309: Frankenstein Redux

In this episode, Professor Mouse and the Cosmologist discuss the reactions to Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein since its release on Netflix. They also discuss Peacemaker, Gen V, and the new slate of television that seems like the beginning of a second wave of prestige TV. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown noses a little page's bagging boarding
batman and the gutter like a maze story tellers me
some fellas, we some felons. Isn't amazing, It's like a
Pella bearver sell it because this ship is so contagious.
Mouths on the summers can pile like that the show
while the cycle spinning knowledge on the getty like a pro.
Beat the bab and be the rabbit. Don't step to
the squad, we get activic and hate. It's like a
stepla part. You don't like fish talk?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Do you hate?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's a batl with.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
The cuttle fish killers tender pools on the taping the
Greatest Five of Stars. If you cherish your life, fucky
barneshit squad spraying leg and your pipe.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition. Up he is this
just bad? Is this just about the best podcast you
never heard of? I'm your host persona mouth Judy's always
because is g K Rock?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (00:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (00:48):
That was more clown? What is k is like? No
joiningless morning on key Rock?

Speaker 5 (00:54):
Oh? Is that? Or? I was just I heard Mickey Mouse.
I had no idea what you were doing?

Speaker 4 (00:58):
The like the old school Casey Kasem radio guy Shaggy
does cut it sound like a clown, like yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah that. The the line between radio host shock jock
and American voice acting is is a blurry one that
like you know, so highly character caricatured, characterized, Which is
part of the reason I don't really watch anime with

(01:33):
American dubs is it's such a different school of acting.
But I mean, you know, you look no farther than
our back catalog of episodes for very broad Voice.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
I thought that the shock jock I think of most
is Howard Stern and his sort of deal. He's very
demure like, he's very kind of he's kind of his
his his register is a lot lower. And the the
thing about Howard is that he just kind of assaults

(02:08):
you with questions where he's like and then and then
and then. The thing that he does that I've seen
him do several times is or seen heard him do
several times, is he'll he will confirm the crazy thing
he said in the question to you, So he'll be

(02:31):
like a man. Uh, you worked with Christopher Nolan. You
remember he's a fucking asshole, isn't he Like he'll do
that's the question, and then the and then the then
the fucking interviewee is on the back foot. Immediately. They
have to either they have to make a choice to

(02:52):
defend that person, which could be bad for them, or
they have to confirm this crazy ship, which could also
be bad for them. Wow.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
The lightning fast switch from very open ended discussion starter
to very close ended question.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Is wortle. One of my favorite Howard bits was Quentin
Tarantino was mad. This is the most Quentin Tarantino story.
He was mad that he had shot oh fuck, oh
the Hateful Eight. He shot it on like like a

(03:28):
seventy millimeter like panorama, super a scilloscope vision, whatever the
fuck he did. And there were only a few movie
theaters in Los Angeles that had the capacity to show
them that the projection equipment to show them like the Vista,
which actually walked past when I was in LA and

(03:50):
it is like when people talk about the Vista, they're like, yeah,
I saw fucking one battle after another at the Vista
was insane. And then you walk by it and it
looked like a fucking piece of shit. It looks like
a condemned building because it's old. It's like extremely fucking old,
but yeah, it has like the seventy millimeter stuff. So

(04:14):
when that movie came out, a Star Wars had just
come out, and for whatever reason, Tarantino released it on
I guess this is still the Weinsteins. They released it
near Christmas, which seems bizarre, and so Disney they they
fucking confiscated all the screens. They were like, yeah, Star

(04:37):
Wars is coming out. It's going to be playing on
in every movie theater in Los Angeles, And Quentin was
pissed and he was like talking about it to Howard
and so then Howard called Bob Iger uh, and Bob
Iger obviously didn't pick up, and so he left a

(05:01):
male being like, you know, Quentin's here, and he's and
and he's I don't get I don't know, fucking Bobby,
what the fuck he wants a seventy millimeter? Who gives
a fuck. But come on, Bobby, you have all the
money in the world. Just give him two more weeks,
two more weeks, which is like, it seems like a
very benevolent thing that he's doing, but it kind of
makes Quentin look like a baby.

Speaker 5 (05:26):
Yes, this is you're getting your mom to call the
principal for.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
You and so it because it's weird because people say
that he's become less of a shock jock, But I
think it's it's he's become a different type of shock jock.
He's become like, uh, he's still starts shit, but it
seems more refined than it was when he was doing like,
you know, whatever the the h a woman rides a

(05:52):
sybyan and you know we talk about it kind of shit.
Now it's kind of like celebrity dirt gossip, uh, and
like stunts like that.

Speaker 5 (06:06):
Yeah, it's sort of As he has more power, prestige
and influence and connections, he can fuckings up in an
entirely different level. The ability to have Bob Iger's phone
in your speed dial and then harass that man is

(06:27):
a power I wish I had.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
What would you call? Like, Okay, you're you're you're calling
Bob Iger on the phone right now, like we're doing it.
I'm Howard, You're you're Quintin. Unfortunately, what is the thing
that you want to me to complain to him about?

Speaker 5 (06:46):
The most probably any of a half dozen Marvel things
on Disney plus of their structure, their format, Uh, why
do you keep hiring good actors and giving them terrible scripts.
Release the ball at once. Do you know the installment
plan to keep people hooked is transparent and stupid and

(07:10):
makes for worst television. To have some faith in your
own creative product and just put it out good and
in fewer episodes.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (07:19):
Things he would not care about because they make him money.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah. He because he's like, but we need a lot
of them, and what you're proposing to me that would
impede me making a lot of that. So you're talking
about the quality of the show and I'm talking about
how many we can have as quickly as possible.

Speaker 5 (07:40):
Exactly, we're operating a completely different accesses.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
The I saw Oscar Isaac did an interview because he's
doing press for Frankenstein, and they talked about Disney. I mean,
this is the albatross around anybody's neck, Like job buye
is always going to get questions about this bullshit Daisy
dry like just constantly.

Speaker 5 (08:03):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
And Oscar Isaac gave an answer that was both intended
to be a shot at Disney and also a surefire
away for him to never have to work with them again,
where he said, I'll work with Disney again if and

(08:28):
when they turn this downward spiral into fascism around or
something like that. So basically he's like, he's like, like,
they're complicit in with ABC and all this like bullshit
that they're doing and this like autocracy, and I will

(08:50):
work with them when they're no longer doing that, which
is not in the cards for them. So it's like
both Disney is a dogshit corporation. Also, Oh, I'll never
work with them again.

Speaker 5 (09:05):
That's so interesting because as big as they like, it
sounds absurd, but they are absolutely contributing and complicit and
have enough money and power and influence to do something
about it. Uh, and benefit from not doing anything about it.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
Good for him.

Speaker 5 (09:23):
I can live without more Moonnight, That's fine.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
I mean they probably have shitcan that, Like, there's no
way they're gonna they're gonna renew that because.

Speaker 5 (09:34):
Isn't the woman I mean, unless they have like two
minutes of Oscar Isaac cameo they were planning for doomsday
so that they could kill him.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah, isn't the woman in Moonnight? Also, like, wasn't she
cut out of a picture because of her political affiliation?
I might be talking about my ass here, but there
was something with that woman where she got like black balled.

(10:07):
Do you know do you know the one I'm talking
about the co leading that.

Speaker 5 (10:13):
I know, the colleague. She's lovely. I don't remember what
her deal was. And I wonder if you're conflating this
with the Israeli character in Brave New.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
World who didn't get cut out.

Speaker 5 (10:26):
Who didn't get cut out, but they had they went
and reworked her whole story to make her less obviously.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
A superhero.

