TMR 319 : One by One (2014) : TMR Movie Roundtable

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello everybody. Julian Chiles here of theMIND Renewed dot Com,
coming to you from the depths of the Lancashire countryside
here in the UK. I'm just checking that file is
still getting bigger. Yes, it is good and welcome to
TMR number three hundred and nineteen, for the nineteenth of
our movie round Tables, in which we continue to discuss
films or other types of production that have relevance the

(00:36):
themes explored on the mind Renude over the last dozen
years or so. And today we're going to be chatting
about the cult British truther or truth y movie for
want of a better term from twenty fourteen called One
by One, starring somewhat notably the well loved comedian and
actor Rick Mail of The Young One's fame. Discuss this

(01:01):
well again fairly obscure film. We do seem to be
drawn to relatively unknown films these days. We are joined
by two thirds of our normal film critical crew, our
good friends Frank Johnson the Land of Trump, Elon and
Doge and Anthony Rattuno here with me in the Land
of Starma, the Farm Ohama and Rachel from Accounts. So

(01:22):
welcome gentlemen, Welcome back to the Timar round Table. Hello, nice,
good to be speaking to both of you again. Thanks
for agreeing to come on to talk about this unusual,
very unusual film, very interesting film, I think. So before
we get onto that, let's catch up a little bit. Frank,
how are things going for you on the other side
of the pond?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, Orange Man's back in charge, So I'm waiting for
the price of housing to come down, but I'm not
sure how likely that is. And the cost of eggs
went up, but that's because you know, they were killing
chickens before the election, probably to drive egg prices up.
And who knows what else is going on there, but
over everything else is gone. Fine. We had some wildfires

(02:03):
out in Los Angeles, but those seem to have died down,
and yeah, everything's all right.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
People are presumably blaming the egg prices on Trump directly.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, most likely. I don't really pay much attention to
too much news, but that's sort of the implication. While
everybody kind of ignores the fact that this bird flu
stuff was going on last year, they were building up
to it.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
So, and Anthony, how are things with you in Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Fine?

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, you're hiding spot. You're hiding place.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, I moved from ten into places just too many murders. Yeah, anyway, fine, Yes,
In terms of the news, I mean following the Lucy
let Me stuff very closely. It's absolutely amazing what's happening
with that. Whether anything happens with it is another matter,
but yeah, fine. In podcastland, I'm closing in on my

(02:52):
two hundredth podcasts.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Wow, across shows, Yes, congratulations.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Decided what I'm going to do. Yeah, I'm just about
to do deep dive into Citizen Kane. Well, your Sistan
Kaine is a good film, not as good as One
by One, but you know, still a good film. And
I've ended up with thirty three it's a good note
thirty three pages of notes slash script. So I'm going
to attack that in the next few days and I'll

(03:18):
probably end up with about six episodes.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Wow, I say, And I'm sure the Masonic connection is
not lost on the audience there. Yeah, we are steeped
in such things. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, it is an incredible film though, But I'm going
to use a bit of a cliche. It is so
much better when you've got a commentary on you've got
someone describing all the tricks they did and everything. It's
still a great film anyway, but it really does benefit
So hopefully I'm going to pass that on to the audience.
It's not going to be a watch a long audio commentary,
but it's going to kind of be seen by scenes.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
I've never really taken to that film. I've seen it
a couple of times. I think the trouble is I've
seen it at those times late at night where I
fall asleep. So maybe that's not fair to the film.
It may just be my state of mind at the time.
I must watch it again some time. Well, with your guidance,
that will be good, Chap. So yeah, let's get onto this.
So this is, as we say, one by one, which

(04:09):
even beats Citizen Kane twenty fourteen, starring Rick Male and
written and directed by Diane Jesse Miller. Now I'm going
to ask you two about whether you had an experience
with this prior to what we're going to be doing here.
So I'll just start by saying that, you know, I've
I have been aware of this film for several years,
but I haven't seen it until recently. I kept getting

(04:30):
put off. Really people were recommending it. You know occasionally
over the years or have you've seen this, you know,
But I was put off by the trailers that I
saw on places like YouTube, rumble other places, And I
now think that's largely because it really is difficult to
choose sections of a film like this to whet people's appetites.
You know, Either you show scenes that seem maybe over

(04:51):
the top, you know, because they're out of context, or
they're going to be really boring bits that don't attract anybody.
So I wonder whether really that was I got a
fair impression. So I've seen it now, although I do
have some criticisms of it, as I believe you taps
also have. You know, I'm going to say I've enjoyed it,
and I do admire them for having a go at it.

(05:11):
So who'd like to go first? Whether you had an
experience with this prior to recently.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, I was aware of this about six or seven
years ago, probably just because of the Rick Mail thing,
and I think the nine to eleven Jenger scene turned
up on YouTube, and like you, actually, Ju and I
tried a couple of times, and I watched twenty minutes
or half an hour or something like that, and then
when you said are we going to do this? Then
I was kind of pleased because I've always been meaning

(05:38):
to actually finish that film. And I watched it twice
and the second time it was, you know, watching it
quite critically. I think the film in a way got worse,
but ideas and material for a podcast got better. And
I think it's a film that sort of belongs in
another time. I mean, it's sort of eleven years old anyway.
To me, it belongs more to something like two eight,

(06:00):
two thousand and nine. And I can explain why later.
But Okay, I think the execution is just is so
on the nose to use a podcast expression. But yeah,
there's loads of good ideas. We've got loads to talk about,
which is good.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, Frank, Am I right that you haven't heard of
this before I mentioned it?

Speaker 2 (06:17):
No, I had not heard of this movie whatsoever. I
don't know if it was even ever released here on
DVD or any in any way that I'm aware of,
because this was the first I've heard of.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
It was from you.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
As far as I know, it's limited to the UK.
I mean, I've got a DVD of it here, which
I got through eBay via their website. I don't think
it's been on TV. I don't think it's been in cinemas.
I mean, I can't say it's never been in any cinema,
but certainly not in general release. So you know, I
suggested you watched it on Vimeo, and I'm not even
sure that link works anymore, so well, yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
It does now.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I haven't rechecked it, but that was the only
way I could watch it was to pay like five
bucks on Vimeo, which was like, I can do that,
you know.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yea, it is weird.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
It's funny that the fact that it's seems to be
in buried is obviously plays into some of the things
I want you to see.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, absolutely, well, perhaps better say the reason why I
want to discuss this one is because it has become
something of a cult classic in truth movement circles. Perhaps
we'll discuss again what that means truth movement and there
is such a thing, you know. So therefore, it touches
on some of the subjects that we've covered on TMR
over the years, and so I thought it would be

(07:29):
a good one to talk about. So I'm going to
give a bit of a plot summary here for anyone
who's not seen it, which is probably the majority of listeners,
so please excuse me. There are going to be some
spoilers in this, so here we go. The film centers
in the character of Dion played by Heather Wilson, who

(07:49):
is a young woman who works in a UK town cafe,
much to the disapproval of her policeman boyfriend Jeff played
by Sean Meyer, who thinks that Dion should be more
ambitious and stop dreaming about being a writer one day
and find herself a career with higher status and pay.
But Dion, at least for the moment, is happy where
she is. She's young, she's in no hurry to get

(08:11):
her life all planned out and anyway, She's made some
good friends at the cafe who have brought a sense
of joy into her life, especially Lily, another young woman
working at the cafe, played by Katrina Nair, who always
seems so bright and cheerful and full of life. Then
there's Lily's father called Proof played by Steve McCaulay, and
a young man called John played by Duncan Wigman, who

(08:32):
later in the film becomes Dion's new boyfriend. And to
complete the list of friends, there's also Ernest played by
the one and only Rick Mayle, who is a slightly
odd character with a distinct air of seriousness and intellectuality
about him, which I think Dion finds initially a little
off putting, but she soon learns to appreciate Ernest and
they quickly become friends. And this is a special group

(08:55):
of friends. There's nothing superficial about their relationships. They're open, caring,
always willing to share their thoughts and feelings, and looking
out for each other and crucially for the story. They
share amongst each other a deep concern for the troubles
of the world, and in particular, a distrust of the
system under which we all live, and a common hope
for a better world. But then tragedy strikes. One of

(09:18):
the friends is fatally wounded. And I won't say more
here because I don't want to give too much away
this early on, but Dion is grief stricken. The oasis
of calm and peace that she'd enjoyed with this group
of friends is suddenly shattered, and she starts to question more,
what is it that my friends really believe? What is
it that's driving them? They've been hinting at something all along,

(09:39):
What is that something, and as she questions and questions more,
the friends reveal that they've each come to learn through
their studies a dreadful truth that there exists a global
conspiracy to remove ninety five percent of the world's population
from the face of the earth, a claim that initially
Dion rejects, but as she herself begins to study, to

(10:02):
read the books to attend the seminars, she comes to
understand that the conspiracy is real after all, and her
world is changed forever. Then, at the end of the film,
everything comes to a head as her disbelieving ex boyfriend
Jeff bursts into the cafe, intent on rescuing Dion from
the clutches of this strange group of people as he

(10:22):
sees them, and as the radio and television announced that
something calamitous is already beginning to take place. The military
are already in the streets, and it, whatever it is,
is already starting to happen for real. It's time to
stand up, we hear dionce inside her mind with eyes open,
ears down to the ground. A change is long overdue.

