it came
to trying to keep that show going through the pandemic
juggling exceptionally large casts, not just because of COVID, but
with scheduling, with postponing, the production just took that one
out of the water too. Yeah, And some of these
shows were already on the way to winding down, and
(07:48):
now the question is for some of them, when will
we get to see their final seasons? And for others
there's still the the scary question of will we see
them because there's always a chance that they'll come to
a similar conclusion that we saw with Glow. So like
super Girl, for example, was already heading into its final season. Yeah, yeah,
(08:11):
which in theory we're still getting black Lightning got renewed,
but now it's been said that this next season will
be its final season as well. I don't know if
that's COVID related though, right. But but my point being
that because because of these production issues, although we are
seeing a lot more shows going back to production, but
because of these production issues, it's it worries me because
(08:34):
that uncertainty can play out by affecting the shows and
making them conclude earlier than it was originally planned. Yeah. Although,
although you've got a note here about the Stranger Things
seasons before going back to that, because there was a
little added benefit to postponing the filming of the show,
(08:55):
which was that they were able to revise their scripture. Yeah,
so this was something that made me laugh. Apparently in
every other season of Stranger Things, the creators of the show,
we're still working on scripts when the early scripts for
the season went into production. So episode one might be
in production and they might still be working on episode four,
(09:17):
which means they don't really know where everything is going
to lead, and they might come up with a great
idea for episode four, but they didn't really set it
up in episode one because they hadn't thought of it yet.
So the benefit of this was that because things got postponed,
the Brothers could end up working on the scripts for
the entire season. They completed this season, then they were
(09:40):
able to go back through and revise the earlier scripts
and have them be more cohesive. So in a way,
Calamity forced them to practice better writing approaches to their work,
and that, to me is interesting. I mean, there's some
movies that I watched and as I was watching them,
I felt like I was watching a film that was
(10:02):
probably still being written while they were shooting the film,
and I later found out that was the case, the
big one being uh, Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of
the Black Pearl, the very first one. As I was
watching it, I was like, there's no way this was
a full script before this, and I love that movie,
don't get me wrong, But I tell yeah, I was right.
I was like, yeah, no, this this, this story is
(10:25):
meandering all over the place. It's clear that they didn't
really know where they were going when they started shooting
because the story wasn't finished yet. Um. And the same
thing was true with Stranger Things. But now we're going
to get a season four that arguably is much stronger,
which which is good because at the end of season three,
I was like, how, what where are they going to
(10:46):
do with this? Yeah, that's a that is a correct
sentence in my mind. Um yeah, it hit so many
of I mean, it hit essentially every production, right, So yeah,
I remember I remember at the beginning going which okay,
I'm waiting on these four shows for their new season.
How many of them are far enough in their production
(11:08):
schedule to still come out despite the fact that everything
is shut down, like Umbrella Academy. For me, it was
Doom Patrol. Doom Patrol. That is a series I did
not expect to enjoy, and it made me fall in
love with A Street. I was about to say, Street
a Talking Street is so such a weird show, and
(11:31):
you know one of those where it's so weird that
you feel like it's the kind of thing that if
you breathe on it wrong, it's gonna go away. I mean, Ariel,
you and I we've been fans of shows that were
truly weird kind of genre shows that never stood a chance,
and it's amazing they done. As far as Gallivant being
(11:53):
a more recent example, right, great show, Great show, felt
like it could have gone one more season. The another
one that I think of all the time, and this
one really is a throwback, is The Adventures of Briscoe
County Jr. Which was so much fun. Uh. It suffered
(12:15):
a little bit with the orb storyline, which I felt
was too weird even for me. But again, one of
those shows where you're like, these are people who are
taking chances to bring very unusual stuff to TV, and uh,
they get like a passionate fan base. It may not
be big enough to justify continuing it, but that's the
(12:37):
kind of thing like that. I think of it with
Doom Patrol, right, It's that kind of category of show.
And then you get something like a pandemic, which is
obviously above and beyond the normal challenges these shows face,
and you worry about whether what are its chances to survive? Yeah,
I mean right now, it's still slated to come back. Um,
(12:58):
and I'm glad that some of the shows that I'm
very excited about, things like wand Division, Falcon and The
Winter Soldier, are still slated to happen. Um. Yeah, they
might be delayed a little bit, but they are like
like Falcon and the Winter Soldier, that was one of
the stories we had where they have gone back into
production and according to uh, the Falcon, it's a miserable
(13:21):
experience because he said he was in Prague and that
all the all the food was delivered in zip block
bags because it had to all be you know, sanitary
and and safely handled. And he says, it's just terrible,
and like it just sounds like a very unpleasant experience.
There are a lot more hoops as a film actor
you got to jump through to make a show right now. Well,
(13:45):
and I want to talk to you about that when
we when we come back from our break, because as
someone who has been dipping her toe in that industry
and has started to see how that works firsthand, I
am curious to hear more about it. But we will
save that after this quick break. Hey, we're back yet
(14:21):
for us, For us, we were here the whole time.
Were But Ariel, I do want to ask you, so,
as you mentioned in our episode zero, you are an actress. Uh.
You you audition for things and you are pursuing that
while we have this new reality going on. So can
(14:41):
you talk a little bit about things that you have
observed or that you have learned of, uh, when it
comes to productions in this in this pandemic world. Yeah,
so really what it comes down to is most productions
and I'll say this even on an indie level, because
I've done some indie stuff. I haven't been on a
(15:02):
big set um during the pandemic. But are really taking
this seriously because much like Broadway, much like all this,
if you're an actor, if you're a person who works
on a film set, this is your livelihood and you're
basically how you've basically spent months not really making any art,
not really making any money. You know. And sure, if
(15:25):
you're like an upper echelon actor, you're you're probably pretty
pretty comfy to to weather it through. But you know
a lot of all actors, yeah, that's that's not many.
You know, most people live on a regular paycheck like
every like the as of us UM. But so they
all want to be really careful. They don't want productions
(15:47):
to shut down. So it's stuff like testing every three
days if you're a series, regular um temperature checks before
you get on set, working, and and all of these
RNA get back to work guide that I actually was
released with some of the unions, and there's an article
about it on Washington Posts, So if you have more
interest in all of that, you can look it up there.
(16:09):
But um temperature checks, like you said, with craft services,
making sure that food is individually packaged and given to everybody. UH,
making sure that people are socially distancing whenever possible. Working
in different zones, so you'll have like different work groups
of people. People who are on set every day of
(16:29):
the week, people who are only on set for a
couple of days, people who can work more regularly social
distance as opposed to actors who have to take their
masks off had to have to get closer together. And
each of these different work groups have different regulations based
on their their risk level that they have to go through. So, um,
(16:49):
if you're if you're not an actor, you have to
wear a mask whenever you're within six ft of somebody.
