A Geek History of Time - Episode 78 - A Quiet Place for Rural Whites With Guest Johnny Taylor

Episode Date: October 24, 2020

And while we have a through line that states, Authorial intent means dick, right? I don't want to have to have the same haircut. You have dad. Sorry, I'm pretty... Harry, mother. Aww. So was this before or after the poster and you vomiting all over the couch? For those of you that can't see, Ed's eyes just crossed.

It is fucked up. But it's not wrong. This is a geek history of time, where we connect nursery to the real world. By the fact that you can hear me saying that part instead of Ed Lelach, my first wild partner, you can tell that I have a guest tonight. But first, I'm Damian Harmony, I'm a Latin teacher up here in Northern California, teaching at a distance during the plague times, and a father of two children, a 10-year-old who really, really likes the 1966 Batman TV series and quotes Penguin all the time now, and

an 8-year-old who is writing her own fan fiction of Mouskard. With me on the screen because we are safe and being good about not getting the plague is my good friend and comedian Johnny Taylor. Johnny how you doing? I'm doing fantastic thanks for having me Damien. Absolutely so tell us a little bit about yourself for the 12 fans who don't know who you are. All right I am am Johnny Taylor. I'm a stand-up comedian. Currently located in Northern California. Came back here from Los Angeles where I was for three years. And moved back just in time to stay in my house for seven months. So yeah, but yeah, I'm a podcast host as well. I host a hip-stroke See with Johnny Taylor available on the Hard Times Network go subscribe stream rate review all that stuff and

Yeah, we've had some great guests and a ton of really big amazing guests to come But that that's me and a nutshell guest to come. But that's me in a nutshell. That's good stuff. I'm glad you could join us tonight, man. Hey, stoked, dude. Do you like horror movies, Johnny? You know, they're one of my favorite things. No, sure.

Yeah, I love horror movies. Horror is a huge part of my life. I have two shelves dedicated to all things horror. Oh, wow. And yeah, it's what you like. If I would say it's ranked third, maybe in my pop culture loves. OK, I got to know what numbers one and two are then.

Well, I love comedy. OK. And then professional wrestling. So everybody can see why he and I are friends now. Yeah, yeah. I'm a huge wrestling geek. And I'm consumed by it. I had listened to hours and hours of podcasts on wrestling. I Yeah, I love it, but I love horror too. So nice. Yeah, you even got to interview Eric Bischoff. Yeah, amazing

I'm getting an interview him again here in a week and Gonna. Yeah, he was actually interviewing him for my little Instagram show I had Was the proof of concept that actually got me the contract with a hard time. So I owe a lot to Eric Bischoff as many people probably do even if they wouldn't admit it. You probably owe just a little less than Billy Kidman would owe to Eric Rischoff. Exactly. So, so, so many people, uh, uh, uh, oh, Eric Rischoff something, uh, a lot of them probably an ass kicking. Haha. True. Oh, I was, I was actually talking with somebody about, I was talking with you, uh, we

were talking about, because we're both wrestle heads about how Vince Russo, uh, was a harbinger for the, his entire rise to, and a scent to power was a harbinger for the rise of the Trump, Trump presidency. So it makes a so much sense. You know, Russo, Russo gaining glory through reality TV show, WWF Raw, and then getting elevated to the biggest, the biggest shot with the biggest company at the time, or at least right there with WF, and then basically just driving it right into the shitter. Yeah, just like getting elevated

way beyond his competency on bluster and like narcissistic self-dilusion and then just taking everyone down with him. He just, yeah, it was good time. So, look for that episode soon. Right, if you ever want to, if you ever want to know who Vince Russo's biggest friends were in WCW, all you had to do was look at who had all the screen time.

So Shane, Shane, he must have loved Shane Doc. Oh, yeah. And Jeff Jarrett too. Yeah. Oh, God, he pushed him through our eyes. So, well, I actually don't like comedy much, but in the last four years, I've watched a lot, or not comedy, sorry, horror.

