November 19, 2025 • 57 mins
On a rainy night Kayla and Rachel brought clipboard to the movie theater to watch Begonia (2025).Now they’re breaking down this absurdist black-comedy thriller beat by beat. Is there any chance that Yorgos Lanthimos’s newest film follows the Save the Cat structure, or are we just trying to shove a genre-bending film into a litterbox?
We talk about opening and final images (cutest bee ever), themes, midpoints, Dark Night of the Soul moments, and that finale we absolutely did not see coming. We had no idea what the Emma Stone character was.
Along the way, we share Kayla’s big writing news, debate conspiracy theories, talk about why celebrities can feel “otherworldly,” and fully spiral about the crocheted alien costumes that deserve their own Oscar category.
This one is for writers, film geeks, and anyone who just likes listening to two friends who are excited about Jesse Plemons.
Watch Begonia first because we literally tell you everything. Spoiler alert.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Kayla Ogden.
And I'm Rachel Sear.
And this is Write Your HeartOut.
Here we go.
Last night, Rachel and I went tothe movies.
We did.
Downtown San Mateo, California.
We sure did.
It was lovely.
Rainy evening.
It was a perfect movie evening.
(00:20):
Yes.
I got a large Coke Zero withlots of ice and a medium
popcorn.
And I got a giant package ofWelch gummies that I didn't have
to share with my kids.
Yeah, I was so surprised when Isaw the Welch's Gummies.
I was like, girl.
Because we see I see those everyday in my house.
Are you a toddler?
SPEAKER_02 (00:38):
I'm like, why did you get those?
Oh, I love them though.
Okay, wait, hold on.
Before we jump into begonia,which of course we must.
That's what we saw, begonia.
You posted on Instagram that youwon an award.
Oh my god.
Kayla, and then you didn't evensay anything to me.
And so I'm ambushing you in thismoment.
SPEAKER_01 (00:56):
Well, I wanted to save it for the pot.
Oh shit.
SPEAKER_02 (00:59):
Well, here we are.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
So that's something about Rachel and my real life
friendship now is that I neverwant to talk to her about
anything because I want toalways save it for the pot.
SPEAKER_02 (01:08):
And I was wildly offended.
You didn't say anything to me.
SPEAKER_01 (01:14):
Yeah.
So my friend Blair Visher, whowe've read her poetry or she's
read her poetry on this podcastbefore.
Yes.
Uh-huh.
She texted me and she said, Igot an email that I placed in
the San Francisco WritersConference writing contest.
And I was like, oh, good foryou.
And I was trying to feelcompersion.
(01:34):
Oh, yeah.
It's like a fucking company.
I was like, great.
But then I clicked on theblessed promotions tab in my
Gmail, and I got an email fromLisa Provost.
Um, and she said,Congratulations, SFWC writing
contest finalist.
And it turned out that me, yeah,I got, I placed.
(01:55):
I was a finalist in the soexciting.
Yes.
And what did you submit?
Okay, so this is what's so crazyis okay, so I was a finalist in
the adult fiction.
Okay.
Along with 10 others.
What I submitted was somethingthat existed for a small glimmer
of time.
I've talked about this on thepodcast several times.
(02:16):
I was trying to write somethingspeculative called the woman
tree.
Yes, of course.
And I wanted it to be sort oflike creepy and weird.
I wanted it to be sort of like aSiaka Murata kind of style
thing.
So I started writing it.
I've talked about it on the poda whole bunch of times.
And then, just like I'veactually done with my whole
novel, I started getting reallyin my head and I decided, okay,
(02:36):
this book is not gonna be a maleprotagonist where all the women
have died in the world.
It's gonna be a femaleprotagonist where all the men
have died in the world.
My perfect world.
SPEAKER_00 (02:48):
So rather.
SPEAKER_01 (02:50):
So yeah, so it changes the whole book in this
case, if I change theprotagonist's sex.
But I did it.
And then I had this wholesituation with my muse where I
felt like my muse was saying,What the fuck are you doing?
Like, change it back.
This is not what I am inspiringyou to do.
Yeah.
But in the brief two-day periodwhere the protagonist was a
(03:13):
woman and the work was calledThe Mantry, I sent that in to
the San Francisco WritersConference.
I like it.
Literally, whatever I sent, Ididn't send it through my email,
so I don't have like a copy ofthat.
I sent it through their website.
Whatever the fuck I sent themdoes not exist anymore in my
life.
Like it's if you go on my GoogleDocs, I had just changed it
(03:36):
back.
SPEAKER_02 (03:37):
Oh no.
Well, you can go back in GoogleDocs.
It it shows you differentversions.
Oh, okay.
So maybe I can help you find itif you want help.
SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, they have it, and Iguess they're gonna print it in
their anthology.
This is very exciting.
And they asked me for my bio.
So I'm gonna put I'm gonna shoutout Write Your Heart Out in
there.
Okay, wonderful because that'sall there is to say.
But I'm so happy and excited.
And now um I talked to Blair, myfriend.
(04:06):
So we went to this conferenceyears ago before COVID, and we
had the most inspiring time.
We I feel like we were likelittle babies, baby writers back
then.
And we tried to get agents.
I didn't even have a fullmanuscript at the time.
And then now it feels crazy thatwe we both kind of got our
(04:26):
finalists in their contest.
That's so amazing.
I love it.
Yeah, and then Blair was like,geez, it's gonna cost$850 for
the to be admitted to thisthing.
She's like, ah, that's a lot forme right now.
I said, Well, why don't wevolunteer this year?
So we So you're volunteering atthe conference?
We applied to volunteer at theconference.
(04:47):
That's great.
And if you volunteer, you canget in for free.
Of course.
Yeah, and then you meet all thepeople.
So you should volunteer with us.
Yeah, wait, when is it?
It's in February.
It's over the Valentine's Dayweekend.
SPEAKER_02 (04:57):
Okay.
I mean, I would love to do that.
That would be amazing.
SPEAKER_01 (05:00):
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'll send you the link.
And it's like you you get chosento volunteer, I guess.
So I haven't heard back aboutthat.
But she has to choose me becauseI'm one of the finalists.
SPEAKER_02 (05:10):
Yeah, right.
I mean, it would be veryinteresting if you didn't get
chosen.
I mean, I guess Yeah, I'd belike, why?
Maybe they don't want creepystalker people writing stalkers,
like your that one story thatyou wrote.
SPEAKER_01 (05:23):
Oh, oh, about the fangirl who Yeah.
I'm so happy.
It it I needed somebody to giveme like the lightest tap on like
pat on the back.
And so I feel like that wasgreat.
SPEAKER_02 (05:35):
I'm so happy for you.
Thank you.
Okay, begonia.
Begonia.
So we went to see this lastnight, as we said, and um we
both went into it without havingvery much information about it.
No, I really know anything aboutit.
And in fact, I hate previews.
SPEAKER_01 (05:52):
Oh, yeah, okay.
So what why did you choose thatto be the movie we saw?
Okay, so I think that Emma Stonechooses the most interesting,
amazing projects, and she is thestar, she's one of the stars of
the film.
And then I heard somewhere thatthe director is awesome.
(06:12):
Umgos Lantimos.
SPEAKER_02 (06:14):
I'm probably saying that wrong.
SPEAKER_01 (06:16):
Yorgos Lantimos.
SPEAKER_02 (06:18):
Yeah, and he's the one who did Poor Things.
Exactly.
And I didn't know that goinginto it.
I tried to know as little aspossible going into the movie
last night.
I literally looked up like thetwo-sentence overview.
After words, I found out it wasthe poor things person, and I
was like, oh, that totallytracks.
The directing style is verysimilar.
SPEAKER_01 (06:39):
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
But I like that this this moviedidn't have that uh steampunk.
SPEAKER_02 (06:45):
Yeah, it wasn't otherworldly, you know, it
didn't have that.
SPEAKER_01 (06:48):
Yeah, it was in this world.
SPEAKER_02 (06:50):
In like mostly.
Yeah, right.
Um, but it was in a rural areathat was like kind of shitty,
you know, it had nothing likepoor things universe.
SPEAKER_01 (07:00):
Yes, exactly.
So I had heard that the directorof Poor Things had done it, so I
really wanted to see it.
And I knew that Rachel lovedPoor Things, yeah.
So I thought we should gotogether.
And one thing that we've beentalking about for a long time is
we both kind of explored thesave the cat paradigm, which you
can look at in another episodeby us earlier in the pod called
(07:24):
Save the Cat, where they have umall of these beats, and
apparently a lot, a lot, a lotof Hollywood blockbuster films,
the scripts follow these beats.
And this is a way to make surethat your script keeps the
reader on sort of anentertaining, emotional roller
coaster and also gives themsatisfaction at the end of the
(07:47):
work.
SPEAKER_00 (07:47):
Totally.
SPEAKER_01 (07:48):
But a lot of people these days find Save the Cat a
little bit cringe because it'sknown to be kind of overdone,
and now people can kind of itmakes it so that things just
feel rote.
Like it's like, oh, da da da.
Like you can catch on to theformula too too easily.
Yeah, and you start to be ableto just predict how everything's
(08:09):
gonna go, and you just feel likeyou've seen this movie before,
even though you haven't, andthat kind of thing.
Um, so I thought, well, I wonderif whoever wrote this movie used
the Save the Cat beats becausepeople say that everyone uses
it, and so do they trulyeveryone does everyone truly use
it?
Sure.
SPEAKER_02 (08:30):
Or do good movies naturally fall in line with the
basic overview of Save the Cat,which I think is probably a good
thought process, is like just agood movie that catches your
attention.
This is usually you don't haveto use the formula.
I think, you know, like goodfood uses the five basic
ingredients of salt, sugar, fat,you know, the tastes.
(08:52):
If good food follows thatformula naturally, maybe this
also happens naturally.
SPEAKER_01 (08:57):
Right, yeah.
Right.
Or maybe certain screenwritersand filmmakers are trying
specifically to butt against itso that they don't fall into
these cliches.
I don't know which one it is,but I I got us um clipboards and
I printed out the all thedifferent beats that uh Save the
(09:18):
Cat style movie is supposed tohit.
We can also use that format fornovels too.
And Rachel and I have gonethrough our work and tried to
see if we're hitting the beatsand stuff like that.
So I said, like, let's takenotes, let's see if we can find
these beats in the work or not.
And um, overall, what did youthink about?
(09:38):
Did you think it was hitting thebeats or not?
SPEAKER_02 (09:41):
So I had a very hard time taking notes in the movie
theater.
It was too dark.
I am like I just it was veryhard for me to take the notes.
Um, so I didn't I do feel likeit hit the beats, however, not
in uh the way that I couldfollow it how you've written it
out beat by beat on so that wecould, you know, like fill in
(10:02):
the blank.
Thinking back as I was drivinghome that it got them all, but I
don't know if it was necessarilyin the same order.
SPEAKER_01 (10:10):
That is totally what I was gonna say.
I was like, it did a lot of thethings that uh Save the Cat
Greenplay is supposed to do, butit kind of like mixed them up
and it may not have done all ofthem, so I don't know if that
even counts.
Oh, I just wanted to let youguys know that I think we're
just definitely gonna spoilthis.
SPEAKER_02 (10:27):
Yes, we're gonna spoil this for sure.
Spoiler alert.
We'll put that in the Instagrampost and everything.
SPEAKER_01 (10:32):
Yeah.
Yeah, because I want, yeah,exactly.
Like I definitely just want totalk about everything that
happens in this movie and how itkind of relates to these
different beats.
SPEAKER_02 (10:40):
If you are listening right now and you don't want it
to be spoiled, pause, go watchthe movie and come back and
listen.
10 out of 10 recommend it.
I can say that.
Oh, yeah.
That's no spoiler.
We literally looked at eachother afterwards and both of us
were like, I loved it.
SPEAKER_01 (10:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rachel immediately was like, Iloved it.
I was like, me too.
Yeah.
I mean, it was so good.
I love seeing a good movie likethat.
Yeah.
Okay, so enjoy the movie andcome back to us in a few.
So the first part of Save theCat is an opening image where
you're supposed to see life asnormal, like the way it is
(11:15):
before all the shit that's gonnahappen in the movie, right?
And so in this movie, it wasreally cool.
There were these two guys andthey were beekeepers and they're
cousins.
And one of them, who's like themain guy, do we know his the
character's name?
SPEAKER_02 (11:30):
Or Danny or Teddy.
Teddy.
Yeah.
Um, wait, hold on.
Should we do a tiny little blurbabout what the movie is?
Sure, sure.
Go for it.
Although you guys have surealready watched it, obviously.
Yeah.
But if you're powering through,you don't care about spoilers.
Here, we're just gonna give youa little bit of a thing.
Begonia is a 2025 absurdistblack comedy thriller film
(11:51):
directed by Yorgos Lantimos,like what she's head, based on
the 2003 South Korean film Savethe Green Planet by Jang Jun
Huan.
And Begonia follows two youngmen who kidnap a powerful CEO,
suspecting that she is secretlyan alien who wants to destroy
Earth.
And the screenplay was by WillTracy.
(12:11):
Will Tracy starring Emma Stone,who uh is obviously the powerful
CEO, uh Jesse Plemens.
He's great.
He is great.
Oh god, creep factor, 10 out of10.
SPEAKER_01 (12:22):
Oh, and he's married to um Kirsten Dunce.
Yeah, best.
Right.
She's sort of like a local baby,she's like in in the Bay Area, I
think.
Is she?
Um place like LA or San Diego.
SPEAKER_02 (12:34):
I don't know.
She's in California.