(10:45):
So wake up, question everything, Are you awake? She asks?
She turns to the camera and addresses us, wake up
now okay. So One by One was released I think
in twenty fourteen, and it was made under the name
Boiling Frog Films. It's an independent film funded by friends
and well wishers, and most of the production crew I believe,

(11:08):
were not paid. It was a labor of love. As
I said before, I don't think it's been on TV.
They really tried hard to get it into festivals and
onto TV, but nobody would touch it. That's what she says,
Diane jesse Miller. Nobod who touch it? And then it
went to DVD in the end, to talk about twenty five
days to film and they spent about twenty five thousand
pounds on it and amazonally he got hold of Rick

(11:32):
Mail to be in it, who works on it with
them for five days out of those twenty five days.
Pretty astonishing, and I think Diane herself was pretty astonished
to get him through his agent, because he accepted it
pretty quickly apparently, and the script was sent to him
and it spoke to him, she says, And it's dedicated
to him, isn't it. The beginning of the DVD it
says to Rick Male ninety fifty eight to twenty fourteen.

(11:54):
Of course, of the same year of his death.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, do we know then, maybe we're he was a
bit of a truth quote unquote or an alternative he
said it spoke to him, So I don't know. Yeah,
he's open to it, at least no one.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Would suppose so. But I haven't found any information to
that effect. I think you mentioned before we started speaking.
There is a viral video out there sometimes it's called
you know Rick Male tried to warn us that sort
of thing.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, it's one of those things, Yeah, that the alternative
media is kind of latched onto a bit like the
Eisenhower closing speech. Yeah, although I mean that one's a
good thing to talk about. But yeah, it supposedly him
saying it's all make belief. But it's one of those
things where you could, depending on where your mind's at,
you could take it a few different ways. I think
it's a smoking gun, but it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
No, I looked at it quite carefully, and I think
it's pretty ambiguous. It could be taken either way. I mean,
he says, well, let's explain this. Though he's clearly filming
on a set somewhere. He's dressed as some kind of officer,
somebody playing a policeman next to him. They're both being
made up and be smoking and looking very severe, and
he looks. He just turns and looks at the cameraman

(13:05):
and he's very very menacing, and he says, what are
you And then he swears what are you doing? And
there's a pause and there and he says that you
don't know. The cameraman goes noop, and Rick says, viewers,
you don't know who the cameraman is. And I think
the cameraman says something like I'm no one, something like that,
and then Rick carries on, you don't know why you're

(13:26):
being made to see these things, nor do I. You're
seeing me, I can't even see you. I may be
dead by the time you watch this, very possibly are
You don't know who's the man who's making things he
wants you to see, destroy your television sets. Now you
must listen to no orders. It's all I can tell
you at this point in humanity. Believe me, Well, I.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Didn't realize he said I'm going to be dead soon.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
He does, indeed, because he.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Does his death officially quite sudden.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Now yeah, heart attack, Yeah, because.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Obviously he's never been the same since the cord accident,
but he had he had recovered from that. But wow,
I realized he said that.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, it's very suggestive, isn't it. It was a jog,
and then he died shortly after this jog, right out
of the blue. But however, I will say, when you
watch that little video, it does carry on g is
a bit more context. He then turns to one of
the crew, a lady member of the crew, and he says,
did that sound pretentious? And she says that sounded really

(14:20):
quite scary, and the cameraman goes, I didn't really understand it. So,
I mean, you know, the very fact of the artist,
did that sound pretentious? I wonder whether he was preparing
for a part, you know, getting into character to be
all scary. I don't know, it's the same.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
We don't know more about that about what he actually
cold is. I think they said he was quite nice
to work with, I mean, on one by one. I
know they're generally always going to say that, but I.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Think he has a reputation for being, you know, fun
to work with, because he was supposed to play Peeves
in the Poultergeist in the Harry Potter movies, and they
actually filmed a bunch of his stuff, but the kids
in the movie all cracked up so much that they
couldn't use any of the footage he was in. That's
what I've heard, and none of that's available anywhere. But
I once surprised me. You know that he's rick. I mean,

(15:06):
women seen him do his stuff, and you know, I
imagine he's probably like that all the time.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
It's over the over the top one way or another,
seemingly all the time.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Yeah. Yeah, I think he might be a bit much
to spend a lot of time.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Oh absolutely, Oh sure, you would have been great to
work with. I have to say that Dan jesse Miller,
the writer and director of this, from what I've heard
of her interviews, and because there's no suspicion that she
reveals about his death, she doesn't mention any concern about that.
Obviously the sadness of it. But that's it. And I
do think to myself, well, you know, his activism footprint

(15:43):
is really very small. There are a couple of newspaper
reports about him being involved in a couple of things
with fairly mainstream activism, things really complaining about the loss
of the pand and not going over to the euro
and about keeping the first past the post parliamentary elections
system we have here, you know, pretty mainstream issues. So

(16:04):
why would you want to kill him off? You know
what I mean? For something like this, you could just say,
always become a bit nutty these days, you know. So
I just think it's pretty unlikely that you know that
he was killed for this.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, it's just one of those things that some people
in the OLK media are going to latch onto because
it seems to make sense, I think so anyway, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, So this lady, Diane jesse Miller hadn't done an
awful lot before this, a TV mini series called The
Gifted sort of comedy sci fi series, and after this
she produced a fantasy thriller called An Irish Story. So
this was pretty much her first plunge into this kind
of thing. So I think she did a good job.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think the point
of the film is obviously to just present ideas. Yeah,
and it kind of made me think, like, was there
actually any point having a plot? Like they have a
love triangle, what's the point of that? What does that actually?
Is it just so you can have a sex scene.
I mean, that guy just seemed like the boyfriend from hell.
You know. Absolutely, she rejected him in favor of the goofy,

(17:09):
kind of open minded guy. I get that that's.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Fine, But neither one of her boyfriends in that movie
were any good.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, yeah, they were both odd in their own ways
for sure.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
I just think that, you know, the first boyfriend doesn't
understand what's going on at all, does He's very mainstream
in his thinking. He's the policeman. Chap is the complete opposite,
of course, of the other Chap, John, who is the
truther and very much more interested in her, more sensitive,
more free and easy, and all these sorts of things.
So he's the complete opposite. And so I suppose they

(17:41):
represent either side of this sort of epistemic divide between
those who are open and those who are closed, I suppose,
and she shifts from one side to the earth, doesn't
she being incredulous about it all to start with, moving
over to the other side, becoming a quote unquote truther,
and John's shepherds across that divide through the Actually, of course,

(18:03):
what happens to the other young lady in the film,
which is key, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah? Didn't it? Yeah? No, and I was saying, I
like the device of having her on video talking about stuff,
but yeah, I mean that really that really came out
of left field. One of the ideas which is quite
nice in the film is that the John guy's very
goofy to start with, and there is a sense of
not taking yourself too seriously. I think the idea was
of being like a child, wasn't it. And it doesn't

(18:32):
mean living like a child trying to tap into that
thing you had when you were a kid. Yes, it
kind of gets lost when you have to enter the
adult world, you know. So there's a bit of that.
But then towards the end he became slightly sinister. You know. Yeah,
she goes through this conspiracy boot camp you might call it.
You know. They send her off for forty eight hours

(18:53):
to watch to lead a videos, and she comes back
and then she goes to the cafe. They all look
a little bit sinister. They've got these strange.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Eyes, particularly that the Rick male character, Ernest. He has
very very strange eyes and strange eyebrows as well. I think, yeah,
oh yeah, he sort of pushes his forehead forward, looks
through just under the bottom of his eyebrows. People in
a really quite menacing way. I think that was a
very odd character.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
He came up quite sinister, even though he's supposedly the
good guy or whatever. But he he did have like
kind of a menacing undertone to sure.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
It's rather the world, isn't it, Because presumably you're supposed
to identify with him, at least I thought so. Because
this group of friends, four or five of them in
this shop, they meet in this cafe, don't they? And
I get the impression that it might be his cafe
because he's got an organic garden on top. I think
we're supposed to identify with them, aren't we. And he
seems to be the sort of leader of this group,
almost like a guru.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
In some ways, I feel like he should have like
it would have had more payoff to him, Like he's
got this group, and then he's also like working against
them somehow.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
You know. Well, I don't think that was inten ended,
but I know what you mean, though it seems to backfire,
doesn't this in.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
A strange way?

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Because he's just too serious?