I don't like horror much. I like comedy. Sure, I hate comedy. I really like comedy. It hates me, mostly. It's the audiences that don't like me. So, apparently people don't like a four-minute long pun about Caesar and Britney Spears. It's just it's not the business. You've built an

entire following on four-minute puns. I think it's doing you pretty good. That's true. That's true. But horror, I never really dug. It was never a genre that I liked, but I dated a gal who liked horror a lot. And I knew that scientifically, if you go see horror films with a person that you're sexually attracted to, you end up fucking a lot more. Interesting.

So yeah, that's a thing that's true. It gets the adrenal glands going, and you get that fight or flight, or freeze or befriend or flop reflex. And then when it all kind of like resolves, there's that need to be close to someone. So you know, it increases. Increases your odds of getting laid by like 2 or 3%.

So yeah, my current girlfriend never liked horror until we started dating. Mashi watches all sorts of horror films all the time. And we fuck a lot. See? See? I think there's something to it. That's science, my friend. That is science.

So, did you ever see the movie A Quiet Place? Sure did. Nice. So, that was a couple years back, a few years back. I saw it too. I saw it in the theater. And today's show is called A Quiet Place for rural white America.

That's so. That's rags. Yeah. So just off the top, did you like the movie? I hated it. And it was so critically acclaimed that I was, here's the thing. And this is coming as a professional wrestling fan. Sure. I found the suspending of disbelief mind numbingly hard in this movie.

Okay. You know, and people it's a couple of years old now. So I mean, it's probably, it's not as fresh in my mind as it could be, but I just remember the entire time being like, they would have got caught right there. Yeah. The monsters would have caught him right there. And yet you and I willingly accepted tugboat as a viable face. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. Michael, how are they farting? You know, that actually smuffling their farts. That came up tremendously. Right. That came up in so many articles that I read about this movie. That was like the top three things that people would bring up. Farting was always in the top three. I mean, what if you caught you have to cough. Right. A human beings cough hundreds of times a day.

They don't even know. But and with COVID, it's like, we're like, oh my god, he coughs. It's like, yeah, we all literally hundreds of times a day. We call. But yeah, it's like, who are like, oh my god, he coughs. It's like, yeah, we all literally hundreds of times today. We call. But yeah, it's like, how are they coughing? Are they sneezing? Yeah, yeah, right. That's when you can't control. Yeah. You're going to make noise when you sneeze. You can kind of muffle a cough, and you can muffle a sneeze, but it makes a noise. Yeah. The monsters would have caught them. I guess with farting, like, I don't know if you've ever done this, but like if you spread them really far apart and you get the right angle on it, you can get the wind to go through instead of anything clapping. Yeah, there's nothing like, was it was Emily Buntton? Was that who is in this? Emily Blunt. Yeah. Emily Blunt. Yeah.

There's nothing better than just imagining a adorable Emily Blot. She's spread her cheeks far apart so she can sneak a fart through some monster-stound attacker. I mean that's amazing visual. Yeah really you know I bet you that was on the cutting room floor they probably just cut it for time but she's just she's just laying in bed like three in the morning and she's just slowly like, up and her, her, her, her cheek. Well, and they have a makes up on a box movie again, to be honest. You know, yeah, you know, you could like see where that cut was, at least, you know,

right. But and they had a deaf daughter in the movie and and there's there was a thing going around for a while, there was a teacher of deaf students who she had to explain to a first grader that everyone can hear his farts because he didn't know. And he thought people were being rude by listening in and she's like, no, this is how it worked. So like, how do you tell her not to do that? You know, like she's got no basis for knowledge on what it sounds like.

It just, yeah. So, yeah, I wish they would have kept that scene in. They're having a talk, like, listen, your farts aren't just for you. Yeah, exactly. They're from monsters. Your fart will bring a monster. That's not a silent, but it's deadly and spoiler alert that poor dev kid ruins everything. Yeah, yeah right up front like

she's like there can be only two. She's really fucked up Highlander. So all right so in January of 2016 Scott Beck and Brian Woods started writing a screenplay about a deadly but very sound sensitive group of aliens that came to Earth and radically changed how people communicated with each other just to stay alive. That was the treatment that they'd written. And they sent it to John Krasinski, who had just brought his new daughter home from the hospital that summer,