Speaker 5 (10:38):
She doesn't get a costume basically and like, oh, she's
a former black widow, don't worry about it, as opposed
to she's specifically the IDF super hero.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
Got it. She has been vocal about uh, the genocide
and Gaza and she was cut out a gladiat or two,
which may or may not be connected.

Speaker 5 (11:07):
Uh, well, no, big loss. I mean at that movie,
I would have enjoyed more just seeing her in it
because it was a slog to get through and she's great.
Uh but yeah, that's hard to say that's connected. I
would assume that it is because corporations are terrible, but
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
There's so much of that happening right now where it's
like soft cancelations that are masked behind things that happened
routinely in Hollywood. Oh, you just got cut out because
like you know, it didn't fit into the story. Blah
blah Blah's like you got cut out of a Ridley
Scott movie. For time.

Speaker 5 (11:44):
That man doesn't cut anything. Yeah right, Oh suddenly this
man is worried about efficiency and streamlining the narrative.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
But so okay, So Franket's sign is out. It's strange
because we this is like a couple of points. We
just are. Our episode on Frankanscin just came out last week,
which actually does coincide, which with sort of when it

(12:18):
was released on Netflix. However, there was a nice feeling,
a nice nostalgic feeling that I had when we were
talking about Netflix that I only realized in retrospect, which is,

(12:40):
here's a movie that has a lot of eyeballs on it,
a lot of attention on it, and because we went
to see it during its like pre release mini theatrical
run that a lot of people didn't see, we actually

(13:00):
were able to see it in a vacuum that wasn't
trapped up in the social media spiral, which is how
you used to see movies, and so it was like
it was weird because there was no nobody's opinion was
being like put onto my for you page. There was
no like there were if you wanted to see something

(13:25):
about it, it wasn't gonna pop up as you were,
you know, scrolling through your Instagram, which is mostly just
like leads fucking news, soccer news and shit that, and
then up there's a fucking one battle after another thing
that that has spoiled the movie for me. Essentially, Like
that kind of shit happens so often now when movies

(13:47):
come out and when they drop on Netflix or when
they you know, drop on streamers, where when you have
these like extremely limited theatrical runs that only last for
a couple of weeks, you do have that that little
week or two respite of you're not burdened by having
to listen to anybody else's opinion about this piece of media.

(14:15):
That's very cool.

Speaker 5 (14:17):
I because our you know, we kind of that episode
was kind of melancholy, and I think it, I mean,
it speaks to the gothic nature of the story and
the month, and I have only now started seeing takes
that replicate many of the things we were trying to
bounce around, so I think we ended up with kind

(14:38):
of a microcosm of the general opinions. I'm curious to
know what like totally off the wall opinions. I would
never have considered that you're coming out through the hive
mind of social media. But you're right, it was really
nice to go in, think about it, bounce it amongst ourselves,

(15:02):
and then put it down and nothing about it again
and not be inundated by it. I'll start the two
opinions that I saw that I think really reflect the
kind of polls of what we were talking about. We're
one somebody taking the idea of del Toro was trying

(15:24):
to make kind of a life affirming film about it's
important to forgive your creator even though you didn't ask
to be born, and how can you go on and
like live in the world with that kind of baggage,
and then the other side being, yeah, sure that's a

(15:44):
story and that can be affirming, but that's not really Frankenstein,
and why is del Toro using that It's the same
what we were talking about, like kind of like putting
a his feel good ending on on a gothic taiale
that is never intended to make anyone feel good. So

(16:09):
it was interesting to kind of to see that back
and forth.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
That was the feel good ending.

Speaker 5 (16:14):
Yeah, well, by God truly And that's a good point,
by del tooral standards and by Gothic standards. It could
have been worse. It could have been more tragic, which
is what I was looking for and which, depending on
your frame of reference, still feels incredibly melancholy at all.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
Right, yeah, he went. He went with the fucking Miltonian
tragedy of God has abandoned you and you and you
are left to fend for your own existence, as opposed
to like, you know, all the other fucked up shit
that could have happened, and the way that it could

(16:54):
have corrupted the creature in like a truly truly cynical way.
The level of ambiguity that that movie presents, coupled with
how also obvious the symbolism is is what is I

(17:16):
think troubling a lot of people because it is at
once a very over the like hits you over the
head type of movie. This was a comment that I
saved that some that somebody wrote on threads. She said,
if you can't discern why Victor keeps drinking milk, you

(17:38):
do not have the skills necessary to offer critical analysis
of the film. It is not a difficult read, which
is true because there's so much obvious shit in the
movie like that, yet it is still so ambiguous, and
that I think is why it has sparked so much discussion,

(18:00):
because I think it's hard for people to square those
two things of like he's so upfront with the symbolism
and the meaning, like Victor being visited by fucking by
an angel in the middle of the night and shit
like that. Like it it's sometimes it hits you over
the head like a brick, and other times it is

(18:23):
like the end of the movie is ambiguous, it's confusing,
it's you know what, what is he really trying to say?
And so there's there equally people saying this movie is
so blatantly obvious, and it becomes a hyper obvious morality

(18:45):
play versus this movie is confusing and disorganized, and it's like,
how can I be both?

Speaker 5 (18:54):
Yeah, Yeah, that's cool, that's interesting because I think that
was that's kind of where we were what we were
wrestling with as well with our various reads and yeah,
everything from like yeah, like what does it mean to
have the sun rise over him? And the single man
monster tear. Where does he go from here versus Frankenstein's

(19:17):
brother being like you are the monster, Like, okay, I
got it, So that.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Where and when he chooses to.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
Really you know, like say it loud for the people
in the back, versus giving you a little bit of
space to breathe. And I think it's important to just
extrapolate from okay, based on all the things he does
hit you over the head with over and over, we
can basically go like, well, if he was doing it
that clearly there. I don't have a reason to believe
that he suddenly changed his tune at the end of

(19:51):
the movie. But yeah, it's that's interesting. I for me,
I don't think it holds a lot of like rewatchability,
but I am very curious as it And to your
point about as people are watching it, does the medium

(20:13):
in which they're watching it matter since they're not cooped
up in the inner you know? Is it the I
didn't get it, But I also like watched it in
fifteen minute chunks over the course of a week or
while I was burning lasagna.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
I don't know. Yeah, the the I mean, it's interesting there,
And there's also like a question about why the there's
a question about like the essence of Frankenstein. And what's

(20:51):
interesting about the debate is that there there there are
people who have a cocksure certainty that they know what
an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein would look like, and
that del Toros is not that, and then other people

(21:12):
who are like, adaptation, by its nature is interpretive, and
so is Mary Shelley's book is also interpretive. And so
the same way that there's not a singular meaning to
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, you have to make the same assumption

(21:36):
when you see an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and
that is it's weird because we're dealing with a piece
of of like canonical Western literature that's several centuries old.
Usually you're dealing with a fucking like picture book written

(22:01):
in the sixties crayons or something. Yeah, no, it's usually
a fucking comic book where they're like, what if Stanley
really would think about fucking Captain America or whatever the
fuck here, It's like people are are are like it
is the literary nerds coming out to be comic book nerds,

(22:22):
to be like adaptationists to be like Stephen the Stephen
King nerds are huge on the internet also, like they
have a lot to say about Welcome to Dary and
the it mythology and shit like that. And this is
the kind of stuff this is interesting to me on
an anthropological level, but not interesting to me in terms
of like interpreting.