She and they are such aninteresting couple because they
both really transform as actors.
SPEAKER_01 (12:40):
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (12:41):
And especially Jesse.
He grosses me out and he's allin so many ways as an actor, and
then I see him in like photoshoots or like interviews, and
I'm like, wildly different.
SPEAKER_01 (12:54):
Like, oh, you're not gross.
Yeah.
He deserves an Academy Awardafter this performance.
I think m maybe more so thanEmma Stone, but who the fuck
cares?
Give her all the awards.
It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_02 (13:06):
The other actors, Aiden Delbus, who I assume is uh
cousin, yeah, who's Dan?
Was it Dan?
Yeah, maybe Dan.
Or Don.
Don.
Don.
Don't.
Oh shoot.
Don and Teddy.
Okay, and then Stavros Halkias,although I don't know who that
is in there.
And then Alicia Silverstoneplays Jesse Pubbin's mom.
Wow.
And she had a very small butpowerful part.
(13:28):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (13:28):
I think the other one must be the cop.
It's a really small cat.
It must be, yeah.
Yeah.
Um okay.
So that's the movie, and itopens with Dawn and Teddy, these
two cousins, and Teddy isteaching Dawn about bees and the
plight of the honeybee.
Yeah, so that's like life asusual.
(13:49):
And then later on in the Savethe Cat um paradigm, at the very
end, the final image is supposedto call back to the life as
normal first image.
Oh, and then secondly, there wasanother opening image where Emma
Stone, the CEO, is is walkingaround her company, like the
(14:12):
office building.
And she's perfectly put.
She's in control.
SPEAKER_02 (14:17):
She's oh, and it also starts with her morning
routine of like vitamins andlike running on a tremor with a
mask on and all of theanti-aging type things that you
see celebrities doing.
SPEAKER_01 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, at their home.
Yeah.
So there's those opening images,life as usual.
I don't think we need to gothrough the story necessarily
beat by beat.
Like, I think it makes moresense to talk about do they at
the end of the movie, do they dothat final image?
Do they recall back?
Absolutely.
I mean, it starts with bees andends with bees.
(14:51):
Yeah, it starts with bees, itends with bees.
Actually, the very final shot ofthe film has the cutest little
bee.
SPEAKER_00 (14:59):
It's just on that little purple flower.
SPEAKER_01 (15:00):
Is that a begonia?
SPEAKER_00 (15:02):
I assume so.
SPEAKER_01 (15:03):
It should be because there's no other begonia mention
in the whole film.
SPEAKER_02 (15:07):
Um, that let me look it up.
Begonia.
SPEAKER_01 (15:10):
Yeah, it shows this the cutest little bee like
tripping all over this flower.
So it so the film definitelyfollows the beats in that scene.
SPEAKER_02 (15:19):
It was not a begonia.
Begonias are this interesting.
So what an interesting name.
Why begonia?
Let me look that up.
That's a good circle back.
The juxtaposition between thethe conspiracy theorist cousins
and their obsession with bees.
And the opening scene there,he's talking about the bees, but
(15:42):
he's also talking about how lifeon earth is maybe not what we
think it is.
And then it's also showing herdoing her routine, and so it's
like showing that they're inthis like rural shitty house,
like doing their weirdconspiracy theory shit.
Oh, yeah.
And she's like living this highpower life.
So like it's showing that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (16:01):
Which is very much theme-stated.
SPEAKER_01 (16:03):
Theme-stated.
Oh, okay, okay.
So so you're saying thejuxtaposition of the different
lifestyles and that sort of likefoil is the theme.
SPEAKER_02 (16:14):
Yeah, well, them them being like clearly
hillbillies talking aboutconspiracy theories.
Yeah.
And then right away you'reseeing this high-powered woman.
So they think that somehow she'sconspiring against them.
That feels very clear.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (16:29):
Yeah.
Um did I throw you off?
No, no, no.
No, it's all good.
I'm just the the next beat istheme stated.
Right.
And I was I was writing aboutthat because that some of the
things that the beekeepers weresaying, I'm like, oh, are they
stating the theme?
Because um he said somethingabout that the bees have this
(16:52):
disease where they aren't umlike working for the queen
anymore, which is what bees doin their colonies, right?
They work for the the queen.
They start going off andabandoning the queen.
And um the cousin says, Well,why do they leave her?
(17:13):
And at this point, I didn't knowwhat was gonna happen in the
movie.
So I'm like, oh, that's thetheme.
Oh, they're gonna leave her.
I don't know.
Like that the larger organizingprinciple is like falling apart,
and I thought that was gonna bethe theme.
But looking back on the movie, Idon't know what the theme was
(17:34):
actually.
SPEAKER_02 (17:34):
There's that dinner scene about three-quarters of
the way through where they'veuh, you know, Teddy has realized
that sh, you know, he's realizedthat she's the alien that he
thinks that she is.
And um, you know, whether it'strue or not at that point,
you're still questioning it.
And then at dinner, they'retalking about this CCN, some
(17:55):
like thing that her company iscreated a cure or like tried to
create a cure, but it actuallymade his Teddy's mom sicker.
SPEAKER_00 (18:05):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:06):
And like, so it ties in, I think that ties in the B
thing is all about right?
This like sickness where hisqueen, his mom, is sick.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (18:18):
Well, she says she the mom says they make you sick
and then they sell you the cure.
Oh, right, right, right.
So I wonder if that's the theme.
unknown (18:26):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:26):
They make you sick and then they sell you the cure.
SPEAKER_02 (18:30):
It was really, yeah.
I think it was like a mentalgymnastics.
Like the theme was like, what isreal?
What is a conspiracy against usas a general population?
Where does that conspiracy end?
Yeah.
And like it starts with, youknow, the people who are
packaging for this Amazon likecompany, um, you know, in the
movie.
And then it's so it starts aslow as that, and then it goes up
(18:53):
as high as the universal, yeah.
Universal.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that that's it.
It's just like this conspiracyof where does it start?
Where does it start with thebees and it ends with the
universe?
SPEAKER_01 (19:03):
Yeah, and what yes, yes, yes, totally, totally.
It's it is about conspiracytheory and the truth of
conspiracy.
Like people are conspiring to dothings all day, every day.
Oh, yeah.
Um, well, and some of ourtheories about those
conspiracies are real and someof them are not.
(19:25):
And sometimes the truth is justas evil as the whacked out
theories.
Right.
But it's more benign, like, ornot benign, but it's more casual
or just rooted in like everydaystuff and money and power and
what you would expect ratherthan um, you know, lizard people
or aliens or whatever.
SPEAKER_02 (19:44):
Or flat earth.
I love that they kind of pokedfun at the flat earth thing
during the movie.
SPEAKER_01 (19:48):
That is such a such a fun motif in this movie, is
all of the conspiracy theoriesthat come up.
Totally.
Um, so I think I would give thislike a hundred percent a hell
yeah, in terms of like theopening images and then ending
because even like in thebeginning, they show her, right?
Like walking through her spaceand control, and then at the
(20:10):
end, she's limping through theoffice building.
She's completely like out ofcontrol, like totally, yeah,
just like um hanging on tothreads of control.
And then also what you weresaying about you know, Teddy, he
works at sort of an Amazonfactory in the beginning.
It kind of shows him working andeverybody working, sort of like
(20:30):
the bees in the hive, but thenat the end, it kind of shows
just the equipment unmanned andthe people sort of on the floor,
and like so it he definitelylike a hundred percent did that
part of the save the cat.
Totally.
And I think that we think thatthere was a theme stated.
Yeah, I think they were kind ofstating the theme all throughout
the movie.
I don't know that like normallywith the save the cat, it's the
(20:52):
theme is stated by some othercharacter, like it'll be like
say it was a movie about alittle boy and all the people
like and his family, and thenjust you know, somebody at
school will say, Hey, toughenup, kid, you gotta believe in
yourself.
Sure.
And it's like that person isn'treally part of the movie, but
they state the theme for theperson watching.
(21:13):
I don't know that they reallydid this right after the opening
image.
I don't think I don't know.
SPEAKER_02 (21:18):
No, it was I mean, it was very clearly saying the
theme.
I think I I think they plantedeverything throughout perfectly
to reconfirm, reconfirm,reconfirm.
But the two guys, the cousins,talking about the theme right
off the bat.
Yeah.
So it was it was laid out infront of you, and then they, you
know, spoon-fed it to youthroughout in a really, really
(21:39):
interesting way.
Just like every bite confirmed alittle bit more of what you're
wondering.
SPEAKER_01 (21:45):
Yes.
You know?
Yeah.
And one thing that I think wasinteresting about this is it was
hard to know who the protagonistwas.
Like we were certainly focusedon Teddy.
Yes.
I think he kind of was the maincharacter.
But sometimes when I looked atthese different beats, I saw
(22:06):
them happening to differentcharacters.
Um, for example, there's asetup, right?
And the whole setup is justthey're showing Teddy and his
cousin preparing and gettingready to go and kidnap her.
SPEAKER_02 (22:20):
Yeah, it's like going to the hardware store,
getting a mask.
Their masks were hilarious.
It was Jennifer Aniston's case.
SPEAKER_01 (22:25):
Jennifer Aniston's mask.
Yes.
They yes, they sh there.
So there definitely is a setup.
Definitely.
And then the catalyst.
But I guess what I'm saying isthere was this one really,
really crazy scene where Teddyis trying to get his cousin to
accept a shot of progesteronefrom him.
(22:46):
That would chemically caststraight.
That would chemically caststraight.
That was heartbreaking.
And the cousin was like, Well, Ithink I might want to be with
somebody someday.
SPEAKER_02 (22:56):
And yeah, and it was so sweet because this this guy,
you know, he's clearly in his20s or 30s, right?
But he's uh, you know, he's gotsome sort of mental health, not
not even mental health issues.
He's he's on He's low IQ, low IQfor sure.
SPEAKER_00 (23:10):
And probably like on the spectrum.
SPEAKER_02 (23:13):
Yeah, God, he's the sweetest little muffin though.
He's like, I just what acharacter.
I I would love to know moreabout him and his act as an
actor.
Um but he's just the sweetest,most innocent bug, you know,
like he's just so cute, and thenhis cousin is so deep in this
hole.
And this, you know, Don, thecousin, he just has nowhere to
(23:34):
else to look.
So he has nothing else to livefor, yeah, except for his
cousin, who's in this hole, andthen his cousin's telling him he
needs to be chemically castratedfor all, you know, for all of
these very firm reasons that hehas evidence, you know, quote
unquote evidence of.
And he's just like, okay, but Ithought maybe one day I could be
(23:55):
with somebody.
SPEAKER_01 (23:56):
So heartbreaking.
She's trying to be like, baby.
Teddy believes that if they havetheir their sperm and their
masculine like testosterone andsex drive, that the alien will
be able to use that againstthem.
So they need to protectthemselves against that by
chemically casting it.
SPEAKER_02 (24:15):
Which another scene he confirms, like when uh she's
she's trapped in the basementand she's like, What do you
want?
Like sex?
And Teddy like looks at hiscousin, he's like, See, he told
you she was gonna try this.
And it was like, Oh, I guess hejust, you know, at least there
was some evidence for himself,you know.
At least Don got that.
SPEAKER_01 (24:33):
Okay, this is something that really confused
me.
I don't know if there was a Bstory.
So I thought maybe the B storywas Brian's relationship with
his mother.
Yeah.
Or oh wait, oh no, I I notBrian.
I wrote down Brains because Ican't couldn't remember his
name.
I called him Brains because hewas the brains of the operation.
(24:53):
So Teddy has his relationshipwith his mother.
He also has a relationship withhis with the cop.
SPEAKER_02 (25:00):
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote down.
Life before with whateverhappened with his mom and the
the weird babysitter situation.
SPEAKER_01 (25:08):
That's the B story because so the A story is is
Teddy, his cousin, the EmmaStones characters that's the A
story.
Yes.
And then the B story that'swoven through is probably the
cop.
SPEAKER_02 (25:22):
Yeah, and I think the mom, I think it's the
backstory of why is he this way,it wasn't needed for this for
the kidnapping and everything tohappen.
However, it gave so much moredetail into why he is this way,
like the cop thing, 1000% notnecessary to k still have gotten
(25:43):
from point A to point B, but itjust added a great B story layer
of like this guy has been fuckedup from the get from his
babysitter as a little boy, andlike his mom clearly was on
opiates, which was like aninteresting and like very needed
thing to know, you know, butalso you didn't need it to get
(26:05):
from point A to point B in thestory, right?
SPEAKER_01 (26:07):
I think it was showing um how somebody becomes
this way, yes, like becomes solike paranoid, yeah.
You know, when you have such ahorrible upbringing and you deal
with so much trauma at such anearly age, how can that not
affect your ability to likeprocess and cope with life?
SPEAKER_02 (26:33):
Yeah, you know?
I mean, I think your completeunderstanding of who to trust is
turned upside down, yeah, right?
Yeah.
If you can't trust your own momand your own babysitter, the
people the two core and his dadwas clearly not there that was
mentioned, you know, the twocore people who you know are
supposed to be your securestattachments, yeah, you know,
like then fuck it.
(26:54):
Like, why would you trust a CEO?
And like who isn't an alien?
You don't you know, like it itreally leaves a lot of room for
unraveling.
SPEAKER_01 (27:04):
So those are the B story.
Yeah.
Fun and game in The Save theCat.
This is the beat where it'ssupposed to take out sort of the
most part of the movie, and it'sthe promise of the premise.
So it's supposed to be the stuffthat they would show in like a
preview for the movie.