with his wife Emily Blunt. Krasinski immediately saw the similarities between that story and being a father to a new child, which I can say as a father, that makes sense. There's this idea of like, I have to take care of this thing, and then the overwhelming reality of, I can never take care of this thing fully. Right. So, yeah, he wanted to keep it safe, you know, and so that was what was in his mind was keeping his daughter safe. So he, being John Krasinski, he had some strokes, speaking of Jeff Jarrett, and he lobbied to direct the movie, and his wife Emily Blunt read it, and she's like, I have to be in

this movie. And they had a bit of a talk about both starring in it and they both agreed to do it. And basically at its core, the movie is a survival story which is post-apocalyptic. A family does what it needs in order to survive in a world where these aliens have killed off almost everyone. In fact, this family is almost all that we see during the whole movie.

I think we see like one or two other people, and that's it. The oldest daughter is deaf, as we've said, but she has a cochlear implant that doesn't work. So that means that she probably was, she had the ability to hear through mechanism that basically sent signals to the nerves in her brain, but it didn't work. As a result, the whole family knows American Sign Language. There's a son and a younger son who dies in the first 10 minutes and a baby who is on the way and that's a major plot point. And because how do you give birth without making any noise?

Never mind the farting. I mean, birth is a painful process from every woman I've talked to. Very quiet. You just got to really stuff those screams deep deep inside. Right. Which good lord. And then how do you keep the baby from crying? Right. It's none of it is like that's the plot point that's like horrific. And it's like it's almost like there's a timer counting down to disaster for this family. Yeah, having a baby's cert disaster. Absolutely, 100%. Babies are the worst thing for a family. I gotta tell you. As a guy who collects divorces. So, the family lives on a farm

and they've set up all kinds of methods to walk without making noise, to harvest their food. They've basically taken sand from, I don't quite know where, because it's very soft sand, and they clearly live in forests, but they have sand everywhere and they stay on those paths, so that keeps you quiet. Now, I personally really enjoyed the movie. I thought it was very well-made and very well-directed. I didn't even think about the farting, but I think I know why. It's because Krzydzinski did a really good job of absorbing me into the silence of the movie. The movie itself, there's very little music. It's a lot of silence. It's told from the point of view of the daughter who is deaf at times, and then otherwise it's it's a long

while before you hear any lines and there's like less than a hundred lines in the whole movie. But he draws you into this world where you totally believe that silence is necessary. And I did I did think they did a good job with that. Yeah. They did such a good job that I remember stink-ying a woman who was like three seats down for me and my girlfriend at the time, because she was digging into her jujubees or her food. I was like, what the fuck are you doing?

And then I like, you gotta get us killed. Yeah, and then I realized I was like, oh, good job, movie, good job. Yeah, right, right, kudos. So I was enamored of the movie when I first saw it. Partly because I love survival movies. Because I think a good survival movie is it takes our humanity and it strips away all the good stuff and so that you really do see existentially what we are underneath.

Some people, they freeze. Some people fight. Some people are predators. Some people are scavengers. Some people are cooperators. Like, I like seeing that breakdown. To me, it's like a cheaper version of sci-fi because you can do it on such a low budget. And you've got this menace off screen that we never have to see. You don't need a spaceship, right? Right. You know, it's cool if there are some, but you don't need it.

So I like survival movies. So I like this. But this one was about a family and survivors guilt because the sun dies really early on. And the hurt that comes from the death of a child in the family, which is really, really, that's a really, it's like turpentine for the soul. Like it's turned you down, you know.

So I was into it, I was. I totally didn't realize the farting thing. Like it's so. I love the farting never came out because it was one of the things, I watched with my girlfriend and we watched it at home. And where I remember very early on being like, what if you fart?