Actors when they don't have to be acting, have to
do the same. Um, you know, making sure that if
you have to do skin on skin contact that you're
wearing gloves. I'm sure in certain scenes of a show
that that may not happen. I've even heard even though
(17:10):
I don't because I do more film acting, I don't
really do extra work anymore. Um, extras are being pulled
on for longer periods of time than maybe just an afternoon,
because if you have to get tested. If you have
to you know, kind of self quarantine and all this
stuff and go through all the hoops to be on set,
then they might want to use you for a couple
more days to get a big chunk of filming out right,
(17:32):
rather than have to keep repeating that whole process with
a new batch of people over and over again. But
I mean, it's it's a lot and it's a lot
of testing, so it's not perfect. You know, there are
certainly some instances where there's still COVID on sets, but
not not much. I think I read an article where
(17:53):
on a on Tyler Perry his COVID rates are well
below Georgia's regular COVID rates because of all of the
precautions they're taking. So it's safer than going to the
grocery store. To me, it feels like and it kind
of seems like to well and and as you were saying, like,
this is livelihood, right, So people are treating it very
seriously because if they don't, then their their work is
(18:18):
is gone. In fact, if COVID does pop up on
a set, depending on on the person, I mean, you
might be contact tracing to say, all right, well, who
is this person near all the time. Is this something
that is concerning enough where we need to shut down
production for a couple of weeks and quarantine to make
certain that no one else is sick? Like that's a
(18:39):
big deal. And time really is money when it comes
to producing TV and film and all that. So you've
got to make sure that everyone is safe or else
you're costing a studio potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars
in downtime and uh and nobody wants to be responsible
for that. So, I mean, it's it's encouraging to hear
(19:03):
that there are all these these protections in place. It
is interesting because you know, I feel very conflicted as
a consumer because I want to see this stuff, right,
I want the content. I'm a fan of things, but
I don't want anyone to get hurt or sick because
(19:23):
of that. And meanwhile, people want to work. They have
that desire to both be creative and to make a
living off of it. Studios want to work because they
want money. Uh. So everyone has these different motivations, some
of which might feel less pure than others. Like if
you look at it from the studio perspective, the typical approaches, Oh,
(19:46):
those greedy producers, by the way, my official title as
executive producer. Then you start to you know, you can
feel like weird about wanting to see stuff come back.
But knowing that there are these protective measure is in place,
and that these are things that the various guilds have
worked towards to make certain that the people they represent
(20:07):
are protected makes me feel better about it. Knowing that
people are going to these lengths to try and protect
each other and the art itself, and and those lengths
I'm sure will change as we learn more about what's
going on with the virus. I have been on a
couple indie sets since the beginning of the pandemic well
spaced out, you know, making sure that myself and everybody
(20:29):
else on very very small cruise. Uh it's me and
one other actor and then a couple of crew people,
is what it's been. And we've all quarantined prior done
it and then as well yeah um again, Like, even
even at the indie level, it seems like everybody's everybody
has taken it as safe as humanly possible, because you want,
(20:52):
you want everybody to be safe first of all, and
then you don't want that hanging over your product either.
So yeah, um, you know, it's everybody's just trying to
do the best they can. I suppose, well, and like
I said to me, it's actually kind of inspiring. It's uh,
(21:12):
because we're really looking otherwise at a pretty bleak future
in the short term anyway for entertainment, because if we
can't create those safe spaces and safe environments for creation,
then we're going to have a really long dry spell.
Although I will say, like after Umbrella Academy came out,
(21:36):
prior to new seasons of things starting to come out now,
I did use that time to catch up on a
whole bunch of television that I have been like, I
want to watch this show, but I don't have time.
It was kind of nice not to have that pressure
of how am I going to fit all these TV
shows in? Because I love I love washing media. Um yeah,
so finally having all that and and of course we've
(21:58):
seen people really gravitate towards various streaming services, and you know,
we even had some new stuff come out. Either it
was already produced after the pandemic, you know, before the
pandemic hit rather, or it was something that finished up
during the pandemic. There were some really creative approaches to that.
Um One that I meant to mention, which is really odd,
(22:23):
is that Blacklist did a really cool thing. But there's
where Blacklist was in season seven, which they were renewed first,
even season eight, but they were still in production for
their twenty twenty season when the pandemic hit, which to
me was already unusual. A lot of television productions will
(22:44):
be finished by then because they have to be so
far ahead of the actual release schedule. But Blacklist was
still filming when the pandemic hit and shut down production.
But they needed to get their season finale done, and
so what they ended up doing was they had the
actors record lines out of their own homes and then
(23:04):
they hired an animation studio to animate the season finale. Uh,
which to me is just like, that's putting a lot
of faith in your audience, right to to completely switch
to a different form of of storytelling and hope that
they come along with you on that journey. That's a
big deal, it is, you know, but people have been
(23:27):
it seems really supportive of the way that not just
television but live events have had to pivot as well.
For instance, Dragon Con yes. So for those who do
not know, dragon Con is a science fiction, fantasy, horror
fan convention and it's the largest one in the Southeast,
and it's it's out of here in Atlanta, Georgia, and
(23:48):
it typically happens over Labor Day weekend and it's huge.
Right there's you get. One of the running jokes about
dragon Con is that you never really know how many
people attend on a weekend because the estimates will range
on the low end from around thirty thousand to more
(24:09):
than one hundred thousand from people who are crazy, because
I don't think there's any way there's that many. I
mean it if you count the people who stop on
the side of the road as they're going to pick
up their Duncan donuts to watch the parade maybe yeah,
and on on a parade day shore so yeah. And
dragon Con is particularly known for things like the cosplay community.
(24:30):
Like Comic Con is a is a much larger convention
by number of people. However, comic Con takes place in
a convention center that closes at the end of the day.
And uh, maybe, like i'd say, like one in maybe
one in five people at comic Con or in costume
maybe a dragon Con, it feels like it's one hour
(24:51):
every two Like half of the people are there in costume,
and it all takes place in hotels, so it never
shuts down. It's there twenty four hours a day a
for like now it feels like a week and a
half because it technically starts on a Friday, four days. Yeah,
it's technically Friday through Monday, but it's now now. For
(25:13):
a while, Thursday was the new Friday, and now Wednesday
is the new Thursday. However, obviously this year that was
all just not viable, right that you could not have
a big convention in person, So they switched to an
online streaming event version, and they put in so much
work to get guests and to have panels and to
(25:36):
and to still have an interactive experience online uh as
best they could, and it was really exciting. It was
It was interesting to me because we saw a Comic Con,
we saw some other conventions also do these online programs,
but Dragon Con kind of took it the extra step.
They even did the parade. They even figured out a
way to do parades and costume contests as a part.