Speaker 5 (22:43):
Media that yeah, I can see you're doing the meta
analysis of like watching the ants and the antilla each other.
That makes sense because and it speaks what we talked
about of Gerald germltro is so interested in other adaptations
of Frankenstein which are also interpretive and have their own agendas,

(23:07):
and is like, I really want to talk be in
conversation with James Whale and Kenneth Browna as much, if
not more so, than I want to be in conversation
with Mary Shelley's book. Uh, and it all gets mixed
up and you know, ripped apart and dissected and stitched
back together as Frankenstein's are wont to do.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
I did see one I did see one comment of
and this is this is like buried expository information, so
like the the obvious shit that hits you with the brick,
like the drinking milk, the double casting of me a
goth even though we missed that, the several different like

(23:50):
you are, the monster moments, the the stuff that is
just sort of like right there. One of the comments
that I read that I thought was very interesting was
person said, never read Mary Shelley's book. Why doesn't he
just use a body because it seems like it's taking

(24:12):
him a really long time to put this one together
using all these different body words.

Speaker 5 (24:21):
That's awesome, yeah, cool, which is funny. For all of
the technobabble that Guerramo del Tarro ads and there's like
too much of it in the first third of the movie.
We're talking all about the little needles and the fancy
lymph nodes, and we're getting like real next generation here

(24:41):
with all of our tech. At one point he briefly
is like, yeah, I need big body parts because it's
easier to do the work and with my stitching process,
which is like halfway taken from the book itself. And
that was the justification too, of like I don't have

(25:05):
microsurgery tech. I need to be stitching this by hand.
The bigger the better, so I can do my stitches.
And that does get said in the movie, but it's
a real throwaway line and when you're busy looking at
the like electricity and other stuff.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Yeah, that's fair. I remember.

Speaker 5 (25:26):
I think that's a question I had the first time
I read the book, too, like why are we going
through all this extra effort? Could you just find like
one preserved body that you just revive a fi like
now it's not hark okay. That's also again, part of
this is an interesting sague, like much of what we
talked about last week, which is the monster is a

(25:46):
metaphor versus the like world building, and if the monster
were real, let's like, why did you know, why does
the Death Star have a weak point?

Speaker 4 (25:56):
That's so silly?

Speaker 5 (25:57):
Why I can't storm through like all of the stuff
that was very big on the early Internet, and the
kind of you know, dad humor of you know, picking
apart the the the functionality in the world and the rules,
and part of what I complain about in later Citiason
Supernatural of well, why don't they just use like a
squirt gun filled with holy water or whatever, like, because

(26:20):
that's not a metaphor anymore, Like it's not the point.
And so the same idea of like Yeah, it would
be easier to just do one body, but then you
wouldn't have the abandoned orphan stitched together horror of he's
an amalgamation of thrown away parts. Yeah, it's there for

(26:42):
the for the horror. It's not there because it makes sense.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
And it's also like, there is that there. It's an
inbuilt characterization too, because he is recycling bodies on the gallows,
he's recycling bodies from the battlefield, and so there's a

(27:06):
way that his inhumanity is represented in the scenes during
which he is gathering the parts. And it also has
eugenic undertones as he is inspecting the bodies and pointing
out the deficiencies in the body parts.

Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yeah, and that's an awesome point. And that goes two
ways because in the original novel you have the like
he wants to make a perfect creature, so he's pulling
all of the best bits and all the biggest bits
and like, and then that speaks to the resurrectionists that
we were talking about of it. It is a specific
take on a contemporary anxiety around your body getting taken,

(27:49):
but it's not a single body. It's you get stripped
for parts, and so that's important that that's the issue,
and then as del Toro is recontextualizing that for a
commentary on industrialization and war profiteering, because specifically the battlefield
bodies in the movie are such a big deal. Whether
or not in the book, that matters of like, you know,

(28:13):
treating these people as disposable bags of parts. So yeah,
it's in both characterization in both ways, and that's one
of the things like if you're going to adapt it
to a new time period and try to say something different,
that's a good way to do it. Which reminds me
something we didn't talk about. When we went to learn
about the Resurrectionists for Halloween. We were addressed to Sam

(28:35):
and Dean Winchester. And so before the tour starts, we
are waiting at a table like having a hot dog.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Wait, can I pause? When you're dressed as Sam and
Dean Winchester, is it notable to people who don't know
about supernatural or cosplays?

Speaker 5 (28:57):
That's a very good question. You get a rain of reactions.
So the last time we were at that same venue
during the day and we and I was carrying a
shovel we had and there were other cosplayers there. People
came up to us to ask, hey, what's the cosplay
event about assuming we were a graveyard staff, because because

(29:21):
it's just like you know, guys in it work clubs
basically and jeans with shovels, like, oh, you probably know
what's going on around here?

Speaker 1 (29:31):
What's all these other people doing up in costume?

Speaker 5 (29:33):
So there's that reaction, and then you get folks who
like start kind of staring at you and like, are
you in costume? Are you a Jehovah's witness or which
like you have to be drunk for, but there was
a drunk and Halloween just said exactly that, like what huh?
And then as soon as you they do a kind

(29:55):
of double take. And if you say, hey, do you
know the show Supernatural? The light bulb goes off and
they go, oh, yeah, of course I get it. So
it's a it's a wider interaction, and that happens anytime
we're in costumes that are sort of street clothes. Back
when I was doing Bucky Barnes from the beginning of

(30:15):
Civil War, where he's in his like Marvels incognito look,
which is always blue baseball cap and a jacket, you
get people kind of like side eyeing me and staring
like is this a costume? What's going on? And if
I were standing next to a Captain America, then you'd
be like, oh, I get it. Yeah, So same kind

(30:39):
of thing. But one of the things that's interesting about
the so to your point, we're just standing around in costume,
blending in and a guy shows up at the table
and plops this giant metal box on the table and goes,

(31:00):
you know, like, hey, how you doing. You're enjoying you
sign up for one of the tours. It turns out
he's one of the presenters for the VIP tour, which
we weren't going to get to see. This box was
stolen and returned with a skull in it, and it's
a whole big thing about like grave robbing, and he
just war dumps and give it, just exposits at us

(31:21):
and gives us the whole story here, which suggests that
there's something about the vibes of Sam and Dean Woodchester
where you could just it was in information for people
like every time I watch that show, they're like, it's
so unrealistic that people would just open up and say
all this stuff. It's such a writing convention because they
have to move the plot forward.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
And then you dress up. But people just tell you stuff.
It works, the system works. Learned all this war.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
That is so funny, man, that's crazy. The the the
Krypke universes is powerful. It really is powerful. Have you
finished gen V?

Speaker 5 (32:14):
No? I completely forgot that it's the new season of
gen V, right, is it finished? Now?

Speaker 4 (32:21):
It's finished? Now, I would have I would have thought
you'd been all over that because it's gen V season
two and it's a Hamish link Later is.

Speaker 5 (32:28):
Well, yeah, I saw the ads with Hamish link Later
as the new Dean and like, oh, yeah, he's back,
and then I just completely forgot he is.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
He is the central antagonist, introduced in the first episode
as the central antagonist and is like fifty percent of
the show. I thought that they would bring in the
Dean and it would be like, you know, just a replacement,
sort of caretaker type figure, like the old Dean, the

(32:59):
old Dean who was part of the story. But it
is much more about the kids this one. It's very
much the kids versus Hamish link Later. He he has
a lot of screen time and one of the things
that I'm curious about is hamishlink Later is a fantastic actor.

(33:21):
There is a there's a level of performance that I
think the younger actors have that is a hard ceiling,
like seventy stories above, which is hamishlink Later's performance. It's

(33:44):
a very It's really strange watching it because I vacillate
between he's acting these kids out of the fucking building
to it makes sense in the context of the story
because he's much more capable and competent, and they're much

(34:05):
more fascile and superficial. So it's it's weird. I wonder
how your experience would be.