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Yeah, I think a lot of people might identify with
maybe having like a bit of a wacky uncle or
something who's into all these ideas, and I think if
they'd had like maybe a bigger budget and had some
other actors who were a bit more accomplished, maybe at
his level, perhaps it might have worked because he you know,
he can play that sort of wacky and sinister, you know,
at the same time, Yeah, that uncle will tell you

(20:29):
the truth about nine to eleven or whatever, sort of
shake you out of your normy existence, that kind of thing.
This film I had the kernels of good ideas. It's
just maybe, I mean, they didn't have the budget for
a start.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yes, I thought the acting on the whole was pretty good.
I think some were stronger than others. I mean, Rick
said that he won. Apparently he said he was looking
forward to being the next Anthony Hopkins. But then, you know,
knowing what we know about Rick, you know, he would
say things like that. So but maybe that was in
his mind. Maybe he had the silence of the Lambsles
in his mind. I don't know. And they only had

(21:01):
him for five days as well, so you know, I
think some of it was edited into place, so perhaps
it's slight rockiness with that. Whether he was quite on
the same wavelength with playing that part as them. I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
I think just done Rick Mayle. Actually, I don't know
if you've heard Adrian Edmondson on Desert Island Discs recently. No,
it's worth a listen. Actually, you can get it as
a podcast in all the usual places. And he breaks
down at one point because he couldn't work with Rick anymore.
After the accident. Rick did recover from the accident the
quad bike one, which I don't remember how many years

(21:33):
earlier that was, but it's quite a few years earlier.
But he did become very difficult and he just became
a little bit too much, got a bit too excessive
in some way. But that's worth a listen anyway. Yeah,
he breaks down at some point, so you obviously a
lot of affects him for him.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Yeah, clearly. Clearly they did a lot of work together,
didn't they.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
I also find it interesting that in the few years
before his death he was doing some other sort of
horror movie things as well. So he did a horror
movie called Evil Calls the Raven. He did a thriller
called Errors of the Human Body it was twenty twelve,
and he did a horror comedy called Elderado in twenty
twelve so he was clearly moving towards that sort of genre,
and I wonder whether he took this on partly because

(22:14):
of that, and therefore always a good opportunity to play
a weird character.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
You know.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Well, he was doing that thing where he played the
father of Greg Davis, you know, who was the teacher
in the in between us. Oh yeah, I haven't seen. Yeah,
he got a lot of good reviews for that. Actually,
I think he was playing a kind of eccentric dad
character there, so he could definitely do it. But I
think in terms of acting, I think the bad boyfriend
in the first film was a bit of a cartoon villain.
He had that strange pout. When she said something you

(22:40):
didn't like, he pouted at.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Her, Oh this is Jeff the Policeman.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
I know what you mean. The first time I saw it,
oh it was a bit too cartoony, I know what
you mean. But the second time I saw it through,
I wondered whether that was actually his fault. I wonder
whether that was a fault of the way the film
was put together, because we didn't get much sense of context,
did we at the beginning of that movie? These two
are dysfunctional in their relationship from the word go there.

(23:07):
You know, they're arguing straight away, and we haven't had
any chance to empathize with them understand why they have
a relationship. Didn't you get that sense of why are
these two you know?

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I'd like to have seen them have
at least one happy scene that you might realize.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Well, that's right. The opening sequence they put thumbnails, it's
quite an effective opening sequence. I thought that. I think
the music's actually really good throughout a really good musical score.
And the beginning they have these thumbnails of their relationship,
you know, going on holiday, et cetera, the two of them,
Jeff and Dion, and they also have world events happening
at the same time in these thumbnails, and that's supposed

(23:46):
to give us a sense of these two having been
together for a while. But the thing is we have
no context. These could be anybody. We don't know that
their characters, and they're very small thumbnails. So the first
well it's not quite the first scene, but almost the
first scene we get is those two arguing. It's like
that's out of the blue, and so therefore I felt
like that's where my view of the actor Sean Meyer

(24:07):
playing Jeff went wrong right from the word go, but
as it went through the movie, my view of him improved.
The way the film was put together just didn't give
him a good crack at the whip to start with.
You know, that's what I think.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Yeah, I mean, maybe it's the script. It's hard to know,
isn't it.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
It is hard to know.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
If you didn't know anything about any of these ideas,
it wouldn't be a bad like starter kit, you know. Yeah,
it's not bad presenting a lot of ideas, it's just yeah,
nothing's really developed or new once particularly.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, I mean the
dialogue is pretty good. Actually, I think it's the screenplay,
isn't it. We should have had some background to them.
I think I thought, I don't know what you thought
about Dion, but I thought she was a good actress. Actually,
I thought she did really well, you know, the grief
stuff that she had to cope with, and yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
I really like Sorry, Frank, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, I thought either she was really like a likable character.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, she's somewhere in the middle. Obviously, she's I don't know.
They taken under their wing in the cafe, you know,
she's looking for something, and obviously John charms her for
a while. She's somewhere in the middle of mainstreaming alternative
and she she reacts against it. Then after she takes
the boot camp, you know, she's not quite all in,
but you know.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Well she is sort of. But she's given a very
strange line at one point where she she's heard all
these strange ideas that these people have, and then she
says something like, oh, you know, I can't accept what
you lot are saying. It's right up there with JFK.
And I think what you think? It's right up there
with JFK. I mean, you've got to be pretty normy
not to think there's something off about the JFK.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
So I like the line does she say something like
if my whole life is a lie? Yeah, I know
that feeling, you know, when you suddenly, when you do
go through all this stuff, which for me was about
two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, you can
get a bit gung ho with it all, you know.
And she says, left is suddenly righting up, is suddenly down?
It does I can identify with it?

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Oh yeah, absolutely, that's the going down the rabbit hole.
Sort of thing, isn't it. Yeah, which I don't think
that group handles at all well as a group. I
think they encouraged her to go down that rabbit hole
too quickly and too uncritically, and they got her at
a very vulnerable time. And I know what the film
is trying to do, you know, it's trying to encourage

(26:15):
people to think, to be questioning of everything. Okay, I
get that, and that's what Diane jesse Miller was saying.
The hope is that people will question because of it.
But the way that group in the film went about it,
I think they pounced upon her at a vulnerable moment
and bombarded her with all kinds of stuff in a
very uncritical way, had their own theories, like an uber

(26:39):
theory in which all these other conspiracies were embedded in
a way that doesn't I don't think makes a lot
of sense. Really, it was not the right way for
that group in this film to go about it in
my view. Yeah, sorry to be so critical about that.
I don't think that quite worked what they were trying
to do there.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, I think if you're going to give someone the
gentle same start and saying that, you know, they want
to wipe out ninety five percent of the population might
not be the best play. No, No, that was something gentler.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yes, indeed, and they sort of imply this is going
to happen. You know, they seem to be operating on
this idea that it's going to happen, don't they. I mean, Lily,
Lillly and John have gone to these seminars and things,
and they've seen movies, and I think Lily says something like, oh,
they're all saying the same thing. They want to wipe
out nine percent of the world's population. And she's crying,
And I think to myself, well, there's one thing to

(27:32):
point out that there are people with power who do
have such ideas, and we ought to remain vigilant and
bear in mind that such tragedies could happen. That's quite
different from saying there is a massive conspiracy in which
all the world's governments are involved to bring this about
and it's just around the corner. It's just we don't
know how, but it's going to happen. That's a do

(27:54):
you know what I mean? That's a very different and
I think super pessimistic way of going about things.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
This is a line where they say we haven't got time.
It's about to help the impression. It's literally about to happen.
And then obviously that thing happens at the end.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
It does happen at the end, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
We're supposed to believe that event that's happening is going
to wipe out night.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
How did you read that, Frank? Did you think that
was actually supposed to be the thing happening at the end?

Speaker 2 (28:19):
I see it came off that way. Yeah, like all
the whole movie they were talking about it, you know,
the way they do in conspiracy circles, like, oh, they
have this plan and one days X is going to happen,
and then suddenly at the end of the show, Yeah,
it did happen. And that for me was quite unbelievable
because it's like, oh, yeah, they were actually right all
this time, and then like, but I think it was

(28:41):
supposed to be that event. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Is that why you say that the whole thing should
be understood as a parable Because if that's the case,
then that kind of makes sense then I.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Think, so, yeah, because they're talking about this the whole movie,
and you know, in real life, we don't really ever
see a culmination of it. But then here in the
movie they play it off just like they do in
real life, except for this time there's actually actually is
a culmination of it. And I almost would have found
that disbelievable if we hadn't, if we weren't on this
side of the COVID twenty twenty stuff, you know, twenty

(29:13):
nineteen stuff. It came on just as suddenly as this
event did in the movie, So it's like it came
out differently, of course, but like you know, that's sort
of what we're going for. It's like they didn't have
one specific event they said it was in the movie,
but they were kind of giving you like a type
or a you know, what you might expect to see
type of thing, the worst case scenario.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, that's right. Well, it did correspond to some of
the things they said, didn't they They said about governments
wanting to do this and the military being encouraged to
kill civilians and all this sort of thing. So if
we understood it as a parable, then you can have
something unbelievable happen like that, because that's just the closure
of the story that's being told here. I mean, she
does say it's a story you know, the director and

(29:58):
writer says it is to be understood as a story.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. I think the idea at the
end was some sort of martial law, wasn't it.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
I think hinting in the movie that it wasn't necessarily
the actual military of the country. It was more like
the United Nations. They kind of I think mentioned United
Nations a couple of times. Yeah, and I think we're
meant to believe that their military might be working in
conjunction where they don't really explicitly stated. But at least
I came away with that idea.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, But there's another part of the film. There was
a bit that I thought was absolutely crazy, but then
it kind of made sense. They gave the idea that Lily,
who's the girl who was stabbed, was part of this
ninety five percent of being wiped out, which is absolutely mad.
But then but then they said, they don't need to
kill us, they just create a system where we kill
each other. So that's quite a different idea than you know,

(30:48):
the Georgia guidestones and we actually are going to get
wiped out. I think what they said, the symbolic thing
was actually more accurate. Yes, you know, the divided rule
get us to kill it each other, either literally kill
each other or just fight amongst ourselves about you know,
left and right or you know. Yeah, that bit made sense,
but the idea that she literally was literally one of

(31:10):
the nine five percent, that doesn't make any sense at them.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Sorry, Frank, did you want to say something about that?