(25:59):
As we said, caused play and that social aspect it's
such a huge part of that convention. They they really
figure out how to make that possible for the fans.
Um And I've seen artists, you know, Dragon Constant Convention,
but I've seen artists and other events do the same
and the interest of full disclosure. Aerial has in the
(26:19):
past worked at the con in various departments, and I
am the son of the first Toastmaster of Dragon con
so we both have a long history with that convention,
but neither of us, I think we're involved. This year,
we were just uh, more like attendees than than participants. Yeah,
(26:40):
so it is good that we're still seeing that sense
of community online even through the pandemic. And it's interesting
because it's it's like seeing a weird cycle for me
because for the longest time when I was growing up,
science fiction conventions that was like the one time you
(27:01):
could gather with other people who happened to like the
same weird stuff you liked, and you could talk to
them and you could share your crazy fan theory about
you know, whatever it was, and you could talk about that,
you listen to other people's crazy theories and then mash
up your crazy theories and you would have these endless
discussions about all sorts of fantasy and sci fi and
(27:25):
horror stuff. But that was the only place you could
really go and do that because there wasn't an Internet
for the general public at that point. Now we have
the Internet where we have the all these different spaces
and so you hear my dog barking in the background.
We have all these different spaces where we've got things
like you know, Reddit, or for the longest time we
had tumbled her hold of us kind of died down.
(27:46):
Now Instagram, all these just not as crazy as it
used to be. Dash Con really took the window of
their sales, but uh, yeah, we're we're We've got these
spaces online that really help out quite a bit. And
uh it's interesting to see now that the place that
used to be the central gathering point for geekdom has
(28:11):
leaned so heavily on the Internet, which in a large
part has has kind of democratized that experience so that
you could you could have something similar. You can find
your people more easily online than in the real world.
That is that is true. So you know, I've really
enjoyed talking about this, and normally we try to stay
(28:32):
more on one topic during our conversation, but we kind
of went over just to to how how much the
pandemic has has made people pivot and how they're they're
trying to adapt to that. But um, it's time for
another break, and then it's time for my favorite part
of the show, where we mashed two things up and
(28:52):
let me tell let me tell you, folks, she's she's
picked a doozy of appearing. Listen, listen. I think it's
it's pertinent because we're talking about the pandemic and this
mashup has both properties have stuff to do with masks, right,
but let's not spoil it. We'll have everyone join us
after the break and then you'll find out what the
heck she's talking about. All right, everybody, So, like I said,
(29:30):
we are going to do our mashup now. So we
kind of brought you down talking about all pandemic stuff,
which everybody knows about, but we we wanted to talk
about it. So now we're going to bring you back up.
So this week we're taking two properties that have to
do with masks and we are mashing them together. One
(29:50):
of those is The Mandalorian, which is a show that
made it through production craziness with the Pandemic because we
just got the second season that is currently airing, and
the other because we talked about Broadway being shut down
and about the opera being shut down. Is the Phantom
of the Opera? Yeah, so, um, I don't feel like
(30:10):
we even need to talk about what these things are
because I'm pretty sure everyone out there listening has heard
of them. But just in case you haven't, The Mandalorian
is a Star Wars property running on Disney Plus and
follows a bounty hunter a Mandalorian similar to Boba Fett,
but is this takes place after the events of the
(30:31):
original trilogy. And then Phantom of the Opera is a ridiculous,
bombastic musical. The specific version we're talking about, I imagine,
is the musical version. That's what you in mind, right, Yes,
the musical version, as opposed to like the original book
or the you know, lawn Cheney type movies with yeah,
(30:52):
where we're disfigured. Guy wears the masks and hides under
the opera and falls in love with an opera star
and then she she has stock Holmes syndrome. Yeah, it's
it brings up a whole Another conversation of able is
um and things like that, but we'll get into that
in a future episode regardless. So it starts when I
(31:12):
hero Mando, and that's not his real name, but I'm
not going to spoil it for Jonathan because I don't
know if he's watched the episode that far yet. Has
his helmet broken and in half in a bounty hunting duel.
Disgraced per the code of his Mandalorian ways, Mando takes
residence under the last place anyone would look for our
stoic protagonist and accidentally catch a glimpse of his face,
(31:35):
the local space opera house. He hides underneath it, but
to his surprise, he loves the music in the drama
of the space Opera and he starts watching the shows. However,
from his little Heidi Hoe hole where he's watching the
shows because he can't just sit in the audience, he
people would see half his face. That cannot happen, uh.
He sees that Strange things keep happening during the performances.
(31:57):
Props will float off the stage one to performers aren't looking.
Trap doors will open up under the singers. It's it's
ruining the shows and it's making everybody in them really worried, Uh,
not wanting this art to be ruined, which has touched
his damaged soul and his damaged helmet. He explores the
opera Space Opera one night, and that's when he sees it.
(32:18):
The child ransacking the leftover refreshment table, levitating the food
to its mouth, the child too cute to kill but
too dangerous to let room around the Space Opera. Uh
is lured by Mando into the wings of the opera
with him, where he stuffs the child in his pouch
to become the tear caretaker of the child and by extension,
(32:39):
the caretaker of the opera. The performers never know why
the strange occurrence has stopped, but there are whispers of
a half masked man hiding and lurking in the dark
crevices just out of sight of the Space Opera. And
if you listen carefully when the curtain is closed, you
can sometimes hear the soft refrains and the curtains rustling.
(33:00):
The child of the forces here inside this path. Well done,
well done. Yeah, the music that I will have to
have Shout out to my friend Sarah who came up
with that. Okay, so um so it's my turn to pitch.
(33:21):
M Okay, the curtain rises and we see an auction
going on. There's a current item that is being auctioned off,
is a broken water evaporator, and as soon as that
auction has cleared, they talk about the magnificent chandelier made
(33:42):
from real I G eleven. Yes, it's a chandelier made
out of a broken robot that then rises up majestically
to the ceiling of the theater house that you are in,
because this is a stage show I'm talking about here,
and it all lights up and everything's brilliant, and so
we essentially see the story of the Fantom of the
(34:02):
Opera playing out, but with very particular lyrics. So so
here's my my pitch for just two of the songs. Okay,
So one of them starts off this way on desert sands.
He came to fix the broken Koweel was his name.
I have spoken see you got it, so that it's
(34:27):
gonna be all about him because ug Knots do not
get enough love. So there's gonna be just a whole
number about ug nuts. But later later we get the
real heart wrenching number. Ready Yes, I'm ready, tiny yo
pop culture since ay stiontion, merch and dice cross all
(34:49):
of creation. Now, I'm not going to sing the sex
part because I cannot even hit the high notes, but
the frog lady of him would beg, please do not
eat my egg, but the child still gobbled up one
in a bite and cancel culture hit Yoda that night.