And this movie's premise isthese conspiracy theorists
(27:25):
kidnap a lady, they think she'san alien, right?
And so the fun in games beat isthey have this woman down in the
basement and she's passed out,and they're putting lotion all
over her skin.
Anti-histamine lotion andshaving her head, and they shave
her head, and then she's like,it's not fun in games in terms
(27:46):
of like we're laughing out loudhere, but it's there's a bit of
a hijinx vibe to it, and you'regetting that promise of the
premise.
You're watching this crazysituation unfolding.
She's tied to the bed, she'strying to negotiate with them,
have a conversation, figure outhow to get herself out of this,
(28:10):
where their heads are at, andthey're super, super on alert
and suspicious of every singlething that she says.
And so you get to watch EmmaStone's beautiful face with a
shaved head, like emoting andher eyes, her huge eyes darting
back and forth and trying tofigure it out and what the CEO
would say and all her likecorpse speak.
(28:32):
Oh yeah.
And then him pressing backagainst the corpse speak and
saying it back to her in sort oflike a like a mocking way.
That was really good.
SPEAKER_02 (28:40):
It was really good, and it really they did such a
great job of making you reallyquestion is this an act?
Like, you know, she Emma Stonedid just an amazing job of being
like, okay, she's supposed to bethis brilliant woman.
So is she trying to figure herway out of it as a brilliant
woman, or is she an alien?
And like, is this guy on tosomething?
(29:01):
Because, you know, she does giveoff an otherworldly vibe of like
of this status, you know, how aspeople think of celebrities or
people think of CEOs, of this,like whether or not we subscribe
to it, there is thisotherworldliness to celebrities
or to these billionaires, youknow?
SPEAKER_01 (29:20):
That is so true.
I feel like when you see,sometimes it's like when you see
a celebrity, they have this kindof air about them.
Like you're kind of like, ugh,like there's some kind of like
electricity around them.
There's an otherworldliness,just like you said.
Um, this is like kind of stupid,like embarrassing aside.
(29:40):
But Sean and I, my husband, welike to watch the show called
Survivor.
Ever heard of it?
It's still on TV.
Anytime I tell people Seasonnumber 42.
Literally, season number 50 iscoming up.
Wow.
Yeah, that was a guess.
That was a guess.
So every time I tell peopleabout this, they're like, that
show is still on TV.
Yes, it is.
It is thrilling.
(30:01):
Anyway, there was like an eventin San Francisco where it was a
watch party where all these likeold serv like survivors, like
people who had played on theshow, were there.
And Sean and I went and we metsome of like our the people we'd
seen on the show and stuff.
And I was standing there in thebar, like watching the show on
the big TVs.
And this girl, this like sort ofpretty um woman, sort of a
(30:26):
slight woman, like with youknow, pretty hair, and she had
fake eyelashes on and stuff, butshe kind of like came and stood
in front of us for a moment andwas like watching the TV.
And I didn't recognize her fromSurvivor, but I just like knew
she was one of the survivors.
Like I could just tell.
Part of me thinks that there'slike a self-consciousness about
(30:47):
them, like they realize thatthey're being watched.
Sure, maybe.
Um, but anyways, that's just I Ilove what you just said about
her character, yeah, and howthere's an otherworldliness
about them that is almost alien.
SPEAKER_02 (30:59):
Yeah, and and it's also a question of what do we as
quote unquote normal people puton them?
You know, because that's also aquestion throughout the movie,
is like what is he putting onher versus what she is, and like
seeing her act scared, and thenis she as this CEO scared
(31:19):
because she's scared as a human,or is she scared because she's
found out as an alien?
You don't know, like it's it'sreally a wild ride they take you
on mentally.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (31:29):
For me, I didn't think that there was any
possibility that she was analien for at least the first
half of the movie.
SPEAKER_02 (31:39):
I'm so curious as to when you feel like you figured
it out.
SPEAKER_01 (31:42):
Um, this is the big spoiler is that like after they
kidnap her and during the funand games when she's she's
chained to this horrible beddownstairs, and they're like,
You're an alien, and she's like,I'm not.
Like, and you're just like,She's fucking not an alien, you
suck.
Yeah, Rose.
SPEAKER_02 (31:59):
I I mean I I I was really I did not think that like
an alien.
SPEAKER_01 (32:04):
Like, I just did not think that's what this movie
was.
Um, okay, so I have a question.
SPEAKER_02 (32:10):
At the point when they torture her, is that where
you were coming up to?
When he, the Jesse Plevinscharacter, he that is what
confirms to him that she's analien.
They're torturing her with thiselectricity, and he gets up to
like 500 or 600 volts ofelectricity, which I have no
idea how much voltage killssomebody.
I don't think it can be thatmuch.
(32:31):
I have no idea.
But whatever amount it is, thatconfirms to him that she's an
alien.
And then is that when the badguys are closing in?
Or is that the when it breaksinto two?
Like at what point?
Because I feel like that wassuch a pivotal moment for those
characters because she wasclearly okay after being
(32:52):
electrocuted.
So then it was like, oh my god,is he actually right?
Or was that actually not enoughelectricity to hurt somebody?
Like it really, unless you knowhow many volts kill somebody.
Yeah.
I'm so curious as to what pointthat was in the Saves the Cat.
SPEAKER_01 (33:08):
Right.
So there's something called themidpoint in Saves the Cat, which
I don't remember what that Inever remembered.
Yeah, me neither.
So let's see what it means.
Huh.
So the midpoint is the exactmiddle of the story where the
protagonist experiences either afalse victory, so he seems to
(33:29):
achieve his goal, or a falsedefeat, like a major setback,
but it won't actually defeather.
SPEAKER_02 (33:35):
Okay, so I would say the midpoint and I would say the
midpoint is when she's gettingelectrocuted.
Don't you think that's abouthalfway through the movie?
It kind of is him getting thislike experience of victory, and
you still don't know if it'sfalse or not.
I feel like that might be themidpoint.
SPEAKER_01 (33:54):
Right.
Maybe that could be the midpointwhere it's either Teddy believes
that he is victorious inconfirming that she is an alien.
Correct.
Although he already knew, but healso now realizes that she that
no other alien that he's evertortured before has gotten up to
(34:14):
that level.
Right.
And so she must be like aroyalty alien.
Oh, right, the royalty.
SPEAKER_02 (34:20):
So then I because I think that that takes us right
into the bad guys closing in.
Because now that he's beenconfirmed in his beliefs, then
he feels like, okay, now it'sthe day before the eclipse, and
things are gonna starthappening, and they start like
foiling the walls, and right?
SPEAKER_01 (34:36):
Oh yeah.
When he electrocutes her, Istill thought she was totally a
human and that he was torturinga human and that this was so
like disgusting and horrible.
SPEAKER_02 (34:46):
Well, so did I.
And then it it felt very clearthat Dawn also was still on the
fence.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (34:51):
And if she could cousin, yeah.
The the cousin You can see thathe doesn't believe, he doesn't
really b fully believe thatshe's an alien or in what his
cousin is saying the whole time.
But every time he starts to feedinto his own doubts and think
about it, his cousin is there toreestablish his belief, you
(35:12):
know, to bring him back in onside.
SPEAKER_02 (35:14):
And Don has nothing else to live for.
Yeah, he doesn't, and he's like,if if she is an alien, I want to
go with her, you know, becausethere's nothing here on the
world.
I know that's so sad.
SPEAKER_01 (35:23):
Um, yeah, and I was kind of wondering with the bad
guys close in.
Um, I was kind of wondering ifthe bad guys closing in in part
was the bad guys were likedoubts.
You know, his cousin startshaving more doubts, like it's
almost like that's closing in.
And then whenever the um woman,the Emma Stone character says,
(35:46):
You are mentally ill.
SPEAKER_03 (35:48):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (35:48):
You know, and you just see this sort of glimmer in
his eye, like she sort ofpenetrated like a tiny bit, like
there might might be a tinysliver within him that wonders,
like, am I just crazy?
Um, and I felt I sometimes Ithought in this movie that the
bad guys closing in was doubtstoo.
SPEAKER_02 (36:06):
Sure.
Um, but I don't know.
I also think at that that dinnerscene is pretty pivotal.
She's already been electrocuted,he thinks that she's you know,
the the high power um alien.
And then they have thisconversation at the table where
the power dynamic really shifts,and you can see him getting
scared and filling himself withdoubt, and he like you know,
(36:27):
climbs across the table, andthen soon thereafter that the
police show up.
Yeah, that's bad guys closingin, yeah.
For sure.
So I think that whole like10-minute sequence in that movie
is very much the bad guysclosing in.
SPEAKER_01 (36:39):
Yes, yes.
That's supposed to be umfollowed by a dark knight of the
soul, which is don't you thinkDawn?
I thought the Dark Knight of theSoul was first of all, um the
lady who's supposed to be thealien, gets she has a whole
altercation.
She gets tied back down to thebed, and there's a cop there
upstairs with Teddy walkingaround and talking to Teddy.
(37:01):
And um, Dawn, the cousin, isleft down there with a shotgun
and the Emma Stone character.
Emma Stone is, you know, feedinginto his doubts, but then also
you can tell that the characterdecides okay, I'm not gonna be
able to sway him from hiscousin's point of view because
he loves his cousin.
(37:22):
So I'm just gonna have to likefeed into this.
The cousin ends up killinghimself because he believes that
if he shoots himself, the MStone character will take him up
with her in her spaceship andhe'll get to live up there in
space with her and not be a partof the world anymore.
SPEAKER_02 (37:40):
Right, which I think that was also just a
misunderstanding.
Like, I don't think heunderstood how any of it was
supposed to work with his cousinin the first place.
But you know, like I think thathis cousin had been Teddy had
been telling him they were gonnago up there and they were gonna
help sort it out and then comeback down.
SPEAKER_01 (37:55):
Yeah.
But he didn't he had thoughtthat they weren't gonna come
back down, and then when hefound out they were coming back
down, he was so sad.
Um The Dark Knight of the Soul,I thought was after that part
where Jesse's like riding hisbike.
SPEAKER_02 (38:09):
Yeah, uh well, Oh, to go see his mom.
Yeah, so I think that that's thedark night of the soul.
Is like, so this has justhappened with Teddy killing
himself and he kills the cop whohad Don killing himself.
Yeah, uh yeah, Don killshimself.
Sorry, Don kills himself.
Teddy uh beats the cop to deathafter the cop admits that he's
molested Teddy as a child andall of this stuff.
(38:32):
It's this intense moment, andthen he goes down to find that
she is, you know, she's downthere with Don's body, and then
she gives him a quote unquotecure to go cure his mom, who up
until that moment we didn'treally know she was still alive.
Yeah.
Um, but somehow she knows he'sshe's still alive, which was
(38:53):
interesting, which was reallyinteresting.
So yeah, I think that that'svery much the Dark Knight of the
Soul moment of like, and then hekills his mom by accident via
the cure.
SPEAKER_01 (39:01):
Yeah.
And then I think that's when itbreaks in the three.
Yeah.
So the dark night of the soul isit's sort of like all is lost.
Yes.
Teddy, his cousin is dead, andhe's he's biking over to
whatever the facility is wherehis mother is in a coma, and you
just see him completelydistraught and biking.
So it's like probably a lessthan a minute is the dark night
(39:24):
of the soul beat.
What does break into three mean?
I think break into three is kindof like the third act of like
sorry, what were we gonna say?
Um, I was gonna say it's likethe protagonist recommits.
They're supposed to likerecommend it.
Break into three is when hecomes back.
SPEAKER_02 (39:40):
He realized he killed his mom.
Yeah.
Via Emma's advice.
She in that moment has thechance to see all of his other
experiments.
She breaks free of the chains,she sees all the other
experiments he's done on otherpeople and quote unquote aliens.
And you're wondering why isn'tshe leaving?
Why isn't she running away?
(40:00):
She had the chance to you seeher starting up the stairs, but
then she goes back down.
SPEAKER_01 (40:04):
So the break into three, beat 13 for Save the Cat
is supposed to happen around the80% mark of the film.
And I would say it might happena little later in this movie,
which it totally does break intothree.
Yep.
At this point, I still thoughtthat Emma Stone's character was
not an alien.
Totally, me too.
So she goes in, she finds thislike secret room where Teddy has
(40:29):
some of the body parts of theother aliens that he has like
dissected and humans andwhatever, and he has 3D printed
like the spaceship that hebelieves exists and all this
crazy stuff.
It's like his crazy room.
Yes.
And Emma Stone is like lookingat it, and I'm like, why aren't
you leaving?
Yeah.
So Rachel's saying, Why aren'tyou leaving?
(40:50):
And I didn't have that feelingnecessarily.
My feeling, I think, was morelike she was locked down there
or something.
SPEAKER_02 (40:59):
I was like, Why aren't you leaving?
And then I was like, okay, maybeshe is a fucking alien.
She's she wants to check out hisinformation that he has.
But then when she's still there,when he gets back, which is I
think the biggest breakingtheory moment, and she starts
telling him everything he wantsto hear about the apes and how
they came down and they gavehumans this many chances.
(41:20):
But they had also shown herreading all of his notes.
Yes.
And I was like, okay, so shejust remembered all his notes.
She's telling him what he wantsto hear so that they can go out
together into the and I'm like,I'm still so questioning myself
of like, is she just this smart?
Like, she realized that sheshould read these notes that
he's clearly taken, all of thestuff he he thinks is fact, and
(41:42):
she's gonna use it against himto get out.
SPEAKER_01 (41:44):
Yeah, so when Teddy comes back from accidentally
killing his mother with what theEmma Stone character had
convinced him to put in herfluid supply, which was
anti-freeze, she said, it's notanti-freeze, that's just the
bottle is just where I hide it.