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, I was just I was thinking. I thought they
were somewhat inconsistent in which conspiracy theory they were lashed onto,
because they were like, you know, one minute, it's big
Pharma with their vaccines and exits. They're going to do
something like round us all up with the United Nations
and then exit. It's like they're going to have us
kill each other. It's like they didn't know which theory
was the right one, or they just thought they were
all right. It was just not very clear which one

(31:37):
they were prepared for, you know, and what preparations that
you've been were taking.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
You know.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Right, they seem to have this overall narrative of this
population reduction thing, and then they slotted every conspiracy theory
they could find into that, and they all thought the
same way as well. Yeah, that's not my experience of
being with people in the so called truth movements. As
it were, everybody else different views and happy to discuss those,
But these people all thought exactly the same way, and

(32:03):
it was, as I said, a kind of uber theory
and everything else fits in, and that discourages you, then
from looking at the individual concerns and perhaps being more
reasonable about those concerns. You know, nothing could be done
for any other reason other than population reduction. That doesn't
make sense to me. It's like a belief system that
they had in place, and you could not challenge it,

(32:25):
presumably controlled by Ernest. That's the impression I got.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
I think they it's an opportunity also to call the
policeman a shill, because like anybody who challenges the narrative
is automatically a shill.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, there was a point in the
film where I actually felt slightly on side with the policeman,
you know where where you know he says, well, you
know your nuts or something like that, and I thought, well,
from his perspective, I can see why he might think
that because of the strange ways in which they've been
talking to him, and the strange power that they seemed

(32:59):
to have over Dion, you know what I mean. I'm
not with him in the sense that I'm closed minded
like he is in the film. But the way they
went about things, I think, well, I can understand why
he might react like that. I can understand why Dion
early on reacts like that, bombarding her with stuff, acting
very odd ways. So she says, well, this is nuts.

(33:20):
I can't accept any of this, and I'm thinking you
shouldn't accept it. They haven't given you really good reasons
to go along with what they said yet. They may
yet do, but they haven't done so far.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
We should probably mention the C word at some point. Cult.
There is a cult aspect that they're all they all
look a bit weird towards the end, and that there's
a strange atmosphere when she walks in the cafe one
of these scenes at the end. Yes, so it's either
counterproductive or here's my conspiracy theory. Maybe she's trying to
ward us all off the truth.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Well, that was a conspiracy theory for sure. I actually
don't get that impression from listening to her, right, I don't.
I get the impression that she's not you know, she's
concerned about stuff's been going on. But she says herself,
she's not an expert in this, and that's fair enough,
absolutely fair enough. But the amount of effort they put
into the production, and there are lots of aspects of

(34:10):
this production that are really good, and I think we'll
get onto that, But in terms of the content, the
theories that they touch on, I don't get the impression
that they put the same amount of effort into those.
I mean, maybe they did, maybe I'm wrong, but that
doesn't come over to me. So I think she's coming
from the right place. She wants to wake people up,
as the phrase goes, wants people to think for themselves,

(34:33):
but perhaps didn't put as much into making that as
persuasive as she could have done, and it may have
backfired in some ways. This is why I think, although
I think people should see this film, I enjoyed watching it.
A lot of people will enjoy watching this, But personally,
I don't think it's the kind of film to show
to people who aren't already open to things like this.
It can confirm them in their dismissal of such views.
Oh gosh, that really is not the sort of thing

(34:55):
I want to get involved with. You know, as you say,
coming back to this sort of cult thing. The word
cult is really awkward, isn't it, because it's notoriously difficult
to define what that means. And so what I would
want to say is that in discussing this sort of thing,
there are some aspects that we see in tight knit
groups that have sort of controlling features about them, and

(35:16):
some aspects we see about this tight knit group as well,
that there's some commonality there. You know, we don't need
to talk about the semantics of the word cult. You know,
it's sufficient that we see those sort of red flags,
and there are some red flags I think in this
particular group, and the biggest red flag is ernest.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
I can imagine seeing I can imagine the three of
us sitting down with this plot, and I'm sure between
the three of us we could come up with some
good ideas of things they could have developed. You know,
there was one interesting thing that maybe I'm reading too
much into this, but when John and Dion actually had
sex in the shower that was straight after the funeral,

(35:54):
was actually the very next scene. You know, they're they're
kind of in the shower, and.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
The way it's not after the funeral, it's directly after
the death, because they're washing the blood off.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Oh sorry, yeah, after death. Yeah, yeah, that's something you
could develop. I said, you had a bigger script and
you know, some other writers or whatever. You know, there's
loads of scope for good ideas.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
I wondered about that scene. Initially when I saw it,
I thought, oh, this, you know, is John exploiting her.
She's in a very vulnerable steate. She's really really upset.
And then I for the second time I saw it,
I thought, no, actually, they're both really upset. This relationship
is much more meaningful, you know than the relationship with
with Jeff, and it's it's actually a very human, understandable
reaction for both of them that particular love making scene,

(36:36):
to be honest. So yeah, I've got no problems with
that if that was well handled.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Actually as a new swim, I think it does, because
I just know we won't discuss that, we won't discuss
the morality of that particular nude swim discussing the film
as it is.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah, on Anthony, no.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
She I just thought there was a bit parallel because
when she tries to get Jeff to do the what
i'd call the conspiracy boot camp, she kind of starts
kissing him and he thinks, you know, something's going to happen.
So in the funny way, she's using that a little bit,
I don't know, reading a bit too much into it.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
I understood that as a kind of goodbye. It came
over as a kind of goodbye to me and affect
you goodbye.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah, maybe you think does she think? Do you think
do you think that she thought that he was going
to be converting? Do you get the idea that she
was then trying to convert him?

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Or I think so? I don't know why she thought that. Yeah,
I think she was hoping. I don't quite understand why,
because he seemed well, you can never tell, can you?
With people? Sometimes people can be so guarded. It's because
they're actually vulnerable inside, you know what I mean, about
to change inside? So who knows?

Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, I think obviously the whole landscape, the whole mainstream
and conspiracy landscape has changed since then. And yes, I
think it'd be hard to find someone who wasn't aware
that these theories, if you want to call him, that
are out there. This was twenty fourteen, wasn't it. And
like I said earlier, this feels like a kind of
beginner's guide in a way. It's almost like the greatest
hits of conspiracy ideas, you know, some of which have

(38:09):
a lot of truth to them. I mean, it's true.
I want to take issue with one thing. Actually it
was a good idea, and they said why do you
need money? And it is absolutely bizarre that there was
a film made about ten years ago called ninety seven
percent I think, and it was made by some people
who had some ideas for changing the economy, and they
said that ninety seven percent of money in the British

(38:30):
economy is digital, which essentially means that rich people have
just got a load of zeros, you know, on a screen.
Then obviously they can buy stuff with it. And it
was interesting. We said, what would you say if I
said you didn't need money? But they didn't develop it
at all. Yeah, there was no explanation of why money
isn't because money is based on faith, isn't it really?

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah? And Jeff is totally incredulous, isn't he? When what's
his name? Proof? Way, it's called Proof. That's interesting. I
think the names mean something. Perhaps we'll discuss. Yeah, Proof
says to Jeff, why do you work? You don't need
money and all this, and Jeff's looking at him like,
of course you do. You need it to live and
so but I get the point. There is this critique

(39:10):
there of the whole system going on but no development.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
He didn't explain why money is an expression rather than
a reality, if you want to think of it like that.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
You know, Yeah, I know where this is coming from.
I wondered if this was the case, and so I
went to their website and I found out that it is,
in fact the case. It's the to do with the
Venus Project James Corbitts talked about in the past, and
it's this kind of technocratic eco vision for the world,
and disappeared in the film Zeitgeist, and they also advertised

(39:41):
hite Geist as well. So I think they're coming.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
From ahat yeah, resource based economy. Oh yeah, I forgot
about that.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
That's it. So the Venus Project in envisions a world
that coincides with the carrying capacity of Earth, favors scientific
method as a source of explanations, relies on engineering to
improve human life on Earth, coordinates all people to transcend
national borders, fulfills the necessities of life, education, health, and culture,
treats resources of common heritage and engages in equitable resource sharing, etcetera, etcetera.
You know, that's where that's coming from. The Venus Project

(40:13):
envisions the world without war, poverty, crime, prisons, police, military, money, debt, servitude, disease, pollution, prejudice,
artificial scarity, nation states, market state, nationalism, elitism, perverse incentives.
In other words, a massive technocracy, which is the I'm
not actually attracted to that, but I could. You know,
I can see how the problems of the systems under
which we live do lead people to look for solutions,

(40:36):
and that's absolutely fair enough. I just don't think this
is the solution. But that seems to be where that
group was coming from.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, I think if you explain to somebody what money
is nowadays, it's figures on the screen. I think people
might have a different attitude to it, and that's good.
I think the idea that you could eradicate money in
the whole world go along with it is just high
in the sky. As we used to say. Ah, and
the other thing was about not owning your car is
kind of again, kind of true. Do you remember the
freedom movement from that? When I went to a lot

(41:03):
of their meetings in London, and it did make quite
a lot of sense. This is again, it wasn't wasn't
really developed. I mean, well, this, this is it.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
This is one of those exampts where I appreciate what
they were trying to do. You know, they didn't pick
a good example. Why didn't they say, you know, your mortgage.
You think you own your house, but you don't because
it's mortgage to the bank or the building society. And
if you don't keep your payments up, you're going to
lose your house. And to what extent do you really
own that? But the exact example that they chose was
this business of the DVLA registration document where it was

(41:32):
there the keeper of the car. That doesn't mean you
don't own it. It just and he says, well, you
don't own it because you're the keeper. Well no, it
just you know, could be the keeper of the car
and still own it. It's your property. So it was
just a bad example.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
I thought, Yeah, there was an idea, wasn't it that
your birth certificate is your parents signing off to the state.
Remember that one, right, the idea? Yeah, Well it was
a guy called I can't remember his name he was
a carpenter, because I think he's around anymore. Actually, John,
how where else his name was? He did some talks
and I mean they'd obviously done loads of research, and
I don't know. I mean I didn't reset it myself.