Spoiler spoiler, you haven't even watched that episode, have you? No?
(35:14):
I haven't gotten that far, but everyone talked about Yoda
eating an egg, so I knew about that part. Well, yeah,
I got a note about that. I'm told that I
have a restraining order now for musicals, which is fair.
I didn't warm up, didn't have music accompaniment, that's those
are my my It was also and I'm a character
(35:34):
of voice actor, so it was like, stop making excuses.
It was beautiful. I would option that musical in a heartbeat. Now.
I like to go meta with my musicals, which is
why I had to comment on the merchandizing, which, honestly,
like the two things I've seen the most about this
coming season or this this current season are the stories
about merchandise and all the baby Yoda merchandise that you
(35:57):
can get, including like the little animated animated be Yoda
robotic figure UH and then the storyline within the show
about Yoda eating an egg from a UH, a near
extinct species, and that there was a big reaction to that,
and I just haven't sat down to watch the full
(36:20):
season like I started it. I started season one with
my wife and we loved it. We thought it was
such a cool take on the Star Wars mythology to
make it kind of a Western, But we just it
was one of those things where we didn't carve out
enough time to watch all of season one, and then
(36:40):
other stuff started piling up, so we need to and
we're as we're recording this, we're actually about to go
into a holiday. So I'm hoping that I can have
some time to catch up on stuff because that's the
because then we can have a huge conversation about that
egg thing, because I tell you, I went back and
forth in my brain about it a few times. Yeah,
the stuff I've I've seen has been um interesting as well,
(37:06):
because I even read up a little bit about it.
Because at that point I'm like, well, it's already been
spoiled for me. I can't I can't know that, so
I do want to know the context, but it's gonna
take me a while to get there, so I'll go
ahead and read up on it. Um. But yeah, it's
like to me. To me, the Mandalorian is one of
those Star Wars properties that just felt thanks Tim Bolt,
(37:31):
felt really really good like it just it was it
was it was. It felt like Star Wars, but in
a new way. And I'm one of those grouchy old
guys who's like, I didn't like the prequels. I don't
fault people who do. And I'm not crazy about the
sequels either. And in fact, if I'm being totally honest,
I've still never seen I haven't seen the last film
(37:53):
in the I haven't seen the Rise of Skywalker. I
just haven't seen it. But that's okay. You like Mandaloria
and a lot of people who have issues with some
of those other properties due to so uh, catch up
and then we'll talk about it on large new drunk ladder.
That sounds good. So, yeah, that was a fun one.
We promised that they won't all be musicals. We do
(38:15):
love musicals. Yeah, well we can't promise that they won't
be all musicals. We're not planning for them all to
be musicals right now, but you know, we we we
care about you too much, dear listener, But we do
welcome you guys to reach out to us. Well I'm
talking about my voice, not yours area, but we welcome
(38:36):
you to reach out to us and to share with
us your thoughts on what a Mandalorian Phantom of the
Opera mashup would be like, or suggest other properties we
should mash together. Yeah, and and as well as you know,
any other kind of geek topics that you think we
should really research and talk about, you know, stuff that
(38:57):
matters to the geek sphere. Yeah, you can reach out
to us currently on social media at on Twitter at
Ellen c Underscore podcast, or on the facebooks or on Instagram.
You can send us a message, you can send us
a d M and we'll check that and if we
like your suggestions, are your stories or your mashups, we
might even read them online. So yeah, all right on
(39:19):
the show not just ane, Yeah, thank you, No, it's fine,
Like listen, we're both recording this after a very long day,
so it's both online right now. Technically we'll be reading
them online, but yes, we'll read them on the show. Field. Yeah,
that's that's that's very fair so yeah, welcome to our madness.
(39:42):
We look forward to covering lots more geeky things, and
we'll be covering you know, current news very soon. By
the time you listen to the episodes that will start
to publish starting next week, you will hear more current headlines.
And until then, I yes, I am still Jonathan Strickland,
(40:05):
and I am and always will be aerial casting Bye,
I have spoken. M m m m m. The Large
(40:35):
New Drunk Collider is production of I Heart Radio and
was created by Ariel cast In. Jonathan Strickland is the
executive producer. This show is produced, edited and published by
Tory Harrison. For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
The Large Nerdron Collider Podcast is a production of My
Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to the Large Nerdron Collider Podcast,
the podcast that's all about the kiki things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
(00:28):
about them. I'm Ariel casting and with me, as always
is podcast brilliant person Jonathan Strickland. Hey, Ariel, I've got
a question for you. My question to you is you
have the power to cast your beloved co host in
(00:51):
any role in any musical. What role do you cast
me in? In? Which show the dude from chess? Because
you like chess. When you say the dude from Chess,
there are I will have you know, multiple dudes in chess.
Do you mean the one night in Bangkok dude? Do
you mean the Okay? All right, you mean I got you?
(01:13):
You mean the American got it bankok? Oriental in they
don't know what? That is an acceptable answer, and I
happily accept the role. I will start training now and
start singing Abba or the lead dude in music man,
never mind pumping any water to your parents. Are caught
with a sister and empty on a Saturday night, and
(01:33):
that's trouble yes, you got lots and lots of trouble. Okay,
that's also excellent. I mean I I do like to
tell people that they've got trouble right here in River
City with a capital T that runs with P and
that stands for pool. Yes, and that's kind of what
what what what we're talking about today? Yeah? Would you
would you like to know what I would cast you in?
(01:54):
I do. I would cast you as Audrey from Little
Shop Horrors. Oh, I love that. It's as good. It
is a good role. I want. That's on my bucket list.
I was baiting when you asked me giving you a
(02:16):
silly answer, but then it would have given away, uh
something coming up later in the episode. Yeah, well that's
that's kind of why I chose this question, is that
it is foreshadowing, but you'll have to stick to the
end to find out what the heck I shadowed for.
So we are entering into our our first official first
segment where we're going to talk about news now however,
(02:41):
transparency for you guys out there in listener land. We're
recording this well before the show goes up, So rather
than pick news that will be stale, we thought we
would talk a little bit about trends that have happened,
particularly over the pandemic, and and you know, stuff that
we would have talked about, wanted to talk about prior
(03:01):
to the launch of ellen C version two. Yes, So
the first part is, I mean, these are all the bummers, right, like,
the pandemic has hit everyone super hard, and that does
not exclude the entertainment industry. The first thing I was
going to bring up, and in fact it does lead
right back from the musicals thing, is that live theater
(03:25):
is essentially on hold right now. Apart from some creative
uses of like streaming media and some very limited performances,
but by and large, live theater has been put on hold.