That's the cure.
And so he goes and and and killsher, and then when he comes
(42:04):
back, she the speech is amazingthat she gives him.
It is, it starts with thedinosaurs, and she says that
yes, she is an alien and she'sthis royal alien, and they came
to Earth and they found thedinosaurs, and everything was
beautiful and perfect, but thenthe aliens fucked up or
something, and then they alldied, they killed all the
dinosaurs, but then the apes andthis and how the alien race and
(42:29):
the human race like got intosort of like a turmoil.
SPEAKER_02 (42:32):
Well, like the humans kept degrading
themselves, degradingthemselves.
Like humans kept like they werethese supreme beings, they would
be they they would make themperfect, and then humans would
wipe themselves out repeatedlyand just keep keep lowering
themselves to the lowest commondenominator.
Like they would they start- youremember there was the point
where she says something aboutbeing on the arc?
(42:53):
Oh, yeah, that she includes theark, which is amazing.
Like the humans are on the arc,but then by the time the the
world dries and they can get offthe boat, they are they're just
apes again because they'vedegraded themselves.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (43:04):
It's like, oh, okay.
So it includes all of theseamazing parts of like the
conspiracy theory lore, right?
Like you've got like thedinosaurs, and then what
happened to them, and when itwas because of aliens, and then
you've got like like the arkreally did happen, but what was
like really what was it reallyabout?
Yeah, and religion.
Yeah, I love that.
And like sprinkling in differentconspiracy theories to create
(43:28):
like this narrative, and it wasso awesome.
SPEAKER_02 (43:31):
It was, and then it could and it was so perfect
because I mean it was writtenbeautifully, because you're
still like, there's no way.
This is so ridiculous.
This has to have been his notes.
Yeah, yeah, those were notes.
SPEAKER_01 (43:43):
She's just reciting it because she's so smart, she
has to convince him to take herout of there.
Right.
She convinces him to go with herback to her office because she
has a and she's gonna contactthe alien ship.
And then they go back there andthey sneak in, which is
hilarious, and then she takesout a calculator and she's like,
I have to put in 53 digits intothis calculator so that um the
(44:08):
ship comes or whatever.
And it has like to look like ahuman object.
And it's just like so funnybecause it's so like so
conspiracy theory-esque.
And I'm still, this is when Istarted to think maybe it was
this is like the very fuckingend of the movie, you guys.
I started being like, maybe,maybe she is an alien and maybe
(44:28):
they are going to the gym.
SPEAKER_02 (44:30):
Well, when she tells them to get into the closet,
yeah, and she's got thecalculator thing.
I was like, no, no, she's justfucking genius.
She's a human, she's genius,she's figured out how to get out
of this.
See, that's when I wasreconfirmed that she's human,
was like, she's just so smart.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (44:46):
And then and when she's looking, she's she's like
pretending to put the thing intothe calculator.
And you see her kind of lookingaround because she's in her
office, and there's you can seepeople kind of crowding around
because she's been missing, andshe's sort of backing away from
the closet that he went into.
But that was literally like myfirst glimmer of thinking she
(45:07):
was an alien at all.
The whole movie.
I did not, I did not think.
I'm am I dumb?
SPEAKER_02 (45:12):
Okay, so then he he has a bomb strapped to him
because he still doesn't trusther a hundred percent.
Yeah.
And then the bomb accidentallygoes off in the closet right at
the last second, and he killedand he kills himself.
SPEAKER_01 (45:24):
Which the cr this is like one of the one of the
craziest moments in this movieis when his head flies out of
the closet and hits her in herhead.
And knocks her out.
SPEAKER_02 (45:36):
His head fucking flies out and hits her in the
head.
Oh my god.
Okay, so then she's knocked out,and then the next scene she's in
an ambulance.
And this is like the bestfinale.
I gotta say, this is the bestfinale.
She's in the ambulance, and thenshe wakes up in the ambulance,
and she's like, Is he dead?
And the EMT is like, Oh yes,he's he's passed away.
And she's like, Okay, and shegets up while the fucking
(45:58):
ambulance is moving, unwraps herneck, jumps out the back of the
ambulance, and then that's thatwas for me.
It was like, what the fuck?
She is an ambulance.
SPEAKER_01 (46:06):
Yes, that's when you're and she like looks up at
the moon.
SPEAKER_02 (46:09):
And like, so I literally was questioning
everything back and forth theentire movie until that moment.
SPEAKER_01 (46:16):
I mean, that's that's because this was a
genius.
It was written so it was writtenso well.
I wonder how good the Korean umnovel is.
Oh my god, I would love to know.
You know, I love Korean shit.
I love Korean movies, I loveKorean um art.
Yeah, like it's reallyincredible.
Like, please give us more, giveit, give it all.
(46:38):
Like, I'm so glad that we'reit's starting to be in an era
where in America it's justopening up to like these new
voices and translators.
Seriously, thank God.
So we're not so even if this,you know, we can shove this
story into it.
I think we're shoving it.
We're shoving it.
(46:59):
Yeah.
But it's also like it is goodfilmmaking to have this opening
image and then tap off yourmovie with the the final image
where it brings back to mindwhere you started, but shows how
different things are now.
I mean, that's just goodfilmmaking.
SPEAKER_02 (47:16):
I think it is.
Uh, we have to talk for onesecond before we move on.
Oh my god.
About the aliens.
So at the end, she is she is analien.
Yes, and she goes to oil.
And the costumes for thesealiens.
You have to watch the movie.
I feel like you have to see itif only for this alien ship.
(47:37):
These costumes are so awesome.
They can't success.
I can't.
SPEAKER_01 (47:41):
I want, I want one.
I want to walk around.
There are these like big puffycrocheted crocheted, amazing
brown and white, and all thealiens are like they're human
because they created man intheir image.
Right.
So they do look, they don't lookdifferent.
They look like humans, so theyall have long hair, and they say
(48:02):
something about needing the hairto communicate with each other.
And and then they have um adiorama of the earth, or like
maybe it just literally is theearth.
Seems like it.
So the earth is sitting in themiddle of their life.
Which is and it's flat.
The earth is flat.
It's so good.
I love that the earth is flat inthis.
SPEAKER_02 (48:22):
Well, you gotta get to it when uh at the when she
they just they make thedecision.
SPEAKER_01 (48:27):
They decide that and then it's that that humanity has
had enough chances, and she justtakes like a needle and pops the
atmosphere, and it literallygoes.
She pops it like a bubble, andthen everybody on earth dies.
But for some reason, the animalsare still alive.
Well, because just humans,humans are the problem, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (48:47):
Right?
So, like bees are still there,which takes us to our closing
scene.
The dog is still there, youknow, like the birds, but
everyone's dead.
And I thought it was a reallyinteresting and smart choice
that they it showed children, itshowed people in the and that
and they're just keeled over,right?
It's not like there's abloodbath or anything, but it
(49:08):
shows you know, people in themidst of having sex, it shows
kids at a museum, people inschool, all over the world, just
they're just dead, like theyjust killed humanity because
they had to start over again.
You know, and then you go to thebees.
And I I thought it was like suchan ending, yeah.
And it because to whateverconspiracy world with these
(49:29):
aliens, it's just as easy as apoop.
SPEAKER_01 (49:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is so freaky.
That is so freaky.
So um, I think that our finalconclusion as to whether this
script was written with like theactual say of the cat in mind.
I would say probably not.
No, like I don't think thisscript writer, I mean, I'm sure
(49:52):
he knows what it is, but I don'tthink that he uses it as a
template as such.
You know what would beinteresting?
SPEAKER_02 (49:59):
So it's originally written by this Korean um uh
writer, yeah, and then it wasadapted into the screenplay for
Americans by Will Tracy.
Yeah so I will I wonder whatsort of filter it goes through
of, you know, the original filmor the original um Save the
Green Planet by Jang Jun Huan,you know, and then being adapted
(50:21):
into a screenplay by Will Tracyfor Americans.
What sort of saves the catfilter does it go into?
Because that would be I I wouldlove to watch the original
versus this one and see how thatworks.
You know?
SPEAKER_01 (50:35):
Yeah.
Oh, this is true.
SPEAKER_02 (50:36):
Because maybe it was, I mean, no offense to Will
Tracy, we don't know anythingabout him as a writer, but maybe
he shoved it into the Saves theCat box, and the original is a
little bit different, you know.
Like I would I would be reallycurious.
SPEAKER_01 (50:49):
Right to like sell it to American consumers.
Right.
Um, oh, he was a writer onsuccession, which is like one of
my favorite shows of all time.
Damn.
SPEAKER_02 (50:58):
That works so well for her, right?
Totally.
We definitely think that youshould watch Begonia.
I will absolutely watch itagain.
I would rate this movie as oneof my top ten films ever.
And this writing was fantastic.
Will, Tracy, if you did shove itinto a Saves the Cat box, I
appreciate you.
(51:18):
Um and I appreciate this, theoriginal writing because it was
really a fun original ride thatI did not see coming.
SPEAKER_01 (51:27):
Awesome, man.
Yeah, definitely go watch that.
Um, and let's see, I think weshould probably just wrap it.
Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02 (51:35):
Well, we were gonna go.
I can go quick.
Because I don't, I mean, it'snot like I'm gonna have stories
by story.
Um so I went to the other day uhon Wednesday, I went to the
writer's ruckus.
So as you might remember fromearlier episodes, um, at when I
was a student at CSM, my story,the compliment, got accepted
(51:56):
into the writer's ruckus.
So this semester at the writersruckus, quite a few people that
I went to school with uh were uhaccepted, and I'm so happy I got
to hear them.
So my friend MJ, as you haveheard her before.
Congratulations, MJ.
Woohoo! And then my good friendIzzy Schrodel, she uh also won a
(52:18):
spot, and they did a trio poemcalled Call Me Crazy that was
incredible that I'll talk abouta little bit.
But also Ashley Evans, um, sheis writing a memoir, and this
was a story from her memoir thatwas really cool.
And Colleen Chan, um, she's beenwriting a series of kind of
(52:38):
essays about her life in Korea.
And then Dominica Pazua, andshe's also writing a novel
that's really cool.
So I'm just so like I just lovethat I was in class with them,
and now they're all in theruckus too.
Yes, pretty good.
You had a good time.
We had a I had a great timelistening to their work, all of
it was incredible.
(52:58):
It was so fun being just anaudience member and not having
the nerves and all of the thingsthat I had last time I heard
everyone else's work because Iwas so in my own head.
So it was really cool to be justthe audience member.
SPEAKER_01 (53:10):
And so the trio, Alexis, MJ, and Izzy Schrodel,
they call me crazy.
What did they do?
They were perform three of themperforming it together?
SPEAKER_02 (53:20):
Yes.
I would love for them to eitherread it for us on the podcast or
something because they did agreat job.
They took turns um sayingdifferent stanzas and then
saying some of the linestogether.
Like I'm not sorry was one ofthe ones they repeated together,
or you know, call me crazy wasone of the things.
Um, and it was all about whatit's like being a woman and
(53:42):
being uh, you know, held down.
And these are all younger women.
They, you know, just have hadvarious levels of discomfort
being young women in this world.
And Izzy is actually a reallyincredible poet.
Her genre that she works withinis like, God, I'm not gonna say
it right, but she's um had aquite a bit of time in a mental
(54:06):
hospital where she had beencommitted, and so a lot of her
work is poetry about like thetick tick tick of the clock when
she's in white walls and thetick-tick tick of the doctor's
pens.
You know, and like it's reallylike it just gave me chills.
That that poem that she read inclass was incredible.
(54:27):
Oh, I'd love to have her readthat for God.
Let me see what she called it.
Eco writing, radical psychology.
She, you know, loves to talkabout the hard-hitting stuff
like um abortion.
And I thought that it would bereally fun if you're down to
have her as a guest on thepodcast, and she'd said she'd be
interested to not only read someof her work, but to talk about
(54:50):
like the inspiration behindthese harder hitting, you know,
topics and you know what thatmeans to her as an activist and
woman and all of the things.
SPEAKER_01 (54:59):
Oh my gosh, I would love to.
We should definitely do that.
Do you think we could do thatsoon, like for the next one?
She sounded down.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
And I'm gonna have um somestories soon because I am going
on a mini road trip with myfriend's mom to Sacramento to
(55:20):
watch this sort of like poet,uh, Sophia Isela.
She's the one that does like thedoll people are crazy.
They had you just look her up onInstagram, you guys, Sophia
Isela.
So I'm going with my friend'smom.
We're going down there.
We're gonna have magic.
We're gonna do a bunch of magicand we're gonna have a wild time
(55:42):
together.
Okay, I got us a hotel room withlike two bedrooms and stuff, and
I don't know why I'm doing thiswith my friend's mom, but I but
I am.
SPEAKER_02 (55:52):
You know, when it clicks, it clicks.
SPEAKER_01 (55:54):
You can click with her, and I honestly like I feel
really um I feel honored whenpeople like older people want to
actually talk to me and spendtime with me.
I remember when I was like 19wanting to hang out with 30 year
olds, and they were like,fucking kick rocks, you dumb
bitch.
Like we don't want to hang outwith you.
You're an idiot still.
Um, so now that I feel like I'mgetting older, older people are
(56:18):
like it just sort of like theplaying field starts to level
more and more the older you get.
Um, so now finally my uhfriend's parents actually want
to spend time with me, which isvery gratifying.
And hopefully not awkward for myfriend DLara.
SPEAKER_02 (56:33):
Well, hopefully not.