(42:07):
I think it was too scary an idea, even for me.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
So actually before I lose the example, and I was
criticizing the the lack of attention to detail and some
of these ideas which I think they could have spent
more time on. There was one with the Twin Towers. Now,
I know that dian jesse Miller was concerned when she
saw the Twin Towers come down. She thought there's something
wrong about that. And I agree with her, there's something
wrong about that. But then in this particular movie, there's

(42:32):
a gnger scene where they're playing with younger blocks and
Ernest is trying to illustrate how the towers came straight
down because you pull out younger blocks at the side
of the tower falls over rather than going straight down. Ah,
I see, and John says, now whereas it, he says,
got it here? John adds this, but what a controlled

(42:53):
demolition looks the same, he says, And I thought when
you look at those twin towers. So okay, they come
straight down like a controlled demolition, which you don't see
a normal control demolition like that, with all this pulverized
concrete going out like a fountain, and all these cut
girders being chucked out laterally at great speed. You don't

(43:14):
see that with a controlled demolition, do you. So why
choose that and not Building seven, which does look exactly
like a controlled demolition? Why not choose that? You know
what I mean? So there's a certain lack of attention
to the detail here that I think is unfortunate and
would have been a better example of what they're trying
to talk about, you.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
Know, so they do they did? They actually not mention
Building seven. They said I had an idea that building.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
And they do not come down like a classic control demolition.
I think that personally, my opinion is that they were
but a very deceptive kind of controlled demolition. You know,
that doesn't look like a classic one. I mean, just
did so much damage. How is that a classic control demolition?

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Yeah? I was Building seven quite wid Do you don't
in twenty fourteen, do you know?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
I would say maybe not? Yes, and no, It depends
like I had, probably through listening to TMR, I probably
became aware of it.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
I mean, actually i'd tell a lie because you remember
the BBC Conspiracy files, I do, the one that we
all were not too impressed by that was actually two
thousand and six or seven, and they did a show
about building because I was surprised. It's called the Third Tower,
do you remember, yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, yeah, so not a lot of people did know
about it. But again, if you're going to make a
film like this, could you not put sufficient effort into
finding a little bit more about it?

Speaker 3 (44:35):
You know? Yeah? I think mentioning a third town that
like a lot of normies of you uncome that would
never have heard of the mainstream population, that would have
been very effective. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Actually, this reminds me there was something I came across
in about maybe probably two thousand and six or seven.
There was a scholarly article that had come out around
that time that said that there was active thermtic material
in the dust from nine to eleven. So, I mean
would have been to Julian's point, that article would have
been a great thing to bring up in this movie.
And even without bringing in Building seven, I see why

(45:08):
they left Building seven, because you know, it's cleaner to
just mention the two towers. It's more iconic, right right, Yeah,
Like you said, to leave out so much detail, especially this,
there's actual explosive dust in the debris. I mean, right,
you know, yeah, there's your there's your thing right there.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
And also to connect it with the population reduction theme
and say that it's, oh, it's all about fear, and
somehow that connects it. I don't see the connection, and
it draws attention from the more likely reason why it
was done for geopolitical reasons, you know. Yeah, So I
don't know. It was a bit of a mess, wasn't it?
From that? I mean, but you know, as I say,
there were good things about it. There were a lot

(45:47):
of good things about it. So let's let's try to
move in that direction a bit.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Yeah, I mean, how many nine levens would it take
to get off ninety population? I mean, I've done the mass.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
But no, No, the idea was that it was an event,
it was a sciop for fear purposes to But I
don't know how that connects distract people from something else
that's it just doesn't really fit, does it. It's just
made to fit and it doesn't fit.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Ye, there's little bits in the script here of truth.
You know, nine eleven was about fear. I think it
probably was, you know said right if it was orchestrated, right,
So they're not wrong about stuff. But there's just it's yeah,
like I said, it's the way the ideas put together.
It just doesn't quite work.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
In fact, it's about fear, even if you believe the
official story about that it was done by Issama bin
Laden and his cronies, you know. Yeah, so that's clearly
true anyway.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
But even if it was, I mean the whole media,
the whole way the media handled it and all the
programs that were developed. That's about fear, you know. It's
not about calming people's fears, is it. No?

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, okay, So good things about it. I think the
music was really suitable and really well done, really professional.
I was very impressed with that. Actually, it came in
at absolutely key moments and just added to the spooky
nurse and the drama of it. Really good. I thought
the cinematography was excellent too. Actually, you know, they're used

(47:14):
filters and time lapsing and things like that, which were
really smoothly integrated with other scenes, and that was quite clever,
and actually, right at the end they broke the fourth wall,
you know, after that speech that Dion gives at the end,
you see her face and you hear what's in her head,
and the military are outside shooting and all this sort

(47:36):
of thing, and there's this long speech. Maybe we'll say
the words of that speech in a bit, and then
suddenly she turns to the camera and speaks directly at you,
and Diane was told, don't do that. That's too risky. Now,
that's kind of just ruin everything at the last minute.
In my view, you may disagree with me, Chaps, in
my view, that really works well. Actually the hairs on

(47:56):
the back of my neck. But even the second time
went up, I thought, oh gosh, it's totally unexpected, totally
and it doesn't It works, It doesn't break everything. I
think maybe it plays to what you said, Frank about
the parable. You realize, yeah, you realize that that moment,
this whole story didn't have to be totally credible. It

(48:16):
was like, this is telling you something bigger, and oh wow,
oh yeah, I've been just experiencing us a story with
a purpose here rather than a documentary. You know, I
think I think that does work.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
Yeah, I'd have to say I think the fact that
story was quite weak, you know, Cis and Kane or
some whales had turned to the camera in the last
scene this series. Yeah, because it wasn't the strongest story.
It's not taking you out of it as much. And
then you realize at the end it's like a public
service film almost, you know, for people to quite quite

(48:48):
wake up. Yeah, that bit was great. Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
It was great. Yeah, really really good moment. Yeah, she says,
now what is it? She says, wake up now. She
turns to you and says that, and it goes immediately
to black, as it would have to.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Do you mind if I read go ahead.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
I'm sure that's fine, it's.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Not too long. I won't do the dramatic voice. Within
some of your feeling is starting to stir. The cracks
are beginning to show. Maybe you choose to ignore it,
maybe you don't know how to face it, or maybe
you think you're alone in this. For most, this is
nothing more than a story, a diversion from the outside world.
But within some of you, a feeling is starting to stir.
It's time to stand up with eyes open, ears down

(49:26):
to the ground. A change is long overdue, So wake up,
question everything? Are you awake? Wake up now?

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, that's where the little gap isn't one? And she
turns and says that, yeah, it's very good. The only
thing about it is and I can't I know I
shouldn't say this, but I cannot help noting it's time
to stand up with eyes open, ears down to the ground.
You're standing up, but your ears are on the ground. Sorry,
I couldn't resist that.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
I guess paying attention they mean, don't they Yeah, yes, yes, I.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Wonder about this, and just conspiracy stuff in general is like, okay,
so you know this stuff, but what is your endgame?
You know, you're at best one person against a whole
elite system.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
They try to come off like yeah, okay, you're aware now,
And even their group too, was like all they did
is occasionally recruit someone new, you know, and give them
to the boot camp. But I mean, what what is
their end goal? Are they just being the change they
want to see in the world? And is that what
we're supposed to do? I guess what is a takeaway
from this film that we're supposed to come with and
just in general, I guess the truth movement. I mean,

(50:32):
you can try to wake other up.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Somebody does say that be the change you want to see?

Speaker 3 (50:37):
That Gandhi and Martin Euther King one of those.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
I don't know if somebody says it in the film Gandhi,
I think, right, Okay, that's again famous. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
You know back in the day, like two thousand and six,
seven eight, when I was first getting into this stuff. Well, Genie,
we did one of my first podcasts with you is
called changing the discourse, wasn't it. It was it was about,
you know, maybe in someone's social life, try to move
the conversation towards this kind of stuff. And I'm very
lucky because not only do I have podcasts, but I'm

(51:05):
an English teacher, English teaching English, so foreign language. And
I'm lucky because I found a niche teaching quite advanced students,
and my students are very receptive to these kind of things.
Not I mean, I don't talk about population reduction. Yeah, no,
it's just introducing.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Presumably you don't do what they do in this film.
You don't bombard them with a whole mass, whole Schmorgers
board of things.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
That's an idea. I'll give you some homework. I said
them away for two weeks to watch Alex Jones's Black Catalog.
But there was one. There was a film in two
thousand eight called wake Up Call, which actually was a
really good starter kit because it went through it had
ever had of John Taylor Gatto teacher, Yes, yes, yeah,

(51:46):
I loved his voice, so I love talking to him
listening to him. Sorry, and he talked about, you know,
the point of education, you know. I think I think
he did a book called Weapons of Mass Destructions or something.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
He had a whole five hour movie called The Ultimate
Histor and I was part of it, and then I
ended up watching the whole thing because like that first
segment was so riveting. It was really well done. It
was just him walking for five hours.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
But it was like, yeah, yeah, that was Richard Grove.
We put that together, yes, right, yeah. He was the
guy who had some direct experience of nine to eleven
I thing. So he was supposed to be at a
meeting on the day and yes, yes, yeah, Richard, and
I think his name is Richard Andrew. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like I said, I've got outlets and I just don't
introduced it into conversations, but in a gentle way. There's