Broadway is on hiatus at least until May of t one,
(03:45):
but even more than that, the Met Opera isn't even
starting back till September. I would actually be shocked if
we see Broadway open in the spring. Right now, most
of the projections I see when it comes to vaccine
nations and herd immunity are pointing to this time next year.
But you know what, it's okay because during this time,
(04:07):
we've just got so much good TV out there that
we can watch. How a bunch of new shows happening,
not not that many new ones, not that many, not
that many returning ones either. Yeah. So this leads into
our other part of talking about the bummers of COVID,
and that would be that a lot of television series
(04:28):
were affected by this, either going into a kind of
limbo or postponing a season because obviously the the risks
of production were very high, especially early on when we
still were learning about the transmission. Arguably we're still learning
(04:50):
about the transmission of of COVID nineteen, but back in
the beginning, no one was really sure under what situations
it was particularly, yeah, exactly, so, so everyone was shutting
down so yeah so um, and a lot of the
shows that shut down were in production um when they started.
(05:13):
Yeah so, so we we saw things like shows like
Stranger Things season four had just started production when the
pandemic hit. I think they were in production for two
weeks and then the pandemic shut them down. They had
planned on being finished with their production by late August,
(05:33):
and they didn't even get started again until late fall
of this year. They are back in production, um, but
obviously it's a much more controlled approach than what they
were looking at when they were first starting in the
early part of the year. Yeah, the film industry has
some pretty stringent COVID regulations going on right now. Um,
(05:54):
you know, they were lucky and and so were some
other shows. Uh, Atlanta and Fargo were postponed to the
pandemic that are planned to come back. Some are not
coming back. Glow and Drunk History, we're both filming when
the pandemic hit and then got canceled. And it was
sad for Glow, a dramedy about the old show Glow
(06:17):
about female wrestlers, because it was their final season. Yeah,
the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling will not get their final
season because the budget just wasn't there to keep things
kind of treading water indefinitely, and so the decision was
made to pull the plug, which is a bummer, especially
(06:38):
since that's a Netflix series. And you see some of
the stuff that Netflix green lights and you start to wonder.
Because Glow was one of those that got critical acclaim,
it was popular and it had good, good critical response.
There are some things that Netflix funds that you start
to question, like who is who's actually paying stuff out.
(07:02):
I mean, granted, a lot of those are probably much
lower budget productions so they don't cost as much. But yeah,
you know, it wasn't just it wasn't just filming. Um,
it wasn't just budgeting. It was also scheduling. So like
Society was another Netflix show that did really well and
I haven't watched it, but the trailer looked funny. Um,
(07:25):
but they were doing really well. But when it came
to trying to keep that show going through the pandemic
juggling exceptionally large casts, not just because of COVID, but
with scheduling, with postponing, the production just took that one
out of the water too. Yeah, And some of these
shows were already on the way to winding down, and
(07:48):
now the question is for some of them, when will
we get to see their final seasons? And for others
there's still the the scary question of will we see
them because there's always a chance that they'll come to
a similar conclusion that we saw with Glow. So like
super Girl, for example, was already heading into its final season. Yeah, yeah,
(08:11):
which in theory we're still getting black Lightning got renewed,
but now it's been said that this next season will
be its final season as well. I don't know if
that's COVID related though, right. But but my point being
that because because of these production issues, although we are
seeing a lot more shows going back to production, but
because of these production issues, it's it worries me because
(08:34):
that uncertainty can play out by affecting the shows and
making them conclude earlier than it was originally planned. Yeah. Although,
although you've got a note here about the Stranger Things
seasons before going back to that, because there was a
little added benefit to postponing the filming of the show,
(08:55):
which was that they were able to revise their scripture. Yeah,
so this was something that made me laugh. Apparently in
every other season of Stranger Things, the creators of the show,
we're still working on scripts when the early scripts for
the season went into production. So episode one might be
in production and they might still be working on episode four,
(09:17):
which means they don't really know where everything is going
to lead, and they might come up with a great
idea for episode four, but they didn't really set it
up in episode one because they hadn't thought of it yet.
So the benefit of this was that because things got postponed,
the Brothers could end up working on the scripts for
the entire season. They completed this season, then they were
(09:40):
able to go back through and revise the earlier scripts
and have them be more cohesive. So in a way,
Calamity forced them to practice better writing approaches to their work,
and that, to me is interesting. I mean, there's some
movies that I watched and as I was watching them,
I felt like I was watching a film that was
(10:02):
probably still being written while they were shooting the film,
and I later found out that was the case, the
big one being uh, Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of
the Black Pearl, the very first one. As I was
watching it, I was like, there's no way this was
a full script before this, and I love that movie,
don't get me wrong, But I tell yeah, I was right.
I was like, yeah, no, this this, this story is
(10:25):
meandering all over the place. It's clear that they didn't
really know where they were going when they started shooting
because the story wasn't finished yet. Um. And the same
thing was true with Stranger Things. But now we're going
to get a season four that arguably is much stronger,
which which is good because at the end of season three,
I was like, how, what where are they going to
(10:46):
do with this? Yeah, that's a that is a correct
sentence in my mind. Um yeah, it hit so many
of I mean, it hit essentially every production, right, So yeah,
I remember I remember at the beginning going which okay,
I'm waiting on these four shows for their new season.
How many of them are far enough in their production
(11:08):
schedule to still come out despite the fact that everything
is shut down, like Umbrella Academy. For me, it was
Doom Patrol. Doom Patrol. That is a series I did
not expect to enjoy, and it made me fall in
love with A Street. I was about to say, Street
a Talking Street is so such a weird show, and
(11:31):
you know one of those where it's so weird that
you feel like it's the kind of thing that if
you breathe on it wrong, it's gonna go away. I mean, Ariel,
you and I we've been fans of shows that were
truly weird kind of genre shows that never stood a chance,
and it's amazing they done. As far as Gallivant being
(11:53):
a more recent example, right, great show, Great show, felt
like it could have gone one more season. The another
one that I think of all the time, and this
one really is a throwback, is The Adventures of Briscoe
County Jr. Which was so much fun. Uh. It suffered
(12:15):
a little bit with the orb storyline, which I felt
was too weird even for me. But again, one of
those shows where you're like, these are people who are
taking chances to bring very unusual stuff to TV, and uh,
they get like a passionate fan base. It may not
be big enough to justify continuing it, but that's the
(12:37):
kind of thing like that. I think of it with
Doom Patrol, right, It's that kind of category of show.
And then you get something like a pandemic, which is
obviously above and beyond the normal challenges these shows face,
and you worry about whether what are its chances to survive? Yeah,
I mean right now, it's still slated to come back. Um,
(12:58):
and I'm glad that some of the shows that I'm
very excited about, things like wand Division, Falcon and The
Winter Soldier, are still slated to happen. Um. Yeah, they
might be delayed a little bit, but they are like
like Falcon and the Winter Soldier, that was one of
the stories we had where they have gone back into
production and according to uh, the Falcon, it's a miserable
(13:21):
experience because he said he was in Prague and that
all the all the food was delivered in zip block
bags because it had to all be you know, sanitary
and and safely handled. And he says, it's just terrible,
and like it just sounds like a very unpleasant experience.
There are a lot more hoops as a film actor
you got to jump through to make a show right now. Well,
(13:45):
and I want to talk to you about that when
we when we come back from our break, because as
someone who has been dipping her toe in that industry
and has started to see how that works firsthand, I
am curious to hear more about it. But we will
save that after this quick break. Hey, we're back yet
(14:21):
for us, For us, we were here the whole time.
Were But Ariel, I do want to ask you, so,
as you mentioned in our episode zero, you are an actress. Uh.
You you audition for things and you are pursuing that
while we have this new reality going on. So can
(14:41):
you talk a little bit about things that you have
observed or that you have learned of, uh, when it
comes to productions in this in this pandemic world. Yeah,
so really what it comes down to is most productions
and I'll say this even on an indie level, because
I've done some indie stuff. I haven't been on a
(15:02):
big set um during the pandemic. But are really taking
this seriously because much like Broadway, much like all this,
if you're an actor, if you're a person who works
on a film set, this is your livelihood and you're
basically how you've basically spent months not really making any art,
not really making any money. You know. And sure, if
(15:25):
you're like an upper echelon actor, you're you're probably pretty
pretty comfy to to weather it through. But you know
a lot of all actors, yeah, that's that's not many.
You know, most people live on a regular paycheck like
every like the as of us UM. But so they
all want to be really careful. They don't want productions
(15:47):
to shut down. So it's stuff like testing every three
days if you're a series, regular um temperature checks before
you get on set, working, and and all of these
RNA get back to work guide that I actually was
released with some of the unions, and there's an article
about it on Washington Posts, So if you have more
interest in all of that, you can look it up there.
(16:09):
But um temperature checks, like you said, with craft services,
making sure that food is individually packaged and given to everybody. UH,
making sure that people are socially distancing whenever possible. Working
in different zones, so you'll have like different work groups
of people. People who are on set every day of
(16:29):
the week, people who are only on set for a
couple of days, people who can work more regularly social
distance as opposed to actors who have to take their
masks off had to have to get closer together. And
each of these different work groups have different regulations based
on their their risk level that they have to go through. So, um,
(16:49):
if you're if you're not an actor, you have to
wear a mask whenever you're within six ft of somebody.
Actors when they don't have to be acting, have to
do the same. Um, you know, making sure that if
you have to do skin on skin contact that you're
wearing gloves. I'm sure in certain scenes of a show
that that may not happen. I've even heard even though
(17:10):
I don't because I do more film acting, I don't
really do extra work anymore. Um, extras are being pulled
on for longer periods of time than maybe just an afternoon,
because if you have to get tested. If you have
to you know, kind of self quarantine and all this
stuff and go through all the hoops to be on set,
then they might want to use you for a couple
more days to get a big chunk of filming out right,
(17:32):
rather than have to keep repeating that whole process with
a new batch of people over and over again. But
I mean, it's it's a lot and it's a lot
of testing, so it's not perfect. You know, there are
certainly some instances where there's still COVID on sets, but
not not much. I think I read an article where
(17:53):
on a on Tyler Perry his COVID rates are well
below Georgia's regular COVID rates because of all of the
precautions they're taking. So it's safer than going to the
grocery store. To me, it feels like and it kind
of seems like to well and and as you were saying, like,
this is livelihood, right, So people are treating it very
seriously because if they don't, then their their work is
(18:18):
is gone. In fact, if COVID does pop up on
a set, depending on on the person, I mean, you
might be contact tracing to say, all right, well, who
is this person near all the time. Is this something
that is concerning enough where we need to shut down
production for a couple of weeks and quarantine to make
certain that no one else is sick? Like that's a
(18:39):
big deal. And time really is money when it comes
to producing TV and film and all that. So you've
got to make sure that everyone is safe or else
you're costing a studio potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars
in downtime and uh and nobody wants to be responsible
for that. So, I mean, it's it's encouraging to hear
(19:03):
that there are all these these protections in place. It
is interesting because you know, I feel very conflicted as
a consumer because I want to see this stuff, right,
I want the content. I'm a fan of things, but
I don't want anyone to get hurt or sick because
(19:23):
of that. And meanwhile, people want to work. They have
that desire to both be creative and to make a
living off of it. Studios want to work because they
want money. Uh. So everyone has these different motivations, some
of which might feel less pure than others. Like if
you look at it from the studio perspective, the typical approaches, Oh,
(19:46):
those greedy producers, by the way, my official title as
executive producer. Then you start to you know, you can
feel like weird about wanting to see stuff come back.
But knowing that there are these protective measure is in place,
and that these are things that the various guilds have
worked towards to make certain that the people they represent
(20:07):
are protected makes me feel better about it. Knowing that
people are going to these lengths to try and protect
each other and the art itself, and and those lengths
I'm sure will change as we learn more about what's
going on with the virus. I have been on a
couple indie sets since the beginning of the pandemic well
spaced out, you know, making sure that myself and everybody
(20:29):
else on very very small cruise. Uh it's me and
one other actor and then a couple of crew people,
is what it's been. And we've all quarantined prior done
it and then as well yeah um again, Like, even
even at the indie level, it seems like everybody's everybody
has taken it as safe as humanly possible, because you want,
(20:52):
you want everybody to be safe first of all, and
then you don't want that hanging over your product either.
So yeah, um, you know, it's everybody's just trying to
do the best they can. I suppose, well, and like
I said to me, it's actually kind of inspiring. It's uh,
(21:12):
because we're really looking otherwise at a pretty bleak future
in the short term anyway for entertainment, because if we
can't create those safe spaces and safe environments for creation,
then we're going to have a really long dry spell.
Although I will say, like after Umbrella Academy came out,
(21:36):
prior to new seasons of things starting to come out now,
I did use that time to catch up on a
whole bunch of television that I have been like, I
want to watch this show, but I don't have time.
It was kind of nice not to have that pressure
of how am I going to fit all these TV
shows in? Because I love I love washing media. Um yeah,
so finally having all that and and of course we've
(21:58):
seen people really gravitate towards various streaming services, and you know,
we even had some new stuff come out. Either it
was already produced after the pandemic, you know, before the
pandemic hit rather, or it was something that finished up
during the pandemic. There were some really creative approaches to that.
Um One that I meant to mention, which is really odd,
(22:23):
is that Blacklist did a really cool thing. But there's
where Blacklist was in season seven, which they were renewed first,
even season eight, but they were still in production for
their twenty twenty season when the pandemic hit, which to
me was already unusual. A lot of television productions will
(22:44):
be finished by then because they have to be so
far ahead of the actual release schedule. But Blacklist was
still filming when the pandemic hit and shut down production.
But they needed to get their season finale done, and
so what they ended up doing was they had the
actors record lines out of their own homes and then
(23:04):
they hired an animation studio to animate the season finale. Uh,
which to me is just like, that's putting a lot
of faith in your audience, right to to completely switch
to a different form of of storytelling and hope that
they come along with you on that journey. That's a
big deal, it is, you know, but people have been
(23:27):
it seems really supportive of the way that not just
television but live events have had to pivot as well.
For instance, Dragon Con yes. So for those who do
not know, dragon Con is a science fiction, fantasy, horror
fan convention and it's the largest one in the Southeast,
and it's it's out of here in Atlanta, Georgia, and
(23:48):
it typically happens over Labor Day weekend and it's huge.
Right there's you get. One of the running jokes about
dragon Con is that you never really know how many
people attend on a weekend because the estimates will range
on the low end from around thirty thousand to more
(24:09):
than one hundred thousand from people who are crazy, because
I don't think there's any way there's that many. I
mean it if you count the people who stop on
the side of the road as they're going to pick
up their Duncan donuts to watch the parade maybe yeah,
and on on a parade day shore so yeah. And
dragon Con is particularly known for things like the cosplay community.
(24:30):
Like Comic Con is a is a much larger convention
by number of people. However, comic Con takes place in
a convention center that closes at the end of the day.
And uh, maybe, like i'd say, like one in maybe
one in five people at comic Con or in costume
maybe a dragon Con, it feels like it's one hour
(24:51):
every two Like half of the people are there in costume,
and it all takes place in hotels, so it never
shuts down. It's there twenty four hours a day a
for like now it feels like a week and a
half because it technically starts on a Friday, four days. Yeah,
it's technically Friday through Monday, but it's now now. For
(25:13):
a while, Thursday was the new Friday, and now Wednesday
is the new Thursday. However, obviously this year that was
all just not viable, right that you could not have
a big convention in person, So they switched to an
online streaming event version, and they put in so much
work to get guests and to have panels and to
(25:36):
and to still have an interactive experience online uh as
best they could, and it was really exciting. It was
It was interesting to me because we saw a Comic Con,
we saw some other conventions also do these online programs,
but Dragon Con kind of took it the extra step.
They even did the parade. They even figured out a
way to do parades and costume contests as a part.
(25:59):
As we said, caused play and that social aspect it's
such a huge part of that convention. They they really
figure out how to make that possible for the fans.
Um And I've seen artists, you know, Dragon Constant Convention,
but I've seen artists and other events do the same
and the interest of full disclosure. Aerial has in the
(26:19):
past worked at the con in various departments, and I
am the son of the first Toastmaster of Dragon con
so we both have a long history with that convention,
but neither of us, I think we're involved. This year,
we were just uh, more like attendees than than participants. Yeah,
(26:40):
so it is good that we're still seeing that sense
of community online even through the pandemic. And it's interesting
because it's it's like seeing a weird cycle for me
because for the longest time when I was growing up,
science fiction conventions that was like the one time you
(27:01):
could gather with other people who happened to like the
same weird stuff you liked, and you could talk to
them and you could share your crazy fan theory about
you know, whatever it was, and you could talk about that,
you listen to other people's crazy theories and then mash
up your crazy theories and you would have these endless
discussions about all sorts of fantasy and sci fi and
(27:25):
horror stuff. But that was the only place you could
really go and do that because there wasn't an Internet
for the general public at that point. Now we have
the Internet where we have the all these different spaces
and so you hear my dog barking in the background.
We have all these different spaces where we've got things
like you know, Reddit, or for the longest time we
had tumbled her hold of us kind of died down.
(27:46):
Now Instagram, all these just not as crazy as it
used to be. Dash Con really took the window of
their sales, but uh, yeah, we're we're We've got these
spaces online that really help out quite a bit. And
uh it's interesting to see now that the place that
used to be the central gathering point for geekdom has
(28:11):
leaned so heavily on the Internet, which in a large
part has has kind of democratized that experience so that
you could you could have something similar. You can find
your people more easily online than in the real world.
That is that is true. So you know, I've really
enjoyed talking about this, and normally we try to stay
(28:32):
more on one topic during our conversation, but we kind
of went over just to to how how much the
pandemic has has made people pivot and how they're they're
trying to adapt to that. But um, it's time for
another break, and then it's time for my favorite part
of the show, where we mashed two things up and
(28:52):
let me tell let me tell you, folks, she's she's
picked a doozy of appearing. Listen, listen. I think it's
it's pertinent because we're talking about the pandemic and this
mashup has both properties have stuff to do with masks, right,
but let's not spoil it. We'll have everyone join us
after the break and then you'll find out what the
heck she's talking about. All right, everybody, So, like I said,
(29:30):
we are going to do our mashup now. So we
kind of brought you down talking about all pandemic stuff,
which everybody knows about, but we we wanted to talk
about it. So now we're going to bring you back up.
So this week we're taking two properties that have to
do with masks and we are mashing them together. One
(29:50):
of those is The Mandalorian, which is a show that
made it through production craziness with the Pandemic because we
just got the second season that is currently airing, and
the other because we talked about Broadway being shut down
and about the opera being shut down. Is the Phantom
of the Opera? Yeah, so, um, I don't feel like
(30:10):
we even need to talk about what these things are
because I'm pretty sure everyone out there listening has heard
of them. But just in case you haven't, The Mandalorian
is a Star Wars property running on Disney Plus and
follows a bounty hunter a Mandalorian similar to Boba Fett,
but is this takes place after the events of the
(30:31):
original trilogy. And then Phantom of the Opera is a ridiculous,
bombastic musical. The specific version we're talking about, I imagine,
is the musical version. That's what you in mind, right, Yes,
the musical version, as opposed to like the original book
or the you know, lawn Cheney type movies with yeah,
(30:52):
where we're disfigured. Guy wears the masks and hides under
the opera and falls in love with an opera star
and then she she has stock Holmes syndrome. Yeah, it's
it brings up a whole Another conversation of able is
um and things like that, but we'll get into that
in a future episode regardless. So it starts when I
(31:12):
hero Mando, and that's not his real name, but I'm
not going to spoil it for Jonathan because I don't
know if he's watched the episode that far yet. Has
his helmet broken and in half in a bounty hunting duel.
Disgraced per the code of his Mandalorian ways, Mando takes
residence under the last place anyone would look for our
stoic protagonist and accidentally catch a glimpse of his face,
(31:35):
the local space opera house. He hides underneath it, but
to his surprise, he loves the music in the drama
of the space Opera and he starts watching the shows. However,
from his little Heidi Hoe hole where he's watching the
shows because he can't just sit in the audience, he
people would see half his face. That cannot happen, uh.