Yeah, we'll see.
Yeah.
Um, okay, well, I will see aboutwhen Izzy can come on.
And in the meantime, enjoy yourmagic, magic poetry.
Can't wait to hear about it.
SPEAKER_01 (56:48):
The mom.
Okay, great.
Uh so we'll talk to you guyssoon.
Yeah, goodbye.
Bye.
I love your nails, by the way.
Hi, I'm Kayla Ogden.
And I'm Rachel Sear.
And this is Write Your HeartOut.
Here we go.
Last night, Rachel and I went tothe movies.
We did.
Downtown San Mateo, California.
We sure did.
It was lovely.
Rainy evening.
It was a perfect movie evening.
(00:20):
Yes.
I got a large Coke Zero withlots of ice and a medium
popcorn.
And I got a giant package ofWelch gummies that I didn't have
to share with my kids.
Yeah, I was so surprised when Isaw the Welch's Gummies.
I was like, girl.
Because we see I see those everyday in my house.
Are you a toddler?
SPEAKER_02 (00:38):
I'm like, why did you get those?
Oh, I love them though.
Okay, wait, hold on.
Before we jump into begonia,which of course we must.
That's what we saw, begonia.
You posted on Instagram that youwon an award.
Oh my god.
Kayla, and then you didn't evensay anything to me.
And so I'm ambushing you in thismoment.
SPEAKER_01 (00:56):
Well, I wanted to save it for the pot.
Oh shit.
SPEAKER_02 (00:59):
Well, here we are.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
So that's something about Rachel and my real life
friendship now is that I neverwant to talk to her about
anything because I want toalways save it for the pot.
SPEAKER_02 (01:08):
And I was wildly offended.
You didn't say anything to me.
SPEAKER_01 (01:14):
Yeah.
So my friend Blair Visher, whowe've read her poetry or she's
read her poetry on this podcastbefore.
Yes.
Uh-huh.
She texted me and she said, Igot an email that I placed in
the San Francisco WritersConference writing contest.
And I was like, oh, good foryou.
And I was trying to feelcompersion.
(01:34):
Oh, yeah.
It's like a fucking company.
I was like, great.
But then I clicked on theblessed promotions tab in my
Gmail, and I got an email fromLisa Provost.
Um, and she said,Congratulations, SFWC writing
contest finalist.
And it turned out that me, yeah,I got, I placed.
(01:55):
I was a finalist in the soexciting.
Yes.
And what did you submit?
Okay, so this is what's so crazyis okay, so I was a finalist in
the adult fiction.
Okay.
Along with 10 others.
What I submitted was somethingthat existed for a small glimmer
of time.
I've talked about this on thepodcast several times.
(02:16):
I was trying to write somethingspeculative called the woman
tree.
Yes, of course.
And I wanted it to be sort oflike creepy and weird.
I wanted it to be sort of like aSiaka Murata kind of style
thing.
So I started writing it.
I've talked about it on the poda whole bunch of times.
And then, just like I'veactually done with my whole
novel, I started getting reallyin my head and I decided, okay,
(02:36):
this book is not gonna be a maleprotagonist where all the women
have died in the world.
It's gonna be a femaleprotagonist where all the men
have died in the world.
My perfect world.
SPEAKER_00 (02:48):
So rather.
SPEAKER_01 (02:50):
So yeah, so it changes the whole book in this
case, if I change theprotagonist's sex.
But I did it.
And then I had this wholesituation with my muse where I
felt like my muse was saying,What the fuck are you doing?
Like, change it back.
This is not what I am inspiringyou to do.
Yeah.
But in the brief two-day periodwhere the protagonist was a
(03:13):
woman and the work was calledThe Mantry, I sent that in to
the San Francisco WritersConference.
I like it.
Literally, whatever I sent, Ididn't send it through my email,
so I don't have like a copy ofthat.
I sent it through their website.
Whatever the fuck I sent themdoes not exist anymore in my
life.
Like it's if you go on my GoogleDocs, I had just changed it
(03:36):
back.
SPEAKER_02 (03:37):
Oh no.
Well, you can go back in GoogleDocs.
It it shows you differentversions.
Oh, okay.
So maybe I can help you find itif you want help.
SPEAKER_01 (03:45):
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, they have it, and Iguess they're gonna print it in
their anthology.
This is very exciting.
And they asked me for my bio.
So I'm gonna put I'm gonna shoutout Write Your Heart Out in
there.
Okay, wonderful because that'sall there is to say.
But I'm so happy and excited.
And now um I talked to Blair, myfriend.
(04:06):
So we went to this conferenceyears ago before COVID, and we
had the most inspiring time.
We I feel like we were likelittle babies, baby writers back
then.
And we tried to get agents.
I didn't even have a fullmanuscript at the time.
And then now it feels crazy thatwe we both kind of got our
(04:26):
finalists in their contest.
That's so amazing.
I love it.
Yeah, and then Blair was like,geez, it's gonna cost$850 for
the to be admitted to thisthing.
She's like, ah, that's a lot forme right now.
I said, Well, why don't wevolunteer this year?
So we So you're volunteering atthe conference?
We applied to volunteer at theconference.
(04:47):
That's great.
And if you volunteer, you canget in for free.
Of course.
Yeah, and then you meet all thepeople.
So you should volunteer with us.
Yeah, wait, when is it?
It's in February.
It's over the Valentine's Dayweekend.
SPEAKER_02 (04:57):
Okay.
I mean, I would love to do that.
That would be amazing.
SPEAKER_01 (05:00):
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'll send you the link.
And it's like you you get chosento volunteer, I guess.
So I haven't heard back aboutthat.
But she has to choose me becauseI'm one of the finalists.
SPEAKER_02 (05:10):
Yeah, right.
I mean, it would be veryinteresting if you didn't get
chosen.
I mean, I guess Yeah, I'd belike, why?
Maybe they don't want creepystalker people writing stalkers,
like your that one story thatyou wrote.
SPEAKER_01 (05:23):
Oh, oh, about the fangirl who Yeah.
I'm so happy.
It it I needed somebody to giveme like the lightest tap on like
pat on the back.
And so I feel like that wasgreat.
SPEAKER_02 (05:35):
I'm so happy for you.
Thank you.
Okay, begonia.
Begonia.
So we went to see this lastnight, as we said, and um we
both went into it without havingvery much information about it.
No, I really know anything aboutit.
And in fact, I hate previews.
SPEAKER_01 (05:52):
Oh, yeah, okay.
So what why did you choose thatto be the movie we saw?
Okay, so I think that Emma Stonechooses the most interesting,
amazing projects, and she is thestar, she's one of the stars of
the film.
And then I heard somewhere thatthe director is awesome.
(06:12):
Umgos Lantimos.
SPEAKER_02 (06:14):
I'm probably saying that wrong.
SPEAKER_01 (06:16):
Yorgos Lantimos.
SPEAKER_02 (06:18):
Yeah, and he's the one who did Poor Things.
Exactly.
And I didn't know that goinginto it.
I tried to know as little aspossible going into the movie
last night.
I literally looked up like thetwo-sentence overview.
After words, I found out it wasthe poor things person, and I
was like, oh, that totallytracks.
The directing style is verysimilar.
SPEAKER_01 (06:39):
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
But I like that this this moviedidn't have that uh steampunk.
SPEAKER_02 (06:45):
Yeah, it wasn't otherworldly, you know, it
didn't have that.
SPEAKER_01 (06:48):
Yeah, it was in this world.
SPEAKER_02 (06:50):
In like mostly.
Yeah, right.
Um, but it was in a rural areathat was like kind of shitty,
you know, it had nothing likepoor things universe.
SPEAKER_01 (07:00):
Yes, exactly.
So I had heard that the directorof Poor Things had done it, so I
really wanted to see it.
And I knew that Rachel lovedPoor Things, yeah.
So I thought we should gotogether.
And one thing that we've beentalking about for a long time is
we both kind of explored thesave the cat paradigm, which you
can look at in another episodeby us earlier in the pod called
(07:24):
Save the Cat, where they have umall of these beats, and
apparently a lot, a lot, a lotof Hollywood blockbuster films,
the scripts follow these beats.
And this is a way to make surethat your script keeps the
reader on sort of anentertaining, emotional roller
coaster and also gives themsatisfaction at the end of the
(07:47):
work.
SPEAKER_00 (07:47):
Totally.
SPEAKER_01 (07:48):
But a lot of people these days find Save the Cat a
little bit cringe because it'sknown to be kind of overdone,
and now people can kind of itmakes it so that things just
feel rote.
Like it's like, oh, da da da.
Like you can catch on to theformula too too easily.
Yeah, and you start to be ableto just predict how everything's
(08:09):
gonna go, and you just feel likeyou've seen this movie before,
even though you haven't, andthat kind of thing.
Um, so I thought, well, I wonderif whoever wrote this movie used
the Save the Cat beats becausepeople say that everyone uses
it, and so do they trulyeveryone does everyone truly use
it?
Sure.
SPEAKER_02 (08:30):
Or do good movies naturally fall in line with the
basic overview of Save the Cat,which I think is probably a good
thought process, is like just agood movie that catches your
attention.
This is usually you don't haveto use the formula.
I think, you know, like goodfood uses the five basic
ingredients of salt, sugar, fat,you know, the tastes.
(08:52):
If good food follows thatformula naturally, maybe this
also happens naturally.
SPEAKER_01 (08:57):
Right, yeah.
Right.
Or maybe certain screenwritersand filmmakers are trying
specifically to butt against itso that they don't fall into
these cliches.
I don't know which one it is,but I I got us um clipboards and
I printed out the all thedifferent beats that uh Save the
(09:18):
Cat style movie is supposed tohit.
We can also use that format fornovels too.
And Rachel and I have gonethrough our work and tried to
see if we're hitting the beatsand stuff like that.
So I said, like, let's takenotes, let's see if we can find
these beats in the work or not.
And um, overall, what did youthink about?
(09:38):
Did you think it was hitting thebeats or not?
SPEAKER_02 (09:41):
So I had a very hard time taking notes in the movie
theater.
It was too dark.
I am like I just it was veryhard for me to take the notes.
Um, so I didn't I do feel likeit hit the beats, however, not
in uh the way that I couldfollow it how you've written it
out beat by beat on so that wecould, you know, like fill in
(10:02):
the blank.
Thinking back as I was drivinghome that it got them all, but I
don't know if it was necessarilyin the same order.
SPEAKER_01 (10:10):
That is totally what I was gonna say.
I was like, it did a lot of thethings that uh Save the Cat
Greenplay is supposed to do, butit kind of like mixed them up
and it may not have done all ofthem, so I don't know if that
even counts.
Oh, I just wanted to let youguys know that I think we're
just definitely gonna spoilthis.
SPEAKER_02 (10:27):
Yes, we're gonna spoil this for sure.
Spoiler alert.
We'll put that in the Instagrampost and everything.
SPEAKER_01 (10:32):
Yeah.
Yeah, because I want, yeah,exactly.
Like I definitely just want totalk about everything that
happens in this movie and how itkind of relates to these
different beats.
SPEAKER_02 (10:40):
If you are listening right now and you don't want it
to be spoiled, pause, go watchthe movie and come back and
listen.
10 out of 10 recommend it.
I can say that.
Oh, yeah.
That's no spoiler.
We literally looked at eachother afterwards and both of us
were like, I loved it.
SPEAKER_01 (10:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rachel immediately was like, Iloved it.
I was like, me too.
Yeah.
I mean, it was so good.
I love seeing a good movie likethat.
Yeah.
Okay, so enjoy the movie andcome back to us in a few.
So the first part of Save theCat is an opening image where
you're supposed to see life asnormal, like the way it is
(11:15):
before all the shit that's gonnahappen in the movie, right?
And so in this movie, it wasreally cool.
There were these two guys andthey were beekeepers and they're
cousins.
And one of them, who's like themain guy, do we know his the
character's name?
SPEAKER_02 (11:30):
Or Danny or Teddy.
Teddy.
Yeah.
Um, wait, hold on.
Should we do a tiny little blurbabout what the movie is?
Sure, sure.
Go for it.
Although you guys have surealready watched it, obviously.
Yeah.
But if you're powering through,you don't care about spoilers.
Here, we're just gonna give youa little bit of a thing.
Begonia is a 2025 absurdistblack comedy thriller film
(11:51):
directed by Yorgos Lantimos,like what she's head, based on
the 2003 South Korean film Savethe Green Planet by Jang Jun
Huan.
And Begonia follows two youngmen who kidnap a powerful CEO,
suspecting that she is secretlyan alien who wants to destroy
Earth.
And the screenplay was by WillTracy.
(12:11):
Will Tracy starring Emma Stone,who uh is obviously the powerful
CEO, uh Jesse Plemens.
He's great.
He is great.
Oh god, creep factor, 10 out of10.
SPEAKER_01 (12:22):
Oh, and he's married to um Kirsten Dunce.
Yeah, best.
Right.
She's sort of like a local baby,she's like in in the Bay Area, I
think.
Is she?
Um place like LA or San Diego.
SPEAKER_02 (12:34):
I don't know.
She's in California.
She and they are such aninteresting couple because they
both really transform as actors.
SPEAKER_01 (12:40):
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (12:41):
And especially Jesse.
He grosses me out and he's allin so many ways as an actor, and
then I see him in like photoshoots or like interviews, and
I'm like, wildly different.
SPEAKER_01 (12:54):
Like, oh, you're not gross.
Yeah.
He deserves an Academy Awardafter this performance.
I think m maybe more so thanEmma Stone, but who the fuck
cares?