Which I think that says more about me. Well, you're a practical man, Johnny. I think I might have farted. And then I was like, that would have got me killed. Yeah, that's a very valid concern. Like now that you've said it out, and I've read it a bunch of times It's like why didn't I think of that? It's not like yeah, I mean I just I think maybe my experience would have been different in the theater

Yeah, you know where you're you know, you're trying not to fart anyways, you know what it smells That's true although the cushions are big enough that like it can just seep in. It would have absorbed it, but I was definitely worried about like, you know, I'm generally worried about what if my fart smells? Gotcha. And you can't just walk away. Yeah, you kind of have to sit there and see. And then it like seeps up into your scrotum. So. Right. Yeah, you don't, you don't want your taint dusty with farts for the whole for the whole movie Dusty taint is gonna be a wrestler in the next 40 years Yeah, baby Just a tank. Yeah, I got a little bit of the both thiffer's

Both thiffer's food baby so Now what I missed in the first viewing was the context in which the movie was made like and and normally that's really hard for me to miss because I'm an historian because I actually never really liked horror to begin with my girlfriend did and I would go see horror movies with her because that's what you do and in order to enjoy them, I would have to get some sort of intellectual rub on it. And so that was usually like, okay, this movie was weighed about this time or it was made at this time, what's going on to make this movie popular. But this one was so good, so well made in terms of the direction of pulling me in that I didn't look at the context at first. In order to get to the context, I think we need to look at John Krasinski a little bit more.

You know who John Krasinski is. Yes. Okay. Let's look at him. Yes. He is something to look at. That guy. He's a handsome man.

He is. He is. Like, and I didn't really know who he was. Apparently, his star rose at a time where I was looking away. But he was on the office. And then he finished up on that. I think he finished up on it, and then he went to play the lead in a Michael Bay film

called 13 Hours. Yeah, a lot of people remember that one. Yeah. Well, it was certain people do because it was specifically about Benghazi. And it was released in January 2016. I remember this. Yeah, it was specifically about Benghazi. And it was released in January 2016. Yeah, it was super red meat because there was a section

of the population. Luckily, it was nowhere near a majority. Unluckily, that's not how our system works. But they were casting about for an avatar, for their hatred of all things Hillary Clinton and Benghazi became the one. And so then you've got a popular movie that comes out about Benghazi in the election year. Mark Levin, who is a talk show host on Fox News, was thirsty as fuck for it.

And he also is a radio show. And he was happy to give it all kinds of publicity on his network. And here's how amazing this movie was. It premiered in 18 T Stadium in Dallas. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. Like, so was this a box office hit this 13 hours?

You know, I didn't look into how much money it made, honestly. I wonder. But it's one of those, it's a Michael Bay film. So you know, lots of explosions, lots of actions, and stuff like that. Yeah, and so I imagine they recouped, but also usually when movies get made, where it involves military,

you actually get the military to help you, and then they get final edit and all kinds of stuff, so there's a lot of savings that you can have there. That's why Top Gun was such a jingoist a hit in 1986. Because the Navy was like, hey, we don't have that many pilots. Can we do something about that? And they were like, oh yeah, here. Tom Cruise. Yeah. And it's like the Cold War. It's like, oh yeah, let's, oh yeah. Let's make it happen. Like you literally never saw the bad guys. All you saw was their face mask with a red star at the top.

You see me, man? Yeah, we didn't even know what kind of bad guys, all you saw was their face mask with a red star at the top. You see, you need, man? Yeah, we didn't even know what kind of bad guys they were. Yeah, if you want to brainwash the public, don't let them seem like they have feelings. Exactly, do not make them people. You cannot be people. Yeah, they need to be tie fighter pilots and that's it. Yeah.

So, all right, so Krasinski also goes on to star in the Amazon series called Jack Ryan, which is actually currently still on, so if you need to get your John Krasinski fix, that's where you go. So he plays this character named Jack Ryan, who was a character that was created in the 80s by a guy named Tom Clancy. Yeah, all kinds of, yeah, all kinds of, it's basically America's 007 in the Cold War, right? That's, that's essentially it.

Now, this character is actually lived on past Tom Clancy who died in 2013, so that's kind of morbid. But this, and his, his, his estate is totally fine with that, by the way, because it's a cash cow. Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure they're like keep on doing it old. We don't mind. We don't know. Artistic integrity.

No need. We like these checks. It's interesting because this character, Jack Ryan, has always been an analyst who then gets drawn into field work in some way. And he's been Alec Baldwin in Hunt for Red October. He was Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and a few other movies. He was Banna Affleck in Clearham, present danger. And he was even Chris Pine in a movie called Shadow Recruit that I had to look up because I didn't know existed. Wow. Jack Ryan is a character that has been making some money.

Yeah. And I got, I saw a statistic, but it was like absurdly obscure. It was like he was like the 74th highest grossing character or something. It was an insanely weird number. Like nowhere near the top three. Yeah, I'm sure Rocky's up there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

So they're just putting it in. But Jack Ryan, he's the top 100. That's not bad. Yeah, yeah. It's better than what I've written so But yeah, now Krasinski plays him on a streaming TV show and it's actually well regarded as a TV series as an action series But it's it's very much our generation's version of 24 Yeah, it seems like that. Yeah, it's a spy show. It's Cast the CIA as a protagonist.

Um, at a time where our role in the world is questionable at best, and our credibility is doubtful at best. Um, and it's a voice for people who want to cheer the competence of our military. Um, to cheer the competence of our intelligence services and our federal government's direction of both of those things. Which, how can we, how in any realistic world can we cheer that, but there it is. John Christmas, he's taking some very MAGA roles. Yeah, he has.

He really has. For what I believe is a left-leaning liberal. Yeah, well, you know, and that's, it's, I kind of get into that a little bit about him, a little bit further down here, but like, yeah, it is kind of, it's almost like he is those liberals who want the plausible deniability. So, yeah, I'm not sure,

but I know that he's the star of this, this ra ra CIA kind of thing. And he did an interview with Fox News and again look where he keeps going um in 2018 and he was jubilant about getting to spend all this time with CIA personnel and and do research for his role um and he keeps coming back to the claim uh that he cares more that about the fact that he's depicting people who work in the CAA, then he's depicting a CAA agent. Like, he's like, this is about people. And here's a quote he said, he says, I'll always respect the people who put their lives on the line for people like me, whom they've never met.

So that's what he's dining out on. And interesting. All right. Yeah. I mean, you know, on some levels, there's humanity to that. I mean, these are for sure. Yeah, you know, it's, there are people who are absolutely doing that, you know,

who don't know me and, you know, I'm grateful to them for it. But it's, he's, it feels to me like he's using them as a bit of a scutch and just to kind of hide the, it feels disingenuous even though it might not be it could be painfully naive. I mean look where he's saying it you know he's saying it on the the shadowy lurker of the network news channels you know. Very true very true so he also started his own news channel in March of 2020 once once we all went on lockdown, called Some Good News. Yeah, I remember this.

Okay, see, I think he might have sold it. He did, he did. Now, the conceited the show was that he would only deliver good news during the quarantine. And he originally, his on record, his story, has never changed. He originally planned to do eight episodes and it caught fire. It got 330,000 subscribers overnight. By April, his first episode had over 12 million views. I

hear that that's a lot. It was really well received as a series. It gave people something to smile about during what at the time were very uncertain times. I kind of long for those uncertain times because at least we're uncertain about it. Right, yeah, uncertainty means that there might be hope somewhere in there. And, and, and, and, yeah, seven, seven months in. It's like, I'm certain that this isn't fucking disastrous. Yeah. Can we swear I'm sorry, I said that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely fucking disaster. Yeah. Where I'm sorry, I said that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I would agree. Now, Michelle Obama praised it. Linwen Manuel Miranda praised it. A lot of other people caught onto it and sang its praises.

And by all accounts, it was a lot of positive press for it and it was a good show. It was so successful that he did end up selling it to ViacomCBS, okay? And he did with all of... All of something secure. Yeah. Make money off.

Oh yeah, yeah, mine as well. You did, you did, you did. Wend it down, make money off. Yeah, if you could, like, I mean, honestly, I would have loved to have done that. Like if my pun show ever gets bought up by ViacomCBS for the money, for a quarter of the money that he got for it, I would be a happy, happy man. How much do you have getting for it?

It's undisclosed. I looked for hours for that. Could not find it, so I'm assuming a mint. Yeah, you might have some millies. Yeah, you know, he did what all of us would love to do. I mean, if you had that option to sell the podcast that you're doing right now, if it meant that you couldn't do it anymore,

but it also meant that you never had to worry about making rent again. Right, it's heartbeat. I mean, my parent company, the hