Episode 746 - The Report (2019)

Hi everyone!

It's been a minute, hasn't it? I'm back today with this special episode, covering a film that I saw just before the stay-at-home orders were issued in California for the current pandemic. It's going to be an extended episode, with an update on things here at One Movie Punch, my review of THE REPORT entangled with an essay on how the pandemic has affected the film industry in the short term and the long term, and for those that stick around afterwards, a fun audio drama to tide you over during the extended absence.

We last left you with our review of LETO back on March 14th, which feels like forever ago, and like yesterday. I had been following the news regarding the Coronavirus, and lamenting how little was being done to contain it, when things began to snowball in New York and New Jersey. Folks were already hoarding food, water, and apparently toilet paper. I remember standing in line, prior to social distancing and masks, listening to someone calmly argue with anyone willing to listen that this was all a hoax, even while dropping three months of food into their cart. I can still remember wondering if anyone around me had it, and if I was going to die, and when I got back to the house that day, I let the team know they could put their pending reviews on permanent hiatus.

There was supposed to be a break anyway. I had a Patreon episode planned out that was announcing a three month break for the podcast so I could concentrate on two major projects: First, our website needs a massive update, and every episode we publish makes that task grow ever larger. We know folks can't find much on our website right now, and we want to change that, while changing hosts. Second, as our team continues to grow, we need a better back-end system to manage our content. I needed some time to work on these projects, and couldn't do that keeping a daily podcast going on.

You'd think that with the pandemic, and the initial stay-at-home orders, that this would have been a slam dunk. Unfortunately, it was anything but that. I spent the first two weeks at home in a downward spiral, one driven by anxiety over whether I had contracted the virus standing in line, and amplified by the depression which followed each anxiety attack. The only way I could get it under control was to occupy myself, which I did by playing "The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt". We felt reasonably safe after the first two weeks, but rationality doesn't do much for anxiety and depression once it gets going.

It wasn't until about five weeks later (and completing "The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt") that I came out of my spiral. Distance learning was limping along for One Movie Spouse and One Movie Spawn, and I decided to get to work with all the free time I had, spending more time reading and exercising, and more importantly to you all, spending four to six hours a day taking online training classes for SQL Server and C#, and building a custom application to help automate our process on the back end.

I was making great progress, which came to a screeching halt as our plans were being developed for returning students (and teachers) to school. I was already behind schedule a little bit, and pushed back our restart date to 9/1 to accommodate the delay. Our districts were fortunate enough to adopt distance learning models, but until the final decisions were made, my anxiety and depression cycle started up again. It also meant we had to rearrange our tiny California townhome to accommodate one student and one teacher for distance learning, including rearranging rooms, assembling furniture, and doing some massive cleaning.

It also came with some practical issues in continuing the podcast for the foreseeable future. The pandemic has required quite a few families to make sacrifices to accommodate work and school changes. Our family is no exception. The increased expectations for distance learning this fall now require One Movie Spouse and One Movie Spawn to be online for longer periods of time each day, which makes trying to watch a movie at home nearly impossible. There's also a lot more housework to be done with three people around all the time, which eats into finding time to manage the podcast. I can't really go back to producing the podcast the way I was before, at least until we're done with distance learning, or when it feels safe enough for me to work elsewhere.

What does that mean? Well, it means the regular podcast will be off the air for the duration of the pandemic. The best I can do right now is continue working on the custom application to automate our process as time permits, and wait patiently for our world to go back to some semblance of stability. Once there's an opportunity to restart, then we will reach out to our critics, collaborators, and fans to figure out a schedule to bring us back on the air. If that's possible before the pandemic is finished, I'll let you know.

In the meantim