Speaker 5 (34:17):
Okay, I'm fascinated by that because the first thing I
think about every anytime you have like a group of
kids against a single adult, I think about like death
Stroke versus the teen Titans, And it's a tough balance
because either this one extremely competent killer is being you know,
goofed on by a bunch of kids and it becomes

(34:38):
like a Scooby Doo episode, or they don't have a
chance against a competent adult. And yeah, that's interesting. Often
in the mark of a really good actor can be
can they elevate the other people in the scene that
they're with to their level and you see this lot

(35:00):
and Jensen Eckles is a good example of that, where
you know, you can tell the difference between like the
supporting character of the week and recurring characters of Wow,
they seem so much better when they're in a scene
with him than when they're in a different scene. But
I would not put it past the showrunners to let

(35:22):
Link later go nuts, specifically to drive home how out
of their depth the kids are.

Speaker 4 (35:30):
Yeah, and and and also part of it is, like
I mean, he's introduced as being so mysterious and being
like a billion steps ahead of everybody else, and that's
a hard thing to pull off just with a character
because it's like because then you have to write that

(35:51):
brilliance right and not not every not everybody who writes
on a fucking TV show is that smart, you know
what I mean? Like, so it's very it's it's very difficult,
and he also has to represent and there are so
many ways to do it, and the choice that he
makes in his characterization is it's not conventional, and he's

(36:17):
like an unconventional dude and always kind of has been.
It is very similar in Midnight mass where you're like,
what the fuck is this guy's deal, Like it's just like,
what is your like, what's your whole vibe? Like, what's
your like are you a person on from Earth? It

(36:39):
is that strange the way that he presents himself. It's
really fascinating. He's a very sort of singular talent, like
a weird kind of like he he's weird because he
strikes me as an archetype that doesn't exist anymore, which
is character actor kind of crazy weird genius that is

(37:03):
in every movie for ten minutes, and that used to
exist like in the nineties when like people would would
pop up and like, oh, Tarantino's using him, the Coen
Brothers are using him, Spielberg is using him. Like they
would just pop up and they'd be like, oh, we
got let's get Hamish for that, Let's get Link later

(37:24):
for that, and then it would be a mainstay and
would become one of those guys. And now it's like
a totally different environment.

Speaker 5 (37:33):
Yeah, I was thinking about We've been watching a lot
of football and NBC is just inundating everybody with wicked
ads and Jeff Goldbloom is all over them. Yeah, and
like that link laders very much in the mold of
the Jeff Goldbloom, Like that's the guy from the nineties,

(37:56):
and he Jeff Golblum comes on to do like a
promo for the Olympics that's also Wicked themed or something,
and Mal turns to me and goes, why is he
so stoned? He just sounds like he's high, and like
why did they let him do that? And like, I
don't think you really have a choice when you hire
Jeff Goldblum. He always sounds like that. He's just a

(38:18):
weird dude, and you just kind of sign up when
you when you hire Jeff Goldblum to do a pitch
for your apartments dot com or Wicked or whatever, He's
just gonna do it one way.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
Yeah, And he really is one of those guys too,
because a lot of people remember him as being like, Oh,
he's in Jurassic Park. He's in this, He's in that,
He's in Wicked. He is not. He is, but he's
the character actor fourth Build, fifth build guy who has

(38:52):
managed to become massively famous, probably the most famous character
actor ever because he's like, he's in Jurassic Park. But
the lead of that movie is Sam Neil, and then
the second lead of that movie is Laura Dern, Like
Goldbloom falls a couple of rungs, and there's a hell
of a big difference between fourth Build and first Built.

(39:13):
Like Sam Neil is in that movie, Goldbloom is in
the movie. It's same thing with Wicked. He's dude, that
movie is two hours and forty minutes long. Goldbloom shows
up two hours in and doesn't stay that long. But
he's like transcended that. He's like the better version of

(39:34):
Jared Leto, Like just you know, in the movie for
fifteen minutes.

Speaker 5 (39:38):
What if the guy actually yeah, caused the movie to
be successful and like elevated it instead of tanking it.
But yeah, absolutely, I want about Independence Day because you know,
I think that speaks to Goldbloom transcending that role of
I mean, there's a big difference between will Smith Top
Build and Jeff Goldblum, but Goldom is in a lot

(40:01):
of that movie, and that feels like a turning point
and in many ways, like Link Later Midnight mass right,
like he's top build him, he's eaten, he's the lead.
But but it is that kind of that kind of role. Well,
that's very exciting. I Yeah, we've been just have not
been keeping up. I only realize just now that AMC

(40:25):
released their Talamasca Secret Order six part show, it'll be
nearly over by the time this comes out, which is
a interview of the Vampire and Rice Immortal Universe tie
in which I think speaks It's interesting. It's not based
on a single book, It's based on the Tallmasca. Is

(40:47):
just essentially Joss Whedon ripped off the idea of the
Watchers from Buffy from the Talmasca. It's exactly that kind
of like where a bunch of nerds tracking supernatural creeds,
and that is really interesting and can be a frustrating

(41:08):
place to be because it's exactly what we were just
talking about with are we thinking too hard about the
rules of our own world? You know, once these guys
start writing stuff down and tracking the logic of the
monster and like, well, what about iron, what about salt?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
What about garlic?

Speaker 4 (41:26):
You know, whatever.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
Do you There's a place for the monster hunter and
the chronicler and the especially in the Gothic like the
rational mind. But in order to be Gothic horror, the
rational mind is faced with things that it cannot rationally explain,
and you know, that's the horror of like you try
to and this is what you love in horror movies, right, Like,

(41:50):
we're trying to problem solve how do you beat the
Oculus mirror?

Speaker 4 (41:54):
And you don't. God you did you see Oculus?

Speaker 5 (41:59):
No? No, but that I want to say, Cripkese involved
with it in some way.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Not sure I remember. I remember I made a hard
sell in this podcast for you to watch Oculus because
it is truly like ninety minutes of people trying to
solve how to defeat a mirror. And it is fucking
riveting because you're like because then you because it's so stupid,

(42:25):
But then you become like, why the fuck did that
not work?

Speaker 1 (42:29):
It's you just told me that you're right.

Speaker 5 (42:32):
You look at it at forty five degree angle, right,
So that's it can be really engaging, but it needs
to not work in order for the horror to be preserved.
And as soon as you like, well, just fill the
water gun with holy water, you start to remove the
then you're all the metaphor breaks down and you have

(42:55):
the safety of intellectualizing it. So it'll be interesting to see.
There's some really good character actors. The guy who's the
the Nazi candidate from Succession is one of the leads,
and yeah, great cast interesting like fitting together of a

(43:19):
knitting together of their world. But I'll report back if
if I get around to it. We're kind of bind,
I say, rewatching DS nine.

Speaker 4 (43:28):
So no, I mean that, Yeah, totally absolutely, and as
you should, because there's so much new stuff. I'm realizing
right now that we might be cresting another golden wave
of television, because you know, there was there was a

(43:52):
like the the first golden wave of television is forever ago,
but like the recent goal an age of television was
coincident with a Game of Thrones reviving appointment viewing, and yeah,
that built on the legacy that Oz and the Sopranos built,

(44:19):
and then you had within that time period Breaking Bad
and Mad Men and The Walking Dead and like all
of this stuff where the concept of binge watching came
into play and then it just became oversaturated to the

(44:40):
point where there was a laziness to it because it
was about getting things to market for people to binge watch,
and you're listening listening exactly. But I think there's there's
there is a a turn half bit happening right now

(45:03):
that I think is it's very interesting that it's coinciding
with the end of Stranger Things, which was part of
like the beginning of this, but like a lot of
stuffs is that coming out again? The Stranger Things is
uh is finishing, so the fifth season is airing. Now.

(45:28):
I've only ever watched the pilot of it and not
interested in kids trying to solve mysteries. But you know,
for all intents and purposes, it definitely was part of
that golden age of television that sort of launched Netflix
into a new stratosphere. Now it's interesting because a lot

(45:52):
of it is happening on a streaming service that nobody watches,
which is Apple TV Plus, because it's it's that thing
where I think Apple TV Plus is right beyond the
threshold of the next streaming service that is too expensive, right,
So like people are they have their HBO Max, they

(46:13):
have their Netflix subscription, whatever, and it's like Apple TV Plus.
I don't know that. I mean, you know, what are
we gonna do? And the reason I say that is
because the studio went every every single Emmy was an
Apple TV Plus show. Ted Lasso is a big part
of this, and both of us have seen Ted Lasso.

(46:35):
Neither of us have Apple tv Plus, which tells you
correct tells the kind of all you need to know
about how people are watching these shows. But the release
of the Welcome to Dairy show on HBO Max and
that meaning this kind of universal acclaim, the release of

(46:58):
I Love La, which is a new Rachel Senate show
that's also on HBO Max that has received universal acclaim,
The Chair Factory, Tim Robinson's show on HBO Max Pluribus,
which just premiered on Apple tv Plus. It's Vince Gilligan's
new show as one hundred percent around tomatoes. People say

(47:18):
it is one of the best pilots ever filmed, and
it is going to deliver on the promise that Westworld squandered,
which is fascinating because I haven't seen it. Wow, Okay,
and the Boys and gen v are all in the
mix here. There is like a real strong television economy

(47:44):
right now, and I think it probably has to do
with the the Netflix model imploding, because now Netflix won't
allow shows to continue to run. They'll cancel them like
within knowing the numbers from their premiere and a lot

(48:08):
of the So none of this shit is happening on Netflix.
There's no interesting shows on Netflix, but all the other
streamers are doing it in this way where it's releasing
on Hulu weekly, it's releasing on Apple TV plus weekly.
It is that bizarre thing of like what launched the
first that this like recent golden age of television. It

(48:30):
was the ability to binge what is now sort of
reviving television and leading us into perhaps like the tail
end or the realization of that first wave or creating
a new wave. Is you gotta wait for it type
of thing, because I think people got exhausted by television.

Speaker 5 (48:54):
Yes, I agree, there is a burnout. And I mean
despite what James and I usually agree with his take
on this superhero fatigue. You know, James Gunn's point is like,
you know, well they're just like mediocre bad TV fatigue. Like, yes,
that's true. Some of that was Disney's fault, some of

(49:17):
that was DC's fault. Some of it is the limitations
of superhero stories. And so that's the thing, like you
can tell the world's best superhero story, but if you
were still if you have still locked yourself inside the
confines of what a mainstream superhero story is allowed to say,

(49:38):
it's still limiting. And you know, and that's why the
Boys and gen v You know, we're so we're so
far up our own butts about like deconstructing and deconstructing,
the deconstruction of to the fact that we're a point
where you've got Mortal Kombats, got Omni Man and Homelander

(49:59):
and Peacemaker all as downloadable characters, and like how many
Evil Superman you need, dude. So that burned people out,
and so it's really interesting that none of what you mentioned,
with the exception of the Boys is a superheroshaw and
some of them are not speculative fiction. Even that's that

(50:23):
it speaks to people like getting tired out by the
genre and looking for something else. The other piece that
I'm more interested in because you know, I started Peacemaker.
It's I think that season's over. I'm curious about people's
thoughts on the whole product. I might go back and
watch it all. Was the it's releasing weekly, but it's

(50:44):
not actually episodic, right, Like this is what we were
complaining about before of we made a movie, we chopped
it up into twelve parts. We are forcing you to
watch it over twelve weeks, but each episode is not
satisfying versus this appointment viewing because you are getting a
classic episode of television with a unified thing. It's the

(51:07):
one where this thing happens, you can talk about it,
and you're not just talking about, oh, what might happen next.
It's not just setting you up for setting you up
for setting you up for the next thing. And that
was the like part of Superhero fatigue. Was the only
thing that matters in this Marvel movie is the end
credits scene. Like, none of what happened from minute one

(51:28):
to everything before the end credits even matters. And you know,
we were excited about the possibilities, but I feel like
I wasted two hours. So if these episodes are actually
giving us real episodes that lead up to something, I'm
all for it. That's awesome if it's appointment viewing, but

(51:49):
it's the same hollow cliffhanger. I am going to wait
and then still be mad when I binge watched the
season because I could, we could sit down and editing
booth in front of your laptop for two hours and
cutting down to a movie life. So what's your viable
on people's reaction to these are they like this is
a good pilot because it's a real pilot or it's

(52:12):
part one of what ought to be a movie.

Speaker 4 (52:15):
I think part of I think it is Vince Gilligan
is the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
So I think a lot of it is giving seeding
power back to creatives and that is what created the

(52:43):
first wave of this, Like television Golden Age, was there
were people like David Chase, there were people like whys
Benioff for you know whatever, five Seasons or whatever. There

(53:05):
were people who really understood the medium of television. And
James Gunn is a movie guy, and the when when
the formula is create a ten hour movie with a

(53:27):
stinger at the end that piques the interest of the
viewer enough to get them to the next part, because ultimately,
what we want them to do is to finish the story, which,
like you're saying, could be the experience of just watching
a movie and not the experience of sitting down and

(53:50):
watching a complete piece of artwork. So what's interesting is
with Pluribus, for instance, it is a guy who really
understands television, who was given all the resources that he
wanted to create a show that Apple TV didn't meddle

(54:14):
in at all. And that's pluribus. David Chase, who was
a Sopranos creator, received a Duffel bag that fell off
of a truck full of money to create a television
series about MK Ultra, which is his project that he's

(54:35):
developing right now. And I think it's the kind of thing.
And I'm skeptical about that one because I think David
Chase's politics are bizarre. So we'll see, you'll see how
far down the rabbit, how far down the rabbit hole
he gets. But I think it in essence, getting the

(54:55):
showrunner of the Sopranos, the creator of the Sopranos, to
create a television series about this very interesting thing is
on its face, like exactly what you should do. And
also finding talent in writers' rooms and giving them their

(55:17):
own shows because mad Men spun off Matthew Wiener, who
was part of David Chase's stable, and so there are
also a lot of showrunners now from successful shows in
the past getting their own shows. For the IT series,
which I really like, and I think it's so underrated,

(55:37):
the horror television show. I think that in and of
itself is a curiosity. There are all the Mike Flannagan
shows that you could watch on Netflix, but that was
made by a movie director.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
And that's what I'm gonna ask with those is like
how much are they really shows? As much as they
are multi part, it's still of a movie.

Speaker 4 (56:02):
I mean, it's just based on the way that we
engage with them. As the answer to that question, which is,
we watched several at a time, like we probably watched
Midnight Mass. I mean, it probably took us like three months,
but that's because we watched three episodes and we got

(56:23):
a month or you know to do it. You know
what I mean, Like, well, we watched three episodes in February,
three episodes in March, and three episodes in April Pipe Shift,
And so it is very much, yes, television made by
a filmmaker who is who desires to have more run
time for his films, like he did the sequel to

(56:46):
The Shining and Doctor Sleep, which I think was a
three hour horror movie, which is a long time to
remain scared. So it does it does wear on you.
There there is a point in which a horror movie
loses you, which is I think a lot of the
reason why horror movies are kind of short, because it's
like I'm exhausted by being scared this long kind of thing.