Give her all the awards.
It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_02 (13:06):
The other actors, Aiden Delbus, who I assume is uh
cousin, yeah, who's Dan?
Was it Dan?
Yeah, maybe Dan.
Or Don.
Don.
Don.
Don't.
Oh shoot.
Don and Teddy.
Okay, and then Stavros Halkias,although I don't know who that
is in there.
And then Alicia Silverstoneplays Jesse Pubbin's mom.
Wow.
And she had a very small butpowerful part.
(13:28):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (13:28):
I think the other one must be the cop.
It's a really small cat.
It must be, yeah.
Yeah.
Um okay.
So that's the movie, and itopens with Dawn and Teddy, these
two cousins, and Teddy isteaching Dawn about bees and the
plight of the honeybee.
Yeah, so that's like life asusual.
(13:49):
And then later on in the Savethe Cat um paradigm, at the very
end, the final image is supposedto call back to the life as
normal first image.
Oh, and then secondly, there wasanother opening image where Emma
Stone, the CEO, is is walkingaround her company, like the
(14:12):
office building.
And she's perfectly put.
She's in control.
SPEAKER_02 (14:17):
She's oh, and it also starts with her morning
routine of like vitamins andlike running on a tremor with a
mask on and all of theanti-aging type things that you
see celebrities doing.
SPEAKER_01 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, at their home.
Yeah.
So there's those opening images,life as usual.
I don't think we need to gothrough the story necessarily
beat by beat.
Like, I think it makes moresense to talk about do they at
the end of the movie, do they dothat final image?
Do they recall back?
Absolutely.
I mean, it starts with bees andends with bees.
(14:51):
Yeah, it starts with bees, itends with bees.
Actually, the very final shot ofthe film has the cutest little
bee.
SPEAKER_00 (14:59):
It's just on that little purple flower.
SPEAKER_01 (15:00):
Is that a begonia?
SPEAKER_00 (15:02):
I assume so.
SPEAKER_01 (15:03):
It should be because there's no other begonia mention
in the whole film.
SPEAKER_02 (15:07):
Um, that let me look it up.
Begonia.
SPEAKER_01 (15:10):
Yeah, it shows this the cutest little bee like
tripping all over this flower.
So it so the film definitelyfollows the beats in that scene.
SPEAKER_02 (15:19):
It was not a begonia.
Begonias are this interesting.
So what an interesting name.
Why begonia?
Let me look that up.
That's a good circle back.
The juxtaposition between thethe conspiracy theorist cousins
and their obsession with bees.
And the opening scene there,he's talking about the bees, but
(15:42):
he's also talking about how lifeon earth is maybe not what we
think it is.
And then it's also showing herdoing her routine, and so it's
like showing that they're inthis like rural shitty house,
like doing their weirdconspiracy theory shit.
Oh, yeah.
And she's like living this highpower life.
So like it's showing that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:00):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (16:01):
Which is very much theme-stated.
SPEAKER_01 (16:03):
Theme-stated.
Oh, okay, okay.
So so you're saying thejuxtaposition of the different
lifestyles and that sort of likefoil is the theme.
SPEAKER_02 (16:14):
Yeah, well, them them being like clearly
hillbillies talking aboutconspiracy theories.
Yeah.
And then right away you'reseeing this high-powered woman.
So they think that somehow she'sconspiring against them.
That feels very clear.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (16:29):
Yeah.
Um did I throw you off?
No, no, no.
No, it's all good.
I'm just the the next beat istheme stated.
Right.
And I was I was writing aboutthat because that some of the
things that the beekeepers weresaying, I'm like, oh, are they
stating the theme?
Because um he said somethingabout that the bees have this
(16:52):
disease where they aren't umlike working for the queen
anymore, which is what bees doin their colonies, right?
They work for the the queen.
They start going off andabandoning the queen.
And um the cousin says, Well,why do they leave her?
(17:13):
And at this point, I didn't knowwhat was gonna happen in the
movie.
So I'm like, oh, that's thetheme.
Oh, they're gonna leave her.
I don't know.
Like that the larger organizingprinciple is like falling apart,
and I thought that was gonna bethe theme.
But looking back on the movie, Idon't know what the theme was
(17:34):
actually.
SPEAKER_02 (17:34):
There's that dinner scene about three-quarters of
the way through where they'veuh, you know, Teddy has realized
that sh, you know, he's realizedthat she's the alien that he
thinks that she is.
And um, you know, whether it'strue or not at that point,
you're still questioning it.
And then at dinner, they'retalking about this CCN, some
(17:55):
like thing that her company iscreated a cure or like tried to
create a cure, but it actuallymade his Teddy's mom sicker.
SPEAKER_00 (18:05):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:06):
And like, so it ties in, I think that ties in the B
thing is all about right?
This like sickness where hisqueen, his mom, is sick.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (18:18):
Well, she says she the mom says they make you sick
and then they sell you the cure.
Oh, right, right, right.
So I wonder if that's the theme.
unknown (18:26):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (18:26):
They make you sick and then they sell you the cure.
SPEAKER_02 (18:30):
It was really, yeah.
I think it was like a mentalgymnastics.
Like the theme was like, what isreal?
What is a conspiracy against usas a general population?
Where does that conspiracy end?
Yeah.
And like it starts with, youknow, the people who are
packaging for this Amazon likecompany, um, you know, in the
movie.
And then it's so it starts aslow as that, and then it goes up
(18:53):
as high as the universal, yeah.
Universal.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that that's it.
It's just like this conspiracyof where does it start?
Where does it start with thebees and it ends with the
universe?
SPEAKER_01 (19:03):
Yeah, and what yes, yes, yes, totally, totally.
It's it is about conspiracytheory and the truth of
conspiracy.
Like people are conspiring to dothings all day, every day.
Oh, yeah.
Um, well, and some of ourtheories about those
conspiracies are real and someof them are not.
(19:25):
And sometimes the truth is justas evil as the whacked out
theories.
Right.
But it's more benign, like, ornot benign, but it's more casual
or just rooted in like everydaystuff and money and power and
what you would expect ratherthan um, you know, lizard people
or aliens or whatever.
SPEAKER_02 (19:44):
Or flat earth.
I love that they kind of pokedfun at the flat earth thing
during the movie.
SPEAKER_01 (19:48):
That is such a such a fun motif in this movie, is
all of the conspiracy theoriesthat come up.
Totally.
Um, so I think I would give thislike a hundred percent a hell
yeah, in terms of like theopening images and then ending
because even like in thebeginning, they show her, right?
Like walking through her spaceand control, and then at the
(20:10):
end, she's limping through theoffice building.
She's completely like out ofcontrol, like totally, yeah,
just like um hanging on tothreads of control.
And then also what you weresaying about you know, Teddy, he
works at sort of an Amazonfactory in the beginning.
It kind of shows him working andeverybody working, sort of like
(20:30):
the bees in the hive, but thenat the end, it kind of shows
just the equipment unmanned andthe people sort of on the floor,
and like so it he definitelylike a hundred percent did that
part of the save the cat.
Totally.
And I think that we think thatthere was a theme stated.
Yeah, I think they were kind ofstating the theme all throughout
the movie.
I don't know that like normallywith the save the cat, it's the
(20:52):
theme is stated by some othercharacter, like it'll be like
say it was a movie about alittle boy and all the people
like and his family, and thenjust you know, somebody at
school will say, Hey, toughenup, kid, you gotta believe in
yourself.
Sure.
And it's like that person isn'treally part of the movie, but
they state the theme for theperson watching.
(21:13):
I don't know that they reallydid this right after the opening
image.
I don't think I don't know.
SPEAKER_02 (21:18):
No, it was I mean, it was very clearly saying the
theme.
I think I I think they plantedeverything throughout perfectly
to reconfirm, reconfirm,reconfirm.
But the two guys, the cousins,talking about the theme right
off the bat.
Yeah.
So it was it was laid out infront of you, and then they, you
know, spoon-fed it to youthroughout in a really, really
(21:39):
interesting way.
Just like every bite confirmed alittle bit more of what you're
wondering.
SPEAKER_01 (21:45):
Yes.
You know?
Yeah.
And one thing that I think wasinteresting about this is it was
hard to know who the protagonistwas.
Like we were certainly focusedon Teddy.
Yes.
I think he kind of was the maincharacter.
But sometimes when I looked atthese different beats, I saw
(22:06):
them happening to differentcharacters.
Um, for example, there's asetup, right?
And the whole setup is justthey're showing Teddy and his
cousin preparing and gettingready to go and kidnap her.
SPEAKER_02 (22:20):
Yeah, it's like going to the hardware store,
getting a mask.
Their masks were hilarious.
It was Jennifer Aniston's case.
SPEAKER_01 (22:25):
Jennifer Aniston's mask.
Yes.
They yes, they sh there.
So there definitely is a setup.
Definitely.
And then the catalyst.
But I guess what I'm saying isthere was this one really,
really crazy scene where Teddyis trying to get his cousin to
accept a shot of progesteronefrom him.
(22:46):
That would chemically caststraight.
That would chemically caststraight.
That was heartbreaking.
And the cousin was like, Well, Ithink I might want to be with
somebody someday.
SPEAKER_02 (22:56):
And yeah, and it was so sweet because this this guy,
you know, he's clearly in his20s or 30s, right?
But he's uh, you know, he's gotsome sort of mental health, not
not even mental health issues.
He's he's on He's low IQ, low IQfor sure.
SPEAKER_00 (23:10):
And probably like on the spectrum.
SPEAKER_02 (23:13):
Yeah, God, he's the sweetest little muffin though.
He's like, I just what acharacter.
I I would love to know moreabout him and his act as an
actor.
Um but he's just the sweetest,most innocent bug, you know,
like he's just so cute, and thenhis cousin is so deep in this
hole.
And this, you know, Don, thecousin, he just has nowhere to
(23:34):
else to look.
So he has nothing else to livefor, yeah, except for his
cousin, who's in this hole, andthen his cousin's telling him he
needs to be chemically castratedfor all, you know, for all of
these very firm reasons that hehas evidence, you know, quote
unquote evidence of.
And he's just like, okay, but Ithought maybe one day I could be
(23:55):
with somebody.
SPEAKER_01 (23:56):
So heartbreaking.
She's trying to be like, baby.
Teddy believes that if they havetheir their sperm and their
masculine like testosterone andsex drive, that the alien will
be able to use that againstthem.
So they need to protectthemselves against that by
chemically casting it.
SPEAKER_02 (24:15):
Which another scene he confirms, like when uh she's
she's trapped in the basementand she's like, What do you
want?
Like sex?
And Teddy like looks at hiscousin, he's like, See, he told
you she was gonna try this.
And it was like, Oh, I guess hejust, you know, at least there
was some evidence for himself,you know.
At least Don got that.
SPEAKER_01 (24:33):
Okay, this is something that really confused
me.
I don't know if there was a Bstory.
So I thought maybe the B storywas Brian's relationship with
his mother.
Yeah.
Or oh wait, oh no, I I notBrian.
I wrote down Brains because Ican't couldn't remember his
name.
I called him Brains because hewas the brains of the operation.
(24:53):
So Teddy has his relationshipwith his mother.
He also has a relationship withhis with the cop.
SPEAKER_02 (25:00):
Yes, that's exactly what I wrote down.
Life before with whateverhappened with his mom and the
the weird babysitter situation.
SPEAKER_01 (25:08):
That's the B story because so the A story is is
Teddy, his cousin, the EmmaStones characters that's the A
story.
Yes.
And then the B story that'swoven through is probably the
cop.
SPEAKER_02 (25:22):
Yeah, and I think the mom, I think it's the
backstory of why is he this way,it wasn't needed for this for
the kidnapping and everything tohappen.
However, it gave so much moredetail into why he is this way,
like the cop thing, 1000% notnecessary to k still have gotten
(25:43):
from point A to point B, but itjust added a great B story layer
of like this guy has been fuckedup from the get from his
babysitter as a little boy, andlike his mom clearly was on
opiates, which was like aninteresting and like very needed
thing to know, you know, butalso you didn't need it to get
(26:05):
from point A to point B in thestory, right?
SPEAKER_01 (26:07):
I think it was showing um how somebody becomes
this way, yes, like becomes solike paranoid, yeah.
You know, when you have such ahorrible upbringing and you deal
with so much trauma at such anearly age, how can that not
affect your ability to likeprocess and cope with life?
SPEAKER_02 (26:33):
Yeah, you know?
I mean, I think your completeunderstanding of who to trust is
turned upside down, yeah, right?
Yeah.
If you can't trust your own momand your own babysitter, the
people the two core and his dadwas clearly not there that was
mentioned, you know, the twocore people who you know are
supposed to be your securestattachments, yeah, you know,
like then fuck it.
(26:54):
Like, why would you trust a CEO?
And like who isn't an alien?
You don't you know, like it itreally leaves a lot of room for
unraveling.
SPEAKER_01 (27:04):
So those are the B story.
Yeah.
Fun and game in The Save theCat.
This is the beat where it'ssupposed to take out sort of the
most part of the movie, and it'sthe promise of the premise.
So it's supposed to be the stuffthat they would show in like a
preview for the movie.
And this movie's premise isthese conspiracy theorists
(27:25):
kidnap a lady, they think she'san alien, right?
And so the fun in games beat isthey have this woman down in the
basement and she's passed out,and they're putting lotion all
over her skin.
Anti-histamine lotion andshaving her head, and they shave
her head, and then she's like,it's not fun in games in terms
(27:46):
of like we're laughing out loudhere, but it's there's a bit of
a hijinx vibe to it, and you'regetting that promise of the
premise.
You're watching this crazysituation unfolding.
She's tied to the bed, she'strying to negotiate with them,
have a conversation, figure outhow to get herself out of this,
(28:10):
where their heads are at, andthey're super, super on alert
and suspicious of every singlething that she says.
And so you get to watch EmmaStone's beautiful face with a
shaved head, like emoting andher eyes, her huge eyes darting
back and forth and trying tofigure it out and what the CEO
would say and all her likecorpse speak.
(28:32):
Oh yeah.
And then him pressing backagainst the corpse speak and
saying it back to her in sort oflike a like a mocking way.
That was really good.
SPEAKER_02 (28:40):
It was really good, and it really they did such a
great job of making you reallyquestion is this an act?
Like, you know, she Emma Stonedid just an amazing job of being
like, okay, she's supposed to bethis brilliant woman.
So is she trying to figure herway out of it as a brilliant
woman, or is she an alien?
And like, is this guy on tosomething?
(29:01):
Because, you know, she does giveoff an otherworldly vibe of like
of this status, you know, how aspeople think of celebrities or
people think of CEOs, of this,like whether or not we subscribe
to it, there is thisotherworldliness to celebrities
or to these billionaires, youknow?
SPEAKER_01 (29:20):
That is so true.
I feel like when you see,sometimes it's like when you see
a celebrity, they have this kindof air about them.
Like you're kind of like, ugh,like there's some kind of like
electricity around them.
There's an otherworldliness,just like you said.
Um, this is like kind of stupid,like embarrassing aside.
(29:40):
But Sean and I, my husband, welike to watch the show called
Survivor.
Ever heard of it?
It's still on TV.
Anytime I tell people Seasonnumber 42.
Literally, season number 50 iscoming up.
Wow.
Yeah, that was a guess.
That was a guess.
So every time I tell peopleabout this, they're like, that
show is still on TV.
Yes, it is.
It is thrilling.
(30:01):
Anyway, there was like an eventin San Francisco where it was a
watch party where all these likeold serv like survivors, like
people who had played on theshow, were there.
And Sean and I went and we metsome of like our the people we'd
seen on the show and stuff.
And I was standing there in thebar, like watching the show on
the big TVs.
And this girl, this like sort ofpretty um woman, sort of a
(30:26):
slight woman, like with youknow, pretty hair, and she had
fake eyelashes on and stuff, butshe kind of like came and stood
in front of us for a moment andwas like watching the TV.
And I didn't recognize her fromSurvivor, but I just like knew
she was one of the survivors.
Like I could just tell.
Part of me thinks that there'slike a self-consciousness about
(30:47):
them, like they realize thatthey're being watched.
Sure, maybe.
Um, but anyways, that's just I Ilove what you just said about
her character, yeah, and howthere's an otherworldliness
about them that is almost alien.
SPEAKER_02 (30:59):
Yeah, and and it's also a question of what do we as
quote unquote normal people puton them?
You know, because that's also aquestion throughout the movie,
is like what is he putting onher versus what she is, and like
seeing her act scared, and thenis she as this CEO scared
(31:19):
because she's scared as a human,or is she scared because she's
found out as an alien?
You don't know, like it's it'sreally a wild ride they take you
on mentally.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (31:29):
For me, I didn't think that there was any
possibility that she was analien for at least the first
half of the movie.
SPEAKER_02 (31:39):
I'm so curious as to when you feel like you figured
it out.
SPEAKER_01 (31:42):
Um, this is the big spoiler is that like after they
kidnap her and during the funand games when she's she's
chained to this horrible beddownstairs, and they're like,
You're an alien, and she's like,I'm not.
Like, and you're just like,She's fucking not an alien, you
suck.
Yeah, Rose.
SPEAKER_02 (31:59):
I I mean I I I was really I did not think that like
an alien.
SPEAKER_01 (32:04):
Like, I just did not think that's what this movie
was.
Um, okay, so I have a question.
SPEAKER_02 (32:10):
At the point when they torture her, is that where
you were coming up to?
When he, the Jesse Plevinscharacter, he that is what
confirms to him that she's analien.
They're torturing her with thiselectricity, and he gets up to
like 500 or 600 volts ofelectricity, which I have no
idea how much voltage killssomebody.
I don't think it can be thatmuch.
(32:31):
I have no idea.
But whatever amount it is, thatconfirms to him that she's an
alien.
And then is that when the badguys are closing in?
Or is that the when it breaksinto two?
Like at what point?
Because I feel like that wassuch a pivotal moment for those
characters because she wasclearly okay after being
(32:52):
electrocuted.
So then it was like, oh my god,is he actually right?
Or was that actually not enoughelectricity to hurt somebody?
Like it really, unless you knowhow many volts kill somebody.
Yeah.
I'm so curious as to what pointthat was in the Saves the Cat.
SPEAKER_01 (33:08):
Right.
So there's something called themidpoint in Saves the Cat, which
I don't remember what that Inever remembered.
Yeah, me neither.
So let's see what it means.
Huh.
So the midpoint is the exactmiddle of the story where the
protagonist experiences either afalse victory, so he seems to
(33:29):
achieve his goal, or a falsedefeat, like a major setback,
but it won't actually defeather.
SPEAKER_02 (33:35):
Okay, so I would say the midpoint and I would say the
midpoint is when she's gettingelectrocuted.
Don't you think that's abouthalfway through the movie?
It kind of is him getting thislike experience of victory, and
you still don't know if it'sfalse or not.
I feel like that might be themidpoint.
SPEAKER_01 (33:54):
Right.
Maybe that could be the midpointwhere it's either Teddy believes
that he is victorious inconfirming that she is an alien.
Correct.
Although he already knew, but healso now realizes that she that
no other alien that he's evertortured before has gotten up to
(34:14):
that level.
Right.
And so she must be like aroyalty alien.
Oh, right, the royalty.
SPEAKER_02 (34:20):
So then I because I think that that takes us right
into the bad guys closing in.
Because now that he's beenconfirmed in his beliefs, then
he feels like, okay, now it'sthe day before the eclipse, and
things are gonna starthappening, and they start like
foiling the walls, and right?
SPEAKER_01 (34:36):
Oh yeah.
When he electrocutes her, Istill thought she was totally a
human and that he was torturinga human and that this was so
like disgusting and horrible.
SPEAKER_02 (34:46):
Well, so did I.
And then it it felt very clearthat Dawn also was still on the
fence.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (34:51):
And if she could cousin, yeah.
The the cousin You can see thathe doesn't believe, he doesn't
really b fully believe thatshe's an alien or in what his
cousin is saying the whole time.
But every time he starts to feedinto his own doubts and think
about it, his cousin is there toreestablish his belief, you
(35:12):
know, to bring him back in onside.
SPEAKER_02 (35:14):
And Don has nothing else to live for.
Yeah, he doesn't, and he's like,if if she is an alien, I want to
go with her, you know, becausethere's nothing here on the
world.
I know that's so sad.
SPEAKER_01 (35:23):
Um, yeah, and I was kind of wondering with the bad
guys close in.
Um, I was kind of wondering ifthe bad guys closing in in part
was the bad guys were likedoubts.
You know, his cousin startshaving more doubts, like it's
almost like that's closing in.
And then whenever the um woman,the Emma Stone character says,
(35:46):
You are mentally ill.
SPEAKER_03 (35:48):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (35:48):
You know, and you just see this sort of glimmer in
his eye, like she sort ofpenetrated like a tiny bit, like
there might might be a tinysliver within him that wonders,
like, am I just crazy?
Um, and I felt I sometimes Ithought in this movie that the
bad guys closing in was doubtstoo.
SPEAKER_02 (36:06):
Sure.
Um, but I don't know.
I also think at that that dinnerscene is pretty pivotal.
She's already been electrocuted,he thinks that she's you know,
the the high power um alien.
And then they have thisconversation at the table where
the power dynamic really shifts,and you can see him getting
scared and filling himself withdoubt, and he like you know,
(36:27):
climbs across the table, andthen soon thereafter that the
police show up.
Yeah, that's bad guys closingin, yeah.
For sure.
So I think that whole like10-minute sequence in that movie
is very much the bad guysclosing in.
SPEAKER_01 (36:39):
Yes, yes.
That's supposed to be umfollowed by a dark knight of the
soul, which is don't you thinkDawn?
I thought the Dark Knight of theSoul was first of all, um the
lady who's supposed to be thealien, gets she has a whole
altercation.
She gets tied back down to thebed, and there's a cop there
upstairs with Teddy walkingaround and talking to Teddy.
(37:01):
And um, Dawn, the cousin, isleft down there with a shotgun
and the Emma Stone character.
Emma Stone is, you know, feedinginto his doubts, but then also
you can tell that the characterdecides okay, I'm not gonna be
able to sway him from hiscousin's point of view because
he loves his cousin.
(37:22):
So I'm just gonna have to likefeed into this.
The cousin ends up killinghimself because he believes that
if he shoots himself, the MStone character will take him up
with her in her spaceship andhe'll get to live up there in
space with her and not be a partof the world anymore.
SPEAKER_02 (37:40):
Right, which I think that was also just a
misunderstanding.
Like, I don't think heunderstood how any of it was
supposed to work with his cousinin the first place.
But you know, like I think thathis cousin had been Teddy had
been telling him they were gonnago up there and they were gonna
help sort it out and then comeback down.
SPEAKER_01 (37:55):
Yeah.
But he didn't he had thoughtthat they weren't gonna come
back down, and then when hefound out they were coming back
down, he was so sad.
Um The Dark Knight of the Soul,I thought was after that part
where Jesse's like riding hisbike.
SPEAKER_02 (38:09):
Yeah, uh well, Oh, to go see his mom.
Yeah, so I think that that's thedark night of the soul.
Is like, so this has justhappened with Teddy killing
himself and he kills the cop whohad Don killing himself.
Yeah, uh yeah, Don killshimself.
Sorry, Don kills himself.
Teddy uh beats the cop to deathafter the cop admits that he's
molested Teddy as a child andall of this stuff.
(38:32):
It's this intense moment, andthen he goes down to find that
she is, you know, she's downthere with Don's body, and then
she gives him a quote unquotecure to go cure his mom, who up
until that moment we didn'treally know she was still alive.
Yeah.
Um, but somehow she knows he'sshe's still alive, which was
(38:53):
interesting, which was reallyinteresting.
So yeah, I think that that'svery much the Dark Knight of the
Soul moment of like, and then hekills his mom by accident via
the cure.
SPEAKER_01 (39:01):
Yeah.
And then I think that's when itbreaks in the three.
Yeah.
So the dark night of the soul isit's sort of like all is lost.
Yes.
Teddy, his cousin is dead, andhe's he's biking over to
whatever the facility is wherehis mother is in a coma, and you
just see him completelydistraught and biking.
So it's like probably a lessthan a minute is the dark night
(39:24):
of the soul beat.
What does break into three mean?
I think break into three is kindof like the third act of like
sorry, what were we gonna say?
Um, I was gonna say it's likethe protagonist recommits.
They're supposed to likerecommend it.
Break into three is when hecomes back.
SPEAKER_02 (39:40):
He realized he killed his mom.
Yeah.
Via Emma's advice.
She in that moment has thechance to see all of his other
experiments.
She breaks free of the chains,she sees all the other
experiments he's done on otherpeople and quote unquote aliens.
And you're wondering why isn'tshe leaving?
Why isn't she running away?
(40:00):
She had the chance to you seeher starting up the stairs, but
then she goes back down.
SPEAKER_01 (40:04):
So the break into three, beat 13 for Save the Cat
is supposed to happen around the80% mark of the film.
And I would say it might happena little later in this movie,
which it totally does break intothree.
Yep.
At this point, I still thoughtthat Emma Stone's character was
not an alien.
Totally, me too.
So she goes in, she finds thislike secret room where Teddy has
(40:29):
some of the body parts of theother aliens that he has like
dissected and humans andwhatever, and he has 3D printed
like the spaceship that hebelieves exists and all this
crazy stuff.
It's like his crazy room.
Yes.
And Emma Stone is like lookingat it, and I'm like, why aren't
you leaving?
Yeah.
So Rachel's saying, Why aren'tyou leaving?
(40:50):
And I didn't have that feelingnecessarily.
My feeling, I think, was morelike she was locked down there
or something.
SPEAKER_02 (40:59):
I was like, Why aren't you leaving?
And then I was like, okay, maybeshe is a fucking alien.
She's she wants to check out hisinformation that he has.
But then when she's still there,when he gets back, which is I
think the biggest breakingtheory moment, and she starts
telling him everything he wantsto hear about the apes and how
they came down and they gavehumans this many chances.
(41:20):
But they had also shown herreading all of his notes.
Yes.
And I was like, okay, so shejust remembered all his notes.
She's telling him what he wantsto hear so that they can go out
together into the and I'm like,I'm still so questioning myself
of like, is she just this smart?
Like, she realized that sheshould read these notes that
he's clearly taken, all of thestuff he he thinks is fact, and
(41:42):
she's gonna use it against himto get out.
SPEAKER_01 (41:44):
Yeah, so when Teddy comes back from accidentally
killing his mother with what theEmma Stone character had
convinced him to put in herfluid supply, which was
anti-freeze, she said, it's notanti-freeze, that's just the
bottle is just where I hide it.
That's the cure.
And so he goes and and and killsher, and then when he comes
(42:04):
back, she the speech is amazingthat she gives him.
It is, it starts with thedinosaurs, and she says that
yes, she is an alien and she'sthis royal alien, and they came
to Earth and they found thedinosaurs, and everything was
beautiful and perfect, but thenthe aliens fucked up or
something, and then they alldied, they killed all the
dinosaurs, but then the apes andthis and how the alien race and
(42:29):
the human race like got intosort of like a turmoil.
SPEAKER_02 (42:32):
Well, like the humans kept degrading
themselves, degradingthemselves.
Like humans kept like they werethese supreme beings, they would
be they they would make themperfect, and then humans would
wipe themselves out repeatedlyand just keep keep lowering
themselves to the lowest commondenominator.
Like they would they start- youremember there was the point
where she says something aboutbeing on the arc?
(42:53):
Oh, yeah, that she includes theark, which is amazing.
Like the humans are on the arc,but then by the time the the
world dries and they can get offthe boat, they are they're just
apes again because they'vedegraded themselves.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (43:04):
It's like, oh, okay.
So it includes all of theseamazing parts of like the
conspiracy theory lore, right?
Like you've got like thedinosaurs, and then what
happened to them, and when itwas because of aliens, and then
you've got like like the arkreally did happen, but what was
like really what was it reallyabout?
Yeah, and religion.
Yeah, I love that.
And like sprinkling in differentconspiracy theories to create
(43:28):
like this narrative, and it wasso awesome.
SPEAKER_02 (43:31):
It was, and then it could and it was so perfect
because I mean it was writtenbeautifully, because you're
still like, there's no way.
This is so ridiculous.
This has to have been his notes.
Yeah, yeah, those were notes.
SPEAKER_01 (43:43):
She's just reciting it because she's so smart, she
has to convince him to take herout of there.
Right.
She convinces him to go with herback to her office because she
has a and she's gonna contactthe alien ship.
And then they go back there andthey sneak in, which is
hilarious, and then she takesout a calculator and she's like,
I have to put in 53 digits intothis calculator so that um the
(44:08):
ship comes or whatever.
And it has like to look like ahuman object.
And it's just like so funnybecause it's so like so
conspiracy theory-esque.
And I'm still, this is when Istarted to think maybe it was
this is like the very fuckingend of the movie, you guys.
I started being like, maybe,maybe she is an alien and maybe
(44:28):
they are going to the gym.
SPEAKER_02 (44:30):
Well, when she tells them to get into the closet,
yeah, and she's got thecalculator thing.
I was like, no, no, she's justfucking genius.
She's a human, she's genius,she's figured out how to get out
of this.
See, that's when I wasreconfirmed that she's human,
was like, she's just so smart.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (44:46):
And then and when she's looking, she's she's like
pretending to put the thing intothe calculator.
And you see her kind of lookingaround because she's in her
office, and there's you can seepeople kind of crowding around
because she's been missing, andshe's sort of backing away from
the closet that he went into.
But that was literally like myfirst glimmer of thinking she
(45:07):
was an alien at all.
The whole movie.
I did not, I did not think.
I'm am I dumb?
SPEAKER_02 (45:12):
Okay, so then he he has a bomb strapped to him
because he still doesn't trusther a hundred percent.
Yeah.
And then the bomb accidentallygoes off in the closet right at
the last second, and he killedand he kills himself.
SPEAKER_01 (45:24):
Which the cr this is like one of the one of the
craziest moments in this movieis when his head flies out of
the closet and hits her in herhead.
And knocks her out.
SPEAKER_02 (45:36):
His head fucking flies out and hits her in the
head.
Oh my god.
Okay, so then she's knocked out,and then the next scene she's in
an ambulance.
And this is like the bestfinale.
I gotta say, this is the bestfinale.
She's in the ambulance, and thenshe wakes up in the ambulance,
and she's like, Is he dead?
And the EMT is like, Oh yes,he's he's passed away.
And she's like, Okay, and shegets up while the fucking
(45:58):
ambulance is moving, unwraps herneck, jumps out the back of the
ambulance, and then that's thatwas for me.
It was like, what the fuck?
She is an ambulance.
SPEAKER_01 (46:06):
Yes, that's when you're and she like looks up at
the moon.
SPEAKER_02 (46:09):
And like, so I literally was questioning
everything back and forth theentire movie until that moment.
SPEAKER_01 (46:16):
I mean, that's that's because this was a
genius.
It was written so it was writtenso well.
I wonder how good the Korean umnovel is.
Oh my god, I would love to know.
You know, I love Korean shit.
I love Korean movies, I loveKorean um art.
Yeah, like it's reallyincredible.
Like, please give us more, giveit, give it all.
(46:38):
Like, I'm so glad that we'reit's starting to be in an era
where in America it's justopening up to like these new
voices and translators.
Seriously, thank God.
So we're not so even if this,you know, we can shove this
story into it.
I think we're shoving it.
We're shoving it.
(46:59):
Yeah.
But it's also like it is goodfilmmaking to have this opening
image and then tap off yourmovie with the the final image
where it brings back to mindwhere you started, but shows how
different things are now.
I mean, that's just goodfilmmaking.
SPEAKER_02 (47:16):
I think it is.
Uh, we have to talk for onesecond before we move on.
Oh my god.
About the aliens.
So at the end, she is she is analien.
Yes, and she goes to oil.
And the costumes for thesealiens.
You have to watch the movie.
I feel like you have to see itif only for this alien ship.
(47:37):
These costumes are so awesome.
They can't success.
I can't.
SPEAKER_01 (47:41):
I want, I want one.
I want to walk around.
There are these like big puffycrocheted crocheted, amazing
brown and white, and all thealiens are like they're human
because they created man intheir image.
Right.
So they do look, they don't lookdifferent.
They look like humans, so theyall have long hair, and they say
(48:02):
something about needing the hairto communicate with each other.
And and then they have um adiorama of the earth, or like
maybe it just literally is theearth.
Seems like it.
So the earth is sitting in themiddle of their life.
Which is and it's flat.
The earth is flat.
It's so good.
I love that the earth is flat inthis.
SPEAKER_02 (48:22):
Well, you gotta get to it when uh at the when she
they just they make thedecision.
SPEAKER_01 (48:27):
They decide that and then it's that that humanity has
had enough chances, and she justtakes like a needle and pops the
atmosphere, and it literallygoes.
She pops it like a bubble, andthen everybody on earth dies.
But for some reason, the animalsare still alive.
Well, because just humans,humans are the problem, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (48:47):
Right?
So, like bees are still there,which takes us to our closing
scene.
The dog is still there, youknow, like the birds, but
everyone's dead.
And I thought it was a reallyinteresting and smart choice
that they it showed children, itshowed people in the and that
and they're just keeled over,right?
It's not like there's abloodbath or anything, but it
(49:08):
shows you know, people in themidst of having sex, it shows
kids at a museum, people inschool, all over the world, just
they're just dead, like theyjust killed humanity because
they had to start over again.
You know, and then you go to thebees.
And I I thought it was like suchan ending, yeah.
And it because to whateverconspiracy world with these
(49:29):
aliens, it's just as easy as apoop.
SPEAKER_01 (49:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is so freaky.
That is so freaky.
So um, I think that our finalconclusion as to whether this
script was written with like theactual say of the cat in mind.
I would say probably not.
No, like I don't think thisscript writer, I mean, I'm sure
(49:52):
he knows what it is, but I don'tthink that he uses it as a
template as such.
You know what would beinteresting?
SPEAKER_02 (49:59):
So it's originally written by this Korean um uh
writer, yeah, and then it wasadapted into the screenplay for
Americans by Will Tracy.
Yeah so I will I wonder whatsort of filter it goes through
of, you know, the original filmor the original um Save the
Green Planet by Jang Jun Huan,you know, and then being adapted
(50:21):
into a screenplay by Will Tracyfor Americans.
What sort of saves the catfilter does it go into?
Because that would be I I wouldlove to watch the original
versus this one and see how thatworks.
You know?
SPEAKER_01 (50:35):
Yeah.
Oh, this is true.
SPEAKER_02 (50:36):
Because maybe it was, I mean, no offense to Will
Tracy, we don't know anythingabout him as a writer, but maybe
he shoved it into the Saves theCat box, and the original is a
little bit different, you know.
Like I would I would be reallycurious.
SPEAKER_01 (50:49):
Right to like sell it to American consumers.
Right.
Um, oh, he was a writer onsuccession, which is like one of
my favorite shows of all time.
Damn.
SPEAKER_02 (50:58):
That works so well for her, right?
Totally.
We definitely think that youshould watch Begonia.
I will absolutely watch itagain.
I would rate this movie as oneof my top ten films ever.
And this writing was fantastic.
Will, Tracy, if you did shove itinto a Saves the Cat box, I
appreciate you.
(51:18):
Um and I appreciate this, theoriginal writing because it was
really a fun original ride thatI did not see coming.
SPEAKER_01 (51:27):
Awesome, man.
Yeah, definitely go watch that.
Um, and let's see, I think weshould probably just wrap it.
Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02 (51:35):
Well, we were gonna go.
I can go quick.
Because I don't, I mean, it'snot like I'm gonna have stories
by story.
Um so I went to the other day uhon Wednesday, I went to the
writer's ruckus.
So as you might remember fromearlier episodes, um, at when I
was a student at CSM, my story,the compliment, got accepted
(51:56):
into the writer's ruckus.
So this semester at the writersruckus, quite a few people that
I went to school with uh were uhaccepted, and I'm so happy I got
to hear them.
So my friend MJ, as you haveheard her before.
Congratulations, MJ.
Woohoo! And then my good friendIzzy Schrodel, she uh also won a
(52:18):
spot, and they did a trio poemcalled Call Me Crazy that was
incredible that I'll talk abouta little bit.
But also Ashley Evans, um, sheis writing a memoir, and this
was a story from her memoir thatwas really cool.
And Colleen Chan, um, she's beenwriting a series of kind of
(52:38):
essays about her life in Korea.
And then Dominica Pazua, andshe's also writing a novel
that's really cool.
So I'm just so like I just lovethat I was in class with them,
and now they're all in theruckus too.
Yes, pretty good.
You had a good time.
We had a I had a great timelistening to their work, all of
it was incredible.
(52:58):
It was so fun being just anaudience member and not having
the nerves and all of the thingsthat I had last time I heard
everyone else's work because Iwas so in my own head.
So it was really cool to be justthe audience member.
SPEAKER_01 (53:10):
And so the trio, Alexis, MJ, and Izzy Schrodel,
they call me crazy.
What did they do?
They were perform three of themperforming it together?
SPEAKER_02 (53:20):
Yes.
I would love for them to eitherread it for us on the podcast or
something because they did agreat job.
They took turns um sayingdifferent stanzas and then
saying some of the linestogether.
Like I'm not sorry was one ofthe ones they repeated together,
or you know, call me crazy wasone of the things.
Um, and it was all about whatit's like being a woman and
(53:42):
being uh, you know, held down.
And these are all younger women.
They, you know, just have hadvarious levels of discomfort
being young women in this world.
And Izzy is actually a reallyincredible poet.
Her genre that she works withinis like, God, I'm not gonna say
it right, but she's um had aquite a bit of time in a mental
(54:06):
hospital where she had beencommitted, and so a lot of her
work is poetry about like thetick tick tick of the clock when
she's in white walls and thetick-tick tick of the doctor's
pens.
You know, and like it's reallylike it just gave me chills.
That that poem that she read inclass was incredible.
(54:27):
Oh, I'd love to have her readthat for God.
Let me see what she called it.
Eco writing, radical psychology.
She, you know, loves to talkabout the hard-hitting stuff
like um abortion.
And I thought that it would bereally fun if you're down to
have her as a guest on thepodcast, and she'd said she'd be
interested to not only read someof her work, but to talk about
(54:50):
like the inspiration behindthese harder hitting, you know,
topics and you know what thatmeans to her as an activist and
woman and all of the things.
SPEAKER_01 (54:59):
Oh my gosh, I would love to.
We should definitely do that.
Do you think we could do thatsoon, like for the next one?
She sounded down.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
And I'm gonna have um somestories soon because I am going
on a mini road trip with myfriend's mom to Sacramento to
(55:20):
watch this sort of like poet,uh, Sophia Isela.
She's the one that does like thedoll people are crazy.
They had you just look her up onInstagram, you guys, Sophia
Isela.
So I'm going with my friend'smom.
We're going down there.
We're gonna have magic.
We're gonna do a bunch of magicand we're gonna have a wild time
(55:42):
together.
Okay, I got us a hotel room withlike two bedrooms and stuff, and
I don't know why I'm doing thiswith my friend's mom, but I but
I am.
SPEAKER_02 (55:52):
You know, when it clicks, it clicks.
SPEAKER_01 (55:54):
You can click with her, and I honestly like I feel
really um I feel honored whenpeople like older people want to
actually talk to me and spendtime with me.
I remember when I was like 19wanting to hang out with 30 year
olds, and they were like,fucking kick rocks, you dumb
bitch.
Like we don't want to hang outwith you.
You're an idiot still.
Um, so now that I feel like I'mgetting older, older people are
(56:18):
like it just sort of like theplaying field starts to level
more and more the older you get.
Um, so now finally my uhfriend's parents actually want
to spend time with me, which isvery gratifying.
And hopefully not awkward for myfriend DLara.
SPEAKER_02 (56:33):
Well, hopefully not.
Yeah, we'll see.
Yeah.
Um, okay, well, I will see aboutwhen Izzy can come on.
And in the meantime, enjoy yourmagic, magic poetry.
Can't wait to hear about it.
SPEAKER_01 (56:48):
The mom.
Okay, great.
Uh so we'll talk to you guyssoon.
Yeah, goodbye.
Bye.
I love your nails, by the way.
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