(52:32):
definitely a way to do it. You know, you can't.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
I think that's what this film was trying to encourage
us to do. One by one of course the title,
but I just don't think it went about it in
the right way. I think that's what it was trying
to do.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Probably there was a kind of a parallel agenda at
the beginning of the film. I don't know if they
carried this on, you know, that thing about eating chocolate
cake and joy again it was done that. It was
a bit too clunky because it was a bit like, oh,
you can work in a coffee shop and eat chocolate
cake and everything will be fine. It was a bit
like that. You know.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
It did seem to be obsessed with chocolate cake, didn't
we Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yeah, but in that general idea of trying to tap
into your you know, the child side of you, you know,
not losing that kind of childlike sense to wonder. I
love all that and being a bit goofy, you know,
because obviously another thing about the conspiracy moment, they could
take themselves very seriously sometimes yeah, you know, and it's
serious stuff, no doubt. But I think in all the

(53:34):
podcasts that you and I did back in the day,
we always tried to keep it light at the same time, Yeah,
because you can still communicate just as effectively by keeping
it quite light. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
I think that's important. And I think humor is important
as well. So I love to mix humor into the
podcasting too. And that's not everybody's taste. I realized that,
but well, I don't care. That's me. That's my personality.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think I think Bill Hicks just
had that. I mean, you know, I'm a massive Bill
Hicks guy. He just had that down to an absolute
tea because he've been doing comedy since he was about
I think he first performed in was about fourteen or fifteen,
and he died when he was thirty three. That's another one.
But he just seemed to have that absolutely down to
a tea better than George Carlin. To be honest, I

(54:19):
don't think George Carlin quite got the mix right. George
can'ten had some amazing speeches, you know, the famous owners
of the country. But Bill Hicks managed to really weave
comedy and truth almost sentence my sentence, you know.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
I think at a certain point, Carlin wasn't doing comedy.
He was just telling people the truth.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
Absolutely, Yeah, which is great. I mean I didn't mind.
I don't mind if there wasn't a joke at the
end of it.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, you know, have you heard this one since he
brought up Bill Hicks, have you heard there's like a
conspiracy theory that he actually died, they actually make his
death and he's actually now Alex Jones's Yeah, that'd be
hilarious in a sense, but yeah, that's u.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Yeah, because do you remember Max Kaiser, He used to
be on this show all the time, and he said
to Alex, you know, there's a conspiracy theory about you
and Alex. Maybe Alex knew, you just never know who.
Alex Jones said that.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
You'll.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Alex has joked about it or so he sort of
jokingly acknowledges it, but he's not like he didn't own
up to it.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Because they both went to Waco, didn't they ninety three?
That was just before Bill CKX died. Actually, yeah, so
Bill Hicks actually went to Waco and did not a report,
but you know it was doing some commentary from there.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
But you know, that's all table these days because I'm
constantly hearing that Biden's not the real Biden, and Prince
Charles and King Charles is not the real King Charles,
and JFK is still alive and all the rest of it.
So all of which I take with the pntrol salta
my dad.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
That's a whole other show if you start opening up though,
right right, But.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
I just think there's so much information out the world
that's completely on the records. You know, it's hidden in
the sense that you know, the major news outlets are
not going to feature it. It's not hidden in the
sense it's on the record, so to speak. Yeah, you know,
files get declassified and no one quite notices.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Right, right much? Can I go to back Anthony to
you were saying something about one of the things they
were celebrating in this, and it's good that they were,
was about the sort of freedom and joy being at
the center of life, capturing your inner child thing that
was going on when John and Dion were behaving like children.
Were they sort of in the park, just enjoying themselves really,
And that was the complete opposite of the relationship with Jeff,

(56:31):
because he's just so serious and doesn't care about creativity.
I mean, she wants to write children's books, and he's
not interested. He wants her to have a serious job,
not to be a waitress, whereas John is very free
and easy about that that he cares about the inner person,
the creativity of dion. Okay, so that was all good,
and they, I think Lily says, well it is it

(56:52):
Lily's father, I don't know. They say something like, you know,
joy is the meaning of life or something like that,
and I get that, but it depends what you mean
by sure, And I got the impression it was something
close to happiness, something close to just sort of being
freely yourself. And okay to some extent, but doesn't truth.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Matter more than joy?

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Do you know what I mean? I mean, there's supposed
to be a truth group. The most joyful thing, wouldn't
it be? Would be to ignore all the things they're
looking into so that you don't get upset, like like
Lily got deeply upset by all this stuff. And if
joy is really what it's all about, then you're not
going to be having anything to do with these things.
You're going to take the blue pill and live the
joyful life, you know. So I just thought I get

(57:33):
what you're saying. Joy is important, and being your true
self is important. But there's more to it than that,
isn't there. Yeah, and certainly from a Christian point of view,
one talks about a deep joy that is rooted in
one's faith in God. But that doesn't mean that everything
in the garden is just lovely all the time. You know,
you can go through some difficult times but retain a

(57:55):
deep joy. I didn't feel that came over. I just
wondered what they by joy. It was never quite clear.
But they're wrong to something. I'm not not being hypercritical,
you know they're wrong to something.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
With that, Yeah, they seemed to sort of pivot. The
beginning of the film seemed to be more about joy,
and then it became more about you know, the truth,
that nothing's more important than the truth. And I think
Ernest is Ringmael says, do you want the answer that
will bring you some comfort or the truth? Yeah? Right,
It seemed to pivot. Maybe it was his influence. I
don't know. Was he in the early part of the

(58:26):
he was did he come.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
In He was quite early? Quite early. He was strange
from the word go, though, wasn't he is introduced to
him at a pub by Lily, and she said, you
must really come and meet eh. I think she calls him.
So Dion goes over to him and he says something like, oh,
nice to meet you, young lady, and she says, oh, no,
the pleasure is all mine, and he says, I disagree, dear.

(58:56):
I'm sure he loved playing that part, but it was
it was an odd one.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
I probably get addressed it a bit more eccentric. He
could have pink shows or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
they could have even developed that a bit more. He's eccentric.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
With this quote from Plato. Do you remember the quote
from Plato? He comes out with, yeah, was that true?
Something about it is true? There was a creature, yeah,
from the Symposium. Apparently I looked it up. I'm going
to admit I looked it up. I didn't know, but yes,
so Plato did talk about original human beings having four legs, etcetera,
and then being cut in two by Zeus, you know,

(59:29):
to stop them going up a Mount Olympus and challenging
the gods. And so that's why we look for our soulmate,
because we're trying to join our other half. Yeah, apparently
so so. Yeah, he knew about this and rather strangely
brought it up.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
But when he says our soul mat is he employing them?
There's only one person in the whole world that's your
soul mate?

Speaker 1 (59:48):
I thought he was. I thought he was. Yeah, because
he said something. That's why it's so hard. You need
to find the right person.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
Yeah, spending money we don't have on things we don't
need as well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Well, that's true, that's true. There's a lot of truth
in this, for sure, there is.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Do you know one thing that came out with Ernest
again is this what would I call it? The sort
of quasi theology of a lot of the so called
truth movement. Oh, I've got to define that. I don't
know what do I mean by the truth movement? We
talked about this before. I don't think it exists. I
think it's different people with different views and some of

(01:00:30):
those intersect, you know, and there is agreement in some
places and not in other places. And to call it
a movement did we talk about that before? I don't know.
I just need to Yeah, I think didn't we? I
just know if you call it a movement, then it
can imply that there should be an orthodoxy and everybody
ought to believe the same sorts of things. And I
do think that's the antithesis of trying to search for answers.
If it's a search searching program searching for truth, which

(01:00:52):
is what presumably this is about, isn't it? So to
call it a movement, I think is not helpful anyway.
I just wanted to say that, you know, he goes
for this sort of quasi theology of the so called
truth movement people involved in this sort of scene. That
I hear it a lot when he says to Dion,
the whole universe holds its breath in anticipation when a

(01:01:13):
person reaches a crossroads, waiting to see what they decide,
and doesn't breathe out until they choose their path. And
I keep hearing this that the universe is somehow sentient,
you know, it holds its breath in New agey, it
anticipates things it's waiting to see it then breathes out

(01:01:34):
when this person chooses their path, etc. It's a kind
of God's substitute, really, But I suppose it kind of
works in that everybody believes the universe exists, so you know,
there's nothing to argue about, you know how it's bigger
than all of us. But it's just that by adopting
this sort of new agy way of looking at things,
which I think sort of holds the hope of including everybody,

(01:01:57):
because everybody believes in the universe in some sense, actually
excludes people who are theistic, or runs the risk of
doing that because as a fierce, whether you're a Christian
or a Jew or a Muslim, you can't accept that
because you don't believe the universe is alive. You believe
the universe is an artifact God made it, you know,
so it is actually while looking like it's nice and
inclusive and fluffy and all that, it's actually it is

(01:02:19):
a doctrine that it's exclusive of quite a lot of people.
I mean, what do you do in that particular group?
You know, if I was in that group, am I
going to challenge Ernis? And that they don't challenge him?
Nobody challenges him about anything. They all agree on everything.
But I would have to say, well, you know, do
you mean the whole universe holds its breath? I don't
think the universe is alive. I think it's something made
by I mean, there's no room for any of the

(01:02:39):
sort of discussion in the film at all, or maybe maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's definitely when they said question everything.
One of the traps I fell into again back in
the early days was being very gung ho about suddenly
having these truths revealed, and then I probably got brainwashed
the other you know. I used to go to a
lot of groups, particularly when I lived in London, and
I wonder, like what you said, do then they tended