(57:11):
So I think that is also part of it, which
is not overthinking things and getting people who have worked
in TV in the past and and and giving them
the resources and not meddling too much, is part of it.
Like the studio is a perfect example. Seth Rogan has
been making television for a really long time, him and

(57:33):
Evan Goldberg, and they have they understand TV, they work
with TV people. They you know, saw Eric Kripke love
his work and said, this is a project that I
think we should get behind and make happen because like,
this is a person who understands television. This is a

(57:55):
great idea. They have a great take on it. Let's
put ours behind that. Let's make this happen. So the
studio was Apple TV being like old Seth Rogen, you
got any ideas. Here's my idea. I want to fucking
satirize all of the fucked up bullshit that I have
experienced and that we've all experienced in Hollywood. I want

(58:16):
to put that and play a clueless executive and I
want to film every episode as a genre piece. So
we're gonna have a noir episode. We're gonna have a
wonner episode. We're gonna have like all of these different
types of episodes, which in and of itself is both
a critique and a love letter to movies. And then
what happens. He wins every Emmy that is possible to win,

(58:40):
you know what I mean, Like, it's not fucking rocket science.
It's just not rocket science. And I think that there
was this push to again, Bob Iger, you're listening, just
create more shows. And so they were just like, does
can anybody just can anybody do a show about Jessica Jones.

Speaker 5 (59:00):
Yeah, and specifically we've got a story. It does not
matter how long that story is. It has to be
eight episodes. Like, well, I've got like a really good
idea for like an hour of content. Nope, eight episodes.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Stretch it.

Speaker 4 (59:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's so funny. Uh yeah, no, it's bad.
It's bad. It's bad the.

Speaker 5 (59:22):
Way exciting though, Yeah, that there may be a glimmer
of a refocusing on let's make art that stands on
its own.

Speaker 4 (59:33):
Yeah, and it's weird. It's weird. I certainly still don't
have Apple TV, but I'm watching these shows. Uh, the
Jason Momoa show that just came out. I can't. I
can't remember the name of it. Also hugely popular, really good.

Speaker 5 (59:53):
I have a Foundation.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
No Foundation is the outlier and the bunch, and the
fact that it is the show ran by a movie
person who's also a bad movie person is the Achilles

(01:00:19):
Heel of that show. Because the Foundation already is so confusing.
Like I was talking to my dad about this, and
you know, my dad was like, you know, I'm trying
to watch Foundation, because my dad watches everything. My dad
was like, I'm trying to watch Foundation, but it's like
they keep jumping in the future so long. It's so confusing.

(01:00:42):
I don't understand it. And I'm like, I've read four
Foundation novels, and so I tell my dad, I go, Dad,
that happens in the novels, and those novels are written
by arguably the best science fiction writer ever, Philip K.

(01:01:07):
Dick level, and he's barely able to pull it off.
You're watching a show about an impossible story that is
being created by the guy that made Blade Trinity. It's
not gonna make sense.

Speaker 5 (01:01:31):
And we know Dad's very very low tolerance for being
confused by television.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Also, Dad's very low tolerance for Blade Trinity. That like,
there are very few movies got my dad's ire. Dude,
when he walked out of Blade Trinity, he was like,
what the fuck did I just watch? This is a god?
This like to go from Blade to Blade Too, which
is del toroal like two movies that fucking rip some

(01:02:02):
of the like coolest movies of that era. To then
be so excited as a dad to go take your
kids to watch Blade Trinity and it sucks balls, and
then you, as an uncritical dad, even understand that walking
out of the movie theater going, man, we just wasted

(01:02:25):
money watching that bullshit. That fucking sucked. It wasn't funny,
it was stupid. Wesley Snipe isn't cool anymore. Like the movie,
the fucking shit doesn't make any sense to see what
I Honestly, I'm trying to think of any other movie
he really hated. He's he's hated some performances. He doesn't

(01:02:45):
have a real he doesn't have tolerance for like gal
Gadot and she doesn't have that much talarnge either. But yeah,
I can't think of any other movie he like despised
as much as Blade Trinity. And so he also didn't
know that David A. Sguyer was involved in Foundations. When
I dropped that bomb on him, he was like, oh,

(01:03:08):
that fucking suck also makes sense? Makes sense? Why why
this show doesn't make any sense?

Speaker 5 (01:03:16):
Yeah? Yeah, I was wondering if he would just have
like an embargo on all things Goyer.

Speaker 4 (01:03:24):
Not no, but like we had a whole conversation about it,
and he was like, what else has he done? And
then I was like, okay, but don't take this as
like as as more than it is. He wrote the
story for the Christopher Nolan Batman movies because I knew
my dad was gonna be like, well, I mean, come
on those are you know, like, how can you how

(01:03:46):
can we argue how?

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
But I was like no, no, no. He was in
the room with a stack of comic books telling these
dudes like what Batman does? They're like, does he have
a belt? Yes? Okay, And that was his role.

Speaker 5 (01:04:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
In rewatching DS nine, there's a couple of episodes that
have Brian Fuller's name on them, and famously goes on
to write most of the end of Voyager, but these
are like pitch scripts. The writer's room in DS nine
would accept submissions and the two episodes of DS nine

(01:04:28):
like that got him noticed and got him basically a
job on Voyager, but he wasn't in the room, like
he submitted the scripts, had an idea and they're like, cool,
we'll pay you your you know, one off rate for that,
and then somebody else goes in and writes it, and
so it's got like some of the themes and some
of the bones of a Fuller idea, and then it's

(01:04:49):
you know, goes off the rails from there. It's completely
different direction. So yeah, the like you know, weak tea
of this person's idea has got diluted can either be good.
If their ideas are bad, then they get covered by
a bunch of other creatives, or it can get you know,

(01:05:11):
stretched out to be unrecognizable.

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
Yeah. Yeah, the that's so interesting too because like another
reason why a lot of shows are doing well, like
shows that these are shows that were were either being
developed during or immediately after the writers strike, and so

(01:05:39):
a lot of people are were also like forced to
have rooms and that is you know, something that the
writers were fighting for, and it's something that's so obviously
a benefit because like Brian Fuller could submit spec scripts

(01:06:03):
and get staffed on a show. Judd Apatow got his
start writing spec scripts for Seinfeld and then you know,
changed comedy movies in Hollywood forever, you know, for better
or for worse. He made them very long, but he
also made them relatable. And so there was this like

(01:06:25):
there's also this way that like the quality of television
is an indication that strikes work as well. And and
Gilligan always has a room. Gilligan always has a room.
Old school TV guy always has a room, is not.
And that's the other thing that I don't like about

(01:06:48):
James Gunn. I don't like that he wrote all of
wrote all a Peacemaker by himself type shit. That stuff
pisses me off, Like and it is because he's a
writer jre and he works in a totally different medium
and he's not made for television. But it's like, have
a fucking room, dude, Like this show could be funnier

(01:07:10):
if you had twelve comedians in a room, the show
could be funnier. And the other point I wanted to
make about Peacemaker. I finished the show, and one of
the fucking problems to me about it. I really liked
Peacemaker Season one. I thought it was so funny. And

(01:07:34):
the gag that gets me all the time, and I
do this in my to Munchie is when Freddie Stroma
gets his mask taken off his Vigilante and he starts
making faces and he's like, if I continue to alter
my face, they won't know my secret identity. And I
do that shit to her all the time. She dies laughing.