He sees that Strange things keep happening during the performances.
(31:57):
Props will float off the stage one to performers aren't looking.
Trap doors will open up under the singers. It's it's
ruining the shows and it's making everybody in them really worried, Uh,
not wanting this art to be ruined, which has touched
his damaged soul and his damaged helmet. He explores the
opera Space Opera one night, and that's when he sees it.
(32:18):
The child ransacking the leftover refreshment table, levitating the food
to its mouth, the child too cute to kill but
too dangerous to let room around the Space Opera. Uh
is lured by Mando into the wings of the opera
with him, where he stuffs the child in his pouch
to become the tear caretaker of the child and by extension,
(32:39):
the caretaker of the opera. The performers never know why
the strange occurrence has stopped, but there are whispers of
a half masked man hiding and lurking in the dark
crevices just out of sight of the Space Opera. And
if you listen carefully when the curtain is closed, you
can sometimes hear the soft refrains and the curtains rustling.
(33:00):
The child of the forces here inside this path. Well done,
well done. Yeah, the music that I will have to
have Shout out to my friend Sarah who came up
with that. Okay, so um so it's my turn to pitch.
(33:21):
M Okay, the curtain rises and we see an auction
going on. There's a current item that is being auctioned off,
is a broken water evaporator, and as soon as that
auction has cleared, they talk about the magnificent chandelier made
(33:42):
from real I G eleven. Yes, it's a chandelier made
out of a broken robot that then rises up majestically
to the ceiling of the theater house that you are in,
because this is a stage show I'm talking about here,
and it all lights up and everything's brilliant, and so
we essentially see the story of the Fantom of the
(34:02):
Opera playing out, but with very particular lyrics. So so
here's my my pitch for just two of the songs. Okay,
So one of them starts off this way on desert sands.
He came to fix the broken Koweel was his name.
I have spoken see you got it, so that it's
(34:27):
gonna be all about him because ug Knots do not
get enough love. So there's gonna be just a whole
number about ug nuts. But later later we get the
real heart wrenching number. Ready Yes, I'm ready, tiny yo
pop culture since ay stiontion, merch and dice cross all
(34:49):
of creation. Now, I'm not going to sing the sex
part because I cannot even hit the high notes, but
the frog lady of him would beg, please do not
eat my egg, but the child still gobbled up one
in a bite and cancel culture hit Yoda that night.
Spoiler spoiler, you haven't even watched that episode, have you? No?
(35:14):
I haven't gotten that far, but everyone talked about Yoda
eating an egg, so I knew about that part. Well, yeah,
I got a note about that. I'm told that I
have a restraining order now for musicals, which is fair.
I didn't warm up, didn't have music accompaniment, that's those
are my my It was also and I'm a character
(35:34):
of voice actor, so it was like, stop making excuses.
It was beautiful. I would option that musical in a heartbeat. Now.
I like to go meta with my musicals, which is
why I had to comment on the merchandizing, which, honestly,
like the two things I've seen the most about this
coming season or this this current season are the stories
about merchandise and all the baby Yoda merchandise that you
(35:57):
can get, including like the little animated animated be Yoda
robotic figure UH and then the storyline within the show
about Yoda eating an egg from a UH, a near
extinct species, and that there was a big reaction to that,
and I just haven't sat down to watch the full
(36:20):
season like I started it. I started season one with
my wife and we loved it. We thought it was
such a cool take on the Star Wars mythology to
make it kind of a Western, But we just it
was one of those things where we didn't carve out
enough time to watch all of season one, and then
(36:40):
other stuff started piling up, so we need to and
we're as we're recording this, we're actually about to go
into a holiday. So I'm hoping that I can have
some time to catch up on stuff because that's the
because then we can have a huge conversation about that
egg thing, because I tell you, I went back and
forth in my brain about it a few times. Yeah,
the stuff I've I've seen has been um interesting as well,
(37:06):
because I even read up a little bit about it.
Because at that point I'm like, well, it's already been
spoiled for me. I can't I can't know that, so
I do want to know the context, but it's gonna
take me a while to get there, so I'll go
ahead and read up on it. Um. But yeah, it's
like to me. To me, the Mandalorian is one of
those Star Wars properties that just felt thanks Tim Bolt,
(37:31):
felt really really good like it just it was it
was it was. It felt like Star Wars, but in
a new way. And I'm one of those grouchy old
guys who's like, I didn't like the prequels. I don't
fault people who do. And I'm not crazy about the
sequels either. And in fact, if I'm being totally honest,
I've still never seen I haven't seen the last film
(37:53):
in the I haven't seen the Rise of Skywalker. I
just haven't seen it. But that's okay. You like Mandaloria
and a lot of people who have issues with some
of those other properties due to so uh, catch up
and then we'll talk about it on large new drunk ladder.
That sounds good. So, yeah, that was a fun one.
We promised that they won't all be musicals. We do
(38:15):
love musicals. Yeah, well we can't promise that they won't
be all musicals. We're not planning for them all to
be musicals right now, but you know, we we we
care about you too much, dear listener, But we do
welcome you guys to reach out to us. Well I'm
talking about my voice, not yours area, but we welcome
(38:36):
you to reach out to us and to share with
us your thoughts on what a Mandalorian Phantom of the
Opera mashup would be like, or suggest other properties we
should mash together. Yeah, and and as well as you know,
any other kind of geek topics that you think we
should really research and talk about, you know, stuff that
(38:57):
matters to the geek sphere. Yeah, you can reach out
to us currently on social media at on Twitter at
Ellen c Underscore podcast, or on the facebooks or on Instagram.
You can send us a message, you can send us
a d M and we'll check that and if we
like your suggestions, are your stories or your mashups, we
might even read them online. So yeah, all right on
(39:19):
the show not just ane, Yeah, thank you, No, it's fine,
Like listen, we're both recording this after a very long day,
so it's both online right now. Technically we'll be reading
them online, but yes, we'll read them on the show. Field. Yeah,
that's that's that's very fair so yeah, welcome to our madness.
(39:42):
We look forward to covering lots more geeky things, and
we'll be covering you know, current news very soon. By
the time you listen to the episodes that will start
to publish starting next week, you will hear more current headlines.
And until then, I yes, I am still Jonathan Strickland,
(40:05):
and I am and always will be aerial casting Bye,
I have spoken. M m m m m. The Large
(40:35):
New Drunk Collider is production of I Heart Radio and
was created by Ariel cast In. Jonathan Strickland is the
executive producer. This show is produced, edited and published by
Tory Harrison. For more podcasts on my heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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