(01:03:09):
to have an't maybe a charismatic leader. I don't mean
that in a bad way, just someone who's a good talker.
And I wonder what happens when you go to these
groups and then you say, well, actually, I don't think
you're right about that. You've gone too full of that way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
You're right right, Well, all I can say is, in
a stand in the park, I'm really pleased to say
that that's fine. Everybody does that. I don't agree, you know,
and the friendships have continued. It was an absolute model
really of how these sorts of groups should work, you know,
similar concerns in some ways, not with an overarching narrative
and claiming to know exactly what's going to happen and

(01:03:41):
all that sort of stuff, but you know, some similar concerns,
but there's no kind of this is the view that
you've got a hold. Otherwise you're I'm going to stare
at you with eyebrows, you know, until you agree with me.
There isn't that. So I'm pleased to say that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
I mean, that's the thing they could have had in
the film, isn't it? Like I say, things they could
have done with this film, maybe someone in the group
reacting against it and then everyone's turning on them or
not turning on them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Right, right, So they could have had some more classic
conspiracy theories that are more more established and then everybody
could agree on that, and then some of these more
off the wall things. There could have been disagreement over that,
but they could all have agreed on the things like
you know, joy and freedom and human rights and all
these things that unites everybody. But there would be the

(01:04:29):
room within the group to discuss things which on non
mainstream that do concern people could have done that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Yeah, I feel like, you know, bringing that up. It
could have been more suited to like a Kevin Smith's
style Clerks type of movie where it's like are talking.
You know, people are just having these conversations, and it's
more like batting the idea around them, saying this is
the definitive thing. Because Rick may All said, so, you
know one of them in Clerks, you know, he likes

(01:04:57):
returning the Jedi, and the other one is like, no,
it's just a bunch of and then they're just like
interacting and disagreeing on things. And I think that would
have I think something like that in this movie would
have been better. So it would have been I think
a little more interesting if if there had been some
conflict around these ideas. I think it was still good,
but I think it would have been done better if
they had disagreed more.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
So, really do Yeah, if they had some sort of
hip alternative Hollywood director, not even Hollywood, but alternative director
who you know, bought the scripts, developed it, had some
money to spend on it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Mind you, whoever was going to put up the money
would say, there's no way of putting up money for that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:32):
Yeah, So I think good honor for doing it and
having you go at it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
And I do think people should say it to keep saying.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Yeah, it's not an easy subject to make a movie.
Movie a druma drama about you know, you either have
to go all in on it absolutely make like They Live,
which I think handled similar themes. More they weren't so
on the nose with it, but you know, they handled
the idea better in certain way. Is you know, I
don't think you like that?

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
No, I agree, in so far as it dealt with
that idea, with the glasses and all that. Yes, I agree.
That's another sort of parable sort of thing, isn't it.
But once that idea was quickly spent, I felt the
rest of the film was waste of time. That's what
I felt. And in that sense, I would say I
prefer this one actually, either film I wanted to watch again,

(01:06:24):
I'd watch this one rather than that one. Yes, I
would say so, because I think there's more to actually
think about in this one. So there you go, there's
a recommendation.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
I think that fight in They Live is amazing though
in the middle of the film, Keith Davis's I've got
a family. That's almost I've got a family, I've got
a mortgage.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Just too much at stake, you know, very in a
sense you have to just really fighting people to get
them to see the truth.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Yeah, in terms of the alternative media. I think you're right, Julian,
there's different camps and humans have a tendency to fight
each other and from subgroups. You know, we know that
from bitter experience. I remember there was a lady that
came to a group I went to in London. Our
opening line was I'm not sure how the world works.
That something's wrong, And I think a lot of people

(01:07:19):
they might moan about the news, but they don't really
feel that anything is fundamentally wrong. I think that number
is getting smaller people, that questioning is getting bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
But that seems to be where Diane Jessie Miller is
coming from. She said in the interview with Tony Gosling
or on the commentary or both. I can't remember exactly
where she said. That's what she felt something's wrong, and
she did feel something was wrong about nine to eleven,
but more broadly, that's one thing I noticed about the
commentary on the DVD is they don't go you'd expect

(01:07:49):
them to go into population reduction and a lot of
these other theories. I was hoping for that, or I'd
like to know why they're doing this, what motivates them.
The main thing that seems to be motivating them from
what I've heard of the speaking, is this I think,
more general sense that things are really seriously wrong with
the world, no doubt, to some extent along the lines
explored in the film, but not clearly with the same

(01:08:11):
degree of specificity expressed by that group in the film.
So I think it is latching on to this sort
of conspiracy scene in order to make that parabolic point
to say to people question things. That's the only sense
I can make out of it. Otherwise, why wouldn't she
go on about it when she does an interview or
does the commentary? You think she would? Wouldn't she? So?

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
Was there an audio commentary on the DVD?

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
There was?

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Oh wow?

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
Was there anything interesting that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
Not much? Not a lot, mostly about the production, you know,
production techniques and things like that. And it's quite lighthearted
as well. You'd think if they were really talking about
the essence of what this group is trying to say,
there would have been a lot more grave and serious
and this is going to happen, and that's going to happen. No,
it's not like that. So it does seem to be

(01:08:58):
something of a vehicle for this general and indeed important
wake up call, you know, come on, question things. Things
may not be as you think they are in many ways.
In which to repeat myself is not to say that
I know they don't have any of the specific concerns
of this group. It is just to say that I
think the primary function of this story is as a
vehicle for this general wake up call for people so

(01:09:20):
looked at like that. I think that enhances my impression
of the film and actually makes a lot of sense
of it. But as always I may be wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
So the commentary was a missed opportunity as well.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
If they were trying to say the specific things that
that group was trying to say, then yes, they're so
lighthearted about it. I think they can't be trying to
make those kinds of points specifically, because you wonder why
they made maybe I'm wrong, well why they made it
in that in that way? Yeah? Yeah, why make it
so heavy? But I suppose maybe it's a bit like

(01:09:55):
a horror film, isn't it, because you have We'll not
a horror film, a sort of thriller, yeah, thanks Frank,
with a disaster that precipitates at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Well, and one thing before I forget it about why
Rick Male decided to do it. It appealed to him. I
don't quite know why. But there's one little clue here.
Diane says that while they were outside during those five
days anyway, he said to her there was something that
really got to him, which is one of the reasons
why he wanted to pick up the script and go
with it. And it was in the Genger scene where

(01:10:31):
they're building the towers with those blocks, and he says
to Dion, if a picture says a thousand words, then
our eyes can see a thousand lies. See it to
believe it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
I don't know what was in his mind, but that
specifically relates to the nine to eleven thing that they
were discussing. And what are those words mean? They mean
to me that, you know, when you see those towers
come down, you're told one story about it, but your eyes,
you know, they see something else. You know, our eyes
can see a thousand lies. Now why was he attracted

(01:11:04):
to that so much and that scene in particular. And
there was some suggestion as well that maybe that scene
was going to be rewritten, or his words were going
to be cut out or something, because he said something
like oh, don't you dare, That's why I did this,
she said, you know, implying you know, don't you dare
cut that out? This is why I was interested in it,
you see. So piecing together bits of information like that,

(01:11:25):
it suggests to me that you know, he was on
side to some extent with some of it, which explains
why I suppose partly explains why I was interested in it.
But there's nothing else to go on because he makes
no statements anywhere else apart from that viral video.

Speaker 3 (01:11:41):
I'm sure there's tons of celebrities though, that are on
board with its ideas. They don't write right. We can
sort of have a gir ye for that, but when
you're talking about you know, it could be millions and
millions of pounds or dollars at stake and you lose
your career. I mean there's a you know, the writer,
the Irish writer, the co write to a further ted Oh,
I won't go for the tangent. But basically he started

(01:12:04):
to question the world agenda and he's been basically shunned
by the entire comedy community.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
It's a gream Linenhan, that's greame linen.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
Yes, yeah, yes, that's what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Yeah, because give you guys a couple more examples. Randy Quaid,
I think he played cousin Eddie in the in the
Vacation Christmas Vacation movie. And then even Mel Gibson has
come up on Kanye West too, like they've all come
up with conspiracy theories of different sorts. And then you know,
it's like, yeah, if you if you go contrary to

(01:12:37):
whatever the parading narrative is, you're gonna be blacklisted to
a certain extent depending on what it is you're promoting,
or I mean nine to eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
If you think about that, that's a big I mean,
I guess Charlie Sheen and there's Rosie o'donnald a couple
of other people. It is a big risk, you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
Know, it is a risk of that. And that's one
of those conspiracy theories where is classic in the sense
that somebody's gonna say you are nuts for believing that,
you know, So good on him for taking that risk
to do it whatever he thought. Good on him for
being interested in the story and doing it anyway whatever
anybody thought of him. So that was good.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
I suppose acting in the film is going to have
less risk, isn't it than actually coming out? And so
I believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Yeah, so sure.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
If I was a famous actor and I did think, God,
there's something really wrong with nine eleven, I might want
to get involved in the film about it rather than
the documentary. You know, I like to think I would
go the whole hug.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
I know what you mean.

Speaker 3 (01:13:30):
I haven't got millions of pounds.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
But when you think about this film though, I mean this,
this is very in your face true for film, isn't it.
You know, the question has going to be come on, Rick,
why are you involved in this? You know? Are you nuts?
And I'm not saying he was nuts at all. Of
course I admire him for doing it for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Quite a departure in rolls for him. I mean you
had mentioned the Young Ones and then the only anything
I had ever seen him and was the movie Drop
Dead Fred, which didn't do very well here, although I
loved it. I saw it as a kid plays like
this imaginary friend and he's just basically being classic Rick
for ninety minutes a movie.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
And like, yes, I's actually seen that one that was
about nineteen ninety one, wasn't I've not seen that? I
have seen funnily enough, and this is going to be
one of those weird moments. I've seen an interview about that,
and he's hoping that it's going to do well, and
somebody asks him, you know, if there was a sequel,
would you would you do? Yeah? Of course, you know
it goes well. I hope it will go well. And
he's in front of a backdrop which is you're not

(01:14:34):
going to believe this the Twin Towers.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Yeah, I recommend it. They actually film part of it
in Minneapolis, where I still live. Okay, that's an interesting note.
He said that in front of the Twin Towers that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
He did he did. I think that's totally coincidental. But
it is one of those weird moments you think, oh gosh, really.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Have you seen the video nine eleven references in movies
prior to two thousand and one.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
No, it happened.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
Yeah, just just for fun and have a look on
YouTube because there's so many. I mean, some of them
are very tenuous. Yeah, but we've talked before it Betuning
about the fact that Neo's birth Leo's date of birth
is September eleventh, two thousand and one.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
In the matrix Oh on the passport.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Yeah, that is bizarre.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
That remains bizarre. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think it's
unreasonable to think there's something strange about that one.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
Yeah, but this video is so weird.

Speaker 1 (01:15:29):
I mean, there's just so many thirty Well, this is
the problem. Once you scan widely enough, you're going to
find all kinds of references to the Twin Towers, aren't you.
It'd be surprising if there wasn't a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
Yeah, you could write some of them off, but there
are quite a lot which are weird. I mean, there
was a this is not films, but there was I
think it was a wrap duo. They had an album
cover six months for nine to eleven, and it was
something pressing down on a demolition. It was Twin Towers,
and then someone pressing down on a debt six months
before it happened. You get a few of those, And

(01:16:05):
I'm not saying that in isolation. Maybe not, but it's
one of those things that I would class it is weird,
you know, I know what you mean, A conclusion that
it's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Yeah, it is weird. But then you said six months
before it happened. Does that matter? I mean, it's just
before it happened. It could have been five years before
it happened, four years before it happened, six.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
Years I'm saying before it happened. Yah, that was before
it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
Yeah, yeah, before it happened.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
The thing about the passport thing is why is it
that particular date on Neo's passport? And that film itself
becomes kind of intellectually or culturally linked to nine to
eleven and in a way that is absolutely astonishing, And
it's actually that date on that passport, and they could
have picked any date, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

(01:16:48):
different dates they could have picked for the I just
wonder whether I've said to you before, Anthony, did somebody
say stick that date on you won't regret that, you know,
somebody who with insider knowledge, who knows who knows? Well,
maybe not, Maybe that's coincidence as well. But I do
see if there's anything important we haven't covered, We've covered
awful lot.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Actually I haven't got too much else. Yeah, yeah, this
is stuff at the beginning about people having blinkers on
and everyone's on their phone not talking to each other. Yes,
we're all connected, but not communicating. I think, yeah, I mean,
that's still relevant now, but I think ten years ago
that was a real thing when the smartphones first came
out and people are suddenly realizing, you know, people are
going out for a drink or going to a restaurant

(01:17:29):
and not actually talking to each other, maybe not the
whole evening.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Yes, so yeah, yes, that's right. So that's in the park,
isn't it with John and Dion and they noticed these
groups of people and they're not really talking because they're
on their phones and all that. And I thought that
was well handled. Actually he had some good points. He
was making some good points to her and she's not
really thought about that before. And that seems old. But
that's not a fault of the film because it is
ten years ago. Is eleven years ago?

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
That's it? Yeah, that's it. I mean, like I said
at the beginning, it's not really a knock on the film,
But this feels like a two thousand and seven or
two thousand and eight film like that one wake Up Call,
which I would recommend to people. Wake Up Call. It's
a good kind of a starter kit if you but
your audience is probably quite seasoned, I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
I think so I.

Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
Might have new listeners though every day. Maybe it might
be the first one they've had in the conspiracy book.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Yeah, you could lead it, Frank, you've got the eyebrows.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
You send someone off, they've got to sit in a
darkened room and not do anything else for forty right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Oh well, thanks ever so much Chaps for discussing this.
I wasn't sure what to go for it or not,
but in the end I liked it sufficiently that I thought, yeah,
I think we can have a good discussion about it,
and I think we really have. Actually, I just say
I do like it. I think it's I think it's
a good production. So I'm going to say to people,
see it if you can not easy to get hold of.
I don't personally recommend it for waking people up, as

(01:18:56):
it were, and I think you could have the opposite
reaction or meet even encourage people to get into sort
of less helpful form of questioning things. Put it that way.
But I think it's an interesting phenomenon. I do admire
them for having made it. It's an unusual film worth seeing,
so yeah, I just think they've gone about it slightly differently.
It can be found well through one by one movie

(01:19:20):
dot co dot UK either way buying the DVD. I
think there's a link that goes through to eBay. I
think they're out of stock at the moment, where they
periodically are back in stock. Maybe on Vimeo. Don't know
what that exists anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
Sorry to interrupt. I did just check, and that link
you sent me for Vimeo is not not functional anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
Wow, look at that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Look at that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
There we go, frank one, take it down.

Speaker 1 (01:19:44):
Right, all right? Okay, so it looks like the only
place to go is one by One movie dot co
dot UK, at least at the moment. So yeah, thanks
very much Chaps for discussing it. I enjoyed it very much.

Speaker 3 (01:19:55):
Thank you, you're welcome. I knew the discussion would be
good even if the film's not on my in my
top ten. Yeah, I knew we'd have loads to talk
for great.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Thanks very much. Yeah, that's great if you'd like to
see the film one by One, which, as I said
in the conversation, I think is well worth watching if
you're over fifteen. That is, there is, so far as
I know, currently only one way to do so, and
that is on DBD. It was until quite recently available
to rent on Vimeo, which is how Frank got to

(01:20:26):
see it, as he said, But unfortunately, for whatever reason,
that page at Vimeo seems to have been removed. However,
the DVD is still available for purchase, I believe via
eBay here in the UK. And I say I believe
because just at the moment that eBay page says this
item is out of stock. But it's said that before,
and it does seem to come back in stock every

(01:20:47):
now and then, so it may well be possible to
get a copy that way, if you check the eBay
page for availability from time to time. But there is
a snag. I wouldn't recommend trying to search for the
DVD on eBay because in my experience, no matter what
search term you put into eba search box, it never

(01:21:09):
comes up with that as a result. So I don't
know what's going on, some kind of shadow banning. I
have no idea whatever, I have no idea, So it's
best to follow the ebaylink directly. So here it is.
It is h T T P S colon forward slash,
forward slash w w W dot eBay dot co dot
UK forward slash I t M forward slash three five

(01:21:31):
two zero seven nine two zero seven five five three.
So I'll say that again, I T M forward slash
three five two zero seven nine two zero seven five
five three, and you'll find that link also on the
One by One Movie website itself, which is h T
T P S colon forward slash forward slash w w

(01:21:53):
W dot one by one movie dot co dot UK.
So one by One movie is one word dot co
dot UK. But there's another snag for people not in
the UK. The sellers of the DVD say, quote international buyers, apologies,
but this item is not currently available for export due

(01:22:15):
to very high costs. If you're living outside the UK
and trying to watch this film, please go to the
producer's Facebook for more information. So the Facebook page you
need there is www dot facebook dot com. Forward slash
one by one the movie. So that's one word again,
one by one the movie. So maybe worth having a

(01:22:38):
look there to see what they can offer by way
of access to the movie. And then the final snack
if you do manage to get a copy of the DVD.
I'm not sure that it will play everywhere. It may
be restricted to Region two that's essentially Europe, Middle East,
South Africa and Japan. And a few other places I've

(01:22:58):
tried to find out that I haven't been able to,
and there is no information to that effect on the
DBD itself, So please bear that in mind. And another
thing to bear in mind, as I said a moment ago,
the film has an age rating of fifteen here in
the UK, and the reasons given are sex, strong language
and sex references. And I think we all agreed on

(01:23:20):
the round table actually that some of those sex references
didn't really work. They seemed unnecessary and didn't really help
the film at all. But that's just a matter of opinion.
But as I keep saying, do bear that in mind.
So I think it is well worth watching. I enjoyed
it very much. I have, as you heard in the conversation,
some criticisms of it, but I do think it really

(01:23:41):
is well worth watching. I think it's well made, intriguing,
the music is very good indeed, and it does get
you thinking, and that, after all, seems to be what
the writer and director Diane jesse Miller was essentially aiming at,
as she said on her blog quote, all through the
process of One by One, the aim of the project
was to get people talking one by one by its

(01:24:01):
very nature was created to put a drama and entertainment
face on the very serious problems we have before us,
and it does do that. It does get you thinking.
So if you manage to get a copy and you
can play it, I do hope you enjoy it. Show
notes for this round table can be found at the
Mind renewde theMIND Renewed dot com podcast. Music by the
brilliant Anthony Rayjakoff. Attribution non commercial share like four point

(01:24:23):
zero International. You have been listening to me Julian Charles
and my guests Frank Johnson and Anthony Ratuno, and I
very much look forward to speaking to you again in
the near future.

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