(01:08:01):
That gag is fucking stupid as shit. It's so funny.
That was totally absent in season two, Like that type
of gag is not there, and I'm like, man, at
least season one there was like goofs and shit, like
that's what I was interested in. I was interested in

(01:08:21):
seeing John Cena be like goofy. But then it's like,
let's have a love story be the center of this show.
Let's have him deal with this trauma. Let's have him
deal with like being outcast from superheroes. Let's have him
at the end make a face turn. And I'm like,

(01:08:41):
I like Peacemaker as the goofy anti heroo with like
jokes and where the seems like the prime objective here
is to be funny and to explore weird shit, to
make like ham fisted commentary, not to set up the

(01:09:06):
next phase of the DCU or whatever the hell's going on.
It's like James Gunn was supposed to be doing this
all differently and Peacemaker season two it's not terrible, but
it gives me a little bit of like, oh, he's
gonna he's gonna replicate. Maybe maybe it's just not possible

(01:09:28):
to do it a different way and maybe like you
get you get a ringer to come in and they
have to. They're trying to think about this creatively. They
have a schedule in front of them, Peter Saffern's there.
They're trying to figure it out, and they go, yeah, well,
we're gonna we're gonna have to like introduce this. Oh

(01:09:49):
I won't spoil it, but we're gonna have to introduce
this important element, uh so that it can be in
the Superman movie. And then people are also gonna have
to watch this. And it's like that is what people
are rejecting in the MCU, and James Gunn's interpretation is

(01:10:13):
people are rejecting that the shows are bad. At some level,
I think that's true, But on another level, I think
they're also rejecting that the shows are homework.

Speaker 5 (01:10:25):
Yes, and that they do not stand on their own,
and that they're not pieces of art in and of themselves.
They are vehicles to get you to buy tickets to
the next thing, which is weird. I mean, James Gunn's
a comic book fan. Like, we went from Oh, it
sucks that nobody was making these understands the source material too.
Oh no, they're too behold into the source material in

(01:10:47):
the structure. They can't think creatively about it. They can't
adapt it in a way that's satisfying on its own
because they're stuck in. This was based on a monthly
publication that never ends. For my story can also never
end and never versus. He adapts a graphic novel that
has a finite beginning and endpoint, and like, oh that

(01:11:10):
was satisfying. Great, Uh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
It's also it isn't it so interesting too that studio executives,
I mean, I might also be surprised by this, But
my relationship with comic books is I I follow very
closely for like six months, and then I dip out,

(01:11:37):
and then I pop back in. I see what's going on,
and if it sucks, I dip out. If it's good,
I pay attention a little bit more. That is the
same reaction that people are having to the MCU, where
they're like, yeah, oh, this is fucking awesome. I'm gonna
see all these Marvel movies. It's gonna fucking rock Disney
Plus launches. They're like, there's more stories. They're like, bet
let me see them. You dip in, You're like, oh,

(01:11:58):
this is getting kind of onerous. This is getting kind
of I think I'm gonna dip out. You pop back
in and you're like, oh, what's going on here? Oh,
Sasha Baron Cohen's playing Mephisto. Okay, I will maybe come
back to this in a couple of installments. Uh you
know where we at or where we at now? I

(01:12:20):
pop in and I see Thunderbolts. I go, okay, interesting, cool,
that's not gonna make me watch Captain in America Brave
New World, But that was a fun time. It is
like the same relationship that people have with comics who
aren't completionists, and the type of like consumer who is
like addicted to comic books is such a small percentile

(01:12:40):
of any consumer base, Like the hardcore comic book fan
who is up to date on everything that's going on
contemporarily and who follows comics like consistently and has a
box and is reading everything they get every Wednesday. That
is such a small percentage of comic book readers. Most

(01:13:02):
comic book readers have their favorite titles, will pop in
when those titles are are going or are attracted by
a massive event, which you know, we have in the
past been like, let's pop in, let's see Doomsday watch,
let's pop in, Let's let's check in on Dark Knight's Metal,
Let's pop in, let's do this, And if that's not happening,

(01:13:25):
then you know, maybe Graham Morrison's Green Lantern will entice
us in. Maybe something else want to tice us in.
But it's not like I'm invested in DC or Marvel comics.
It's I am interested in very specific things about this
or specific events. And so it's like, you know, am

(01:13:46):
I going to watch Secret Wars when it comes out
in theaters in two years? My answer right now is
definitely not not interested, don't care, will watch it when
it releases, probably pirate it because I'm not trying to
get Disney. Sorry, go to Blockbuster and rent it, because

(01:14:07):
I'm not trying to give Disney any money. It's weird. Yeah,
they replicated a structure that is mainly oriented around the
vast majority of consumers do so casually.

Speaker 5 (01:14:20):
Yeah, it's I think about when I was in high
school and I was very invested in DC versus Marvel,
and my English teacher, who grew up with the Chris
Claremont X men, was like, no, that's not the way
to be a comic book fan. This is stupid. And
I didn't understand what he meant, and I was like upset.
Then uh he uh, you know, I get it now, Yes,

(01:14:47):
that was so it the you fall out of it
and like there's a certain amount of time you have
in a certain time in your life when you can
be totally invested with everything all the time. And the
comic book industry requires new blood to fill in for
the people who get burned out or get busy, and

(01:15:11):
you know, the craven uh no pun intended point of
people are only interested in events, that's what does entice
them back. Then there's too many events and the events
get hollow and uh, you know, phoned in and everything
is a secret invasion and everything is a crisis. And

(01:15:33):
when everything is a crisis, nothing is a crisis. You know,
that's how I live my life. Also, everything feels like
a crisis, but it's it's unsustainable. And so to your point, fandom,
that this kind of fandom became mainstream. Everybody had a
fundaco pop of everything for a little while, and it's
saturated the market and it's and it can't it can't last.

(01:15:57):
And you're right that Disney overextended on oh, the Marvel
model and the Marvel method of comic books. We will
replicate that in our TV bro comicook stores are dying
like that model doesn't work and nobody really wants that
they but they just got behold in the material. And

(01:16:18):
so yeah, we're it's interesting to come out the other
side of going from I get one chance to get
a Green Lantern story on film, never again, this is it.
They got to cram everything they can into it. It's
made by somebody who hates Green Lantern and doesn't want
to be doing this, And to now, I'm kind of

(01:16:42):
scared that The Lantern Show will be too much. But yeah,
there needs to be a middle ground there, and I
think you're totally right. The middle ground is hire people
who understand how to make television that stands on its
own at and that is a model that just simply

(01:17:02):
doesn't exist because we're not looking at syndication, and we're
not looking at reruns, and we're not looking at pieces
that have to work individually. But guess what I'm watching
mash those you know, those individual pieces of art generally
hold up. Uh, you know, we're doing a list of

(01:17:23):
the ones that aren't worth ree watching or haven't aged well.
But it's a model and a structure that works. And
trying to make TV versions of twenty five page ads
for next month's twenty five page ad for next month
twenty five page ad not a great way to do it, fuddy.

Speaker 4 (01:17:45):
Yeah. The And that's also like it is true that
like movie people think they run the entertainment industry where
they're like, yeah, just get the movie people to make TV.
Like it's just it's the same thing, right, It's like no,
that's why it's so crazy when they're they're always like, man,

(01:18:06):
David Chase couldn't hack it as a movie director, and
it's like, but you can't hack it as a TV showrunner.
Like it's it's just like crazy arrogance that the movie
people have where they're like, I'll just go to TV
and I'll just make a great TV show because I
mean it's the same thing basically as what I do.
It's shorter, it's easier. It's like, no, it's actually a

(01:18:28):
totally different skill set. People's brains are are not wired
to do movies. Like David Chase is a bad filmmaker.
He is. He's a fucking terrible filmmaker. He's the the
best television creator of all time, arguably.

Speaker 5 (01:18:43):
Like it's just funny because yeah, yeah, no, absolutely thinking
about like oh, stan Lee, frustrated novelist, can't hack it
as a novelist, goes on to make comics and like
the early like oh they wanted to be like pulp,
uh you know, Hemingway or whatever, and like, oh now
I'm slumming it here in comic books, and some of

(01:19:04):
them are cut out for sequential storytelling in a way
that like, you know, do I want to read Jack
Kirby's novel about his experiences in World War Two? Probably not,
but like a sprawling epic, you know, trippy colored the
months of the New Gods and his you know, interconnected nonsense. Yeah, dude,

(01:19:30):
that's very compelling. It's a totally different structure.

Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
Yeah for sure. Well, folks, it's that time to goo
Google goog. Yeah, we're wrecked. You coming in hot with
any recos.

Speaker 5 (01:19:51):
Well, I will recommend uh and it'll incense you. But uh,
following up on last week went to this bird festival,
I will recommend conservation and yeah, you know, certainly for you,
not of birds, but.

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
It was lovely. Don't want them around me?

Speaker 5 (01:20:13):
Well that's fair. Well, I'll tell you. The point of
this is to get the birds out of here. It's
to heal them up. They get they recover after they
hit a window and you know, get them all fixed
up and they can go back into nature. And there's
a bird releases, so you would have appreciated, Like the
point is a bird in a cardboard box freaking out.
They pick it up, talk about you know, the process.

(01:20:36):
It's looking around, it's got stage fright. Nobody told it.
It's the lines. People chant at it until I give
it a countdown and then they release it and it
flies into like a tree fifty feet away, Like what
the hell just happened? But yeah, so you know, find
a local organization, get involved, go out touch grass. In
my part of the country, the leaves are turning and

(01:20:58):
it was beautiful to kind of be out in the world.
And honestly, best in animal interaction of the day cameo
by a very very thick bulldog, like the size of
a small pig, density of a small pig, having a
great time watching the birds. So yeah, that was good.

Speaker 4 (01:21:20):
I love that. So I'll give my real recommendation and
then I will remark on something that I would recommend
as an anthropological experiment. My real recommendation is Rachel Senna's
new show I Love La. It is a very interesting show.

(01:21:44):
She stars in it, and she's one of the creators.
Rachel Sennett was in Bottoms and I believe co wrote that,
was in Siva Baby. Where she got famous, was in Bodies, Bodies, Bodies,
was in My favorite train Wreck, the idol. She plays
like Lily Rose Depp assistant. And it is a show.

(01:22:04):
The title is slightly ironic, but not to the point
where it is taking potshots at Los Angeles, which I
think is a tired thing that a lot of folks
do when they like They either are like over romanticize

(01:22:25):
Los Angeles as it being the sort of like utopia,
or they describe it as it's like hellscape This is
a show in which it portrays people who are working
in an industry that a lot of people ridicule, which
is the influencer space, and it it provides a loving

(01:22:54):
critique of those people that is very much rooted in
a gen Z millennially cuspy type of humor. So it's
interesting because it is written by people who live in
Los Angeles with drawing from their experiences. It shows me

(01:23:18):
an element of like the sort of backstage of the
like Instagram influencer type uh space where I'm I've always
been like, man, I'm scrowing. I'm seeing these people like
like how do like are do they make money? How
do they make money? Like what what's going on here?

(01:23:40):
And she's working for this like startup that is like
doing marketing for Chipotle, and she's responsible for like writing
the captions to that. And so you see this like
this alienated labor and this like the behind the commodity
fetishism of Los Angeles of like own know they are living,

(01:24:00):
breathing people who live in LA who are actively pursuing
this as a career. This is wild. It is also
so very specific to this generation, and so it's just
fascinating because it does peel back. This this like weird

(01:24:21):
veil of those people don't seem to be making a
lot of money. A lot of them do not get
that famous. And the labor market is just like packed
with these folks who are trying to make it in
Los Angeles, which is one of the most expensive places
to live. So it's a really fascinating show. And it's also,

(01:24:45):
you know, one of those rare shows where it's a
thirty minute comedy that's actually got jokes in it, where
it's not like The Bear, which is a thirty minute
comedy that has zero jokes in it. The and I
like The Bear, but I'm like, what are we what
are are we doing here? This is a drama. The
reverse reco I will make is. Kim Kardashian has been really,

(01:25:08):
really trying to campaign to get a second season of
her show All's Fair, greenlit by Hulu, is a Ryan
Murphy show. It's our Kim Kardashian and among the additional
castAR Naomi Watts, Nissi Nash, Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Tianna Taylor,

(01:25:32):
real good actors. Naomi Watts is a fucking star. Glenn
Close has been nominated for several Academy Awards. It is
one of the most poorly rated shows in the history
of television. It's Ryan Murphy's worst rated show ever, and

(01:25:53):
it is maybe the worst television show I have ever seen.
So this was like my idol, uh and I just
mentioned it the idol the Lily Rose Depp weekend show
where everyone was like, this is one of the worst
shows ever. This show sucks. It's so bad, and so

(01:26:13):
I had to watch it. Same kind of deal with
with this, where people are like, this is historically bad,
and so I tell my wife, I'm like, I mean, listen,
how can this be so bad? It has Ryan Murphy's
attached Kim Kardashian, Is she a bad actress? Like, you know,
people say she was good on an American horstory? How
bad should be? And look at the rest of this cast,

(01:26:35):
look Glenn Close, Sarah Paulsen, come on, and everyone's saying
it's horrible. It has five percent around tomatoes, like we
must watch this, we must see how they fucked this up.
And it is baffling how bad it is. Every every
line of dialogue functions like the end of a line

(01:26:58):
of dialogue, like if fuck in, like a mic drop.
Every single one is a mic drop where they are
constantly owning people. And Kim Kardashian's boyfriend in the show,
where she plays a lawyer who runs a multimillion dollar

(01:27:21):
law firm. She famously did not pass the California bar
and aspires to be a trial lawyer, like that's what
she wants to do. Her boyfriend in the show is
a three time Super Bowl winning football player who leaves
her because she's too perfect and she makes him feel
small next to her. It is Kim Kardashian's worldview captured

(01:27:50):
in a much more realistic way than her reality show,
which is more scripted than the TV show that she made.
It's crazy. It's like it was so it was so crazy,
we were mouth agaped the whole time.

Speaker 5 (01:28:11):
That's fascinating, both in like her trying to live out
some kind of magical realism, and also in that you
really are never going to escape the battlefield earth effect
of being really morbidly fascinated with terrible pieces of attempted art.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
I just love. I just love when things are made.
I hate a mediocre thing. I hate a mediocre thing.
I want to watch great shit, or I want to
watch really bad shit, because I think there's craftsmanship where
it's it's barely perceptible in a mediocre show, where you're

(01:28:53):
like yes, like it's just so anonymously created, as opposed
to like, you know, we talked about Germo del Toro,
like when an auteur has his hands on something and
you're like, oh, this is a very distinctive like expert
craftsman who is trying something here versus this is a.

Speaker 5 (01:29:19):
No go ahead finish.

Speaker 4 (01:29:21):
Where versus like this is someone who doesn't have a clue,
who is trying their best to create something that they
think is good and that will well, that people will like.
So it's a different orientation between I'm creating a piece

(01:29:42):
of art versus I'm trying to create something I think
people will like, and that yields different results.

Speaker 5 (01:29:51):
Every time, yep. And you can learn a lot about
the bones and the structure of what makes successful art
or good art, those two things are not always the same,
and what you like and what your own worldview and
values are by being like uh, in conflict with the

(01:30:11):
thing that you're watching.

Speaker 4 (01:30:16):
Yeah, so do that. Let the birds, Let the birds out,
let them freeze, and we'll see other next episode of
Is this just bad? Bye?

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
Is It's just a badd It's like, oh, pirates, quote
your brain, Robin Nala's no joking.

Speaker 5 (01:30:42):
Open in your mind with the probots as you're woken,
hitting hydra halen hairs, and for time, the head.

Speaker 1 (01:30:46):
Of reasons for more than with the soldiers, with them
for all seasons. Listen closely while we share our expertise
and customic comments culture Dean streetuition to the Multiversity, not
it's likecho teaching perfect balance. When we snap in vinet
gents into your ears, does their shoulders when we speak?
Both men were sweet, and speech were Randy. Seven drendals
with the Immortal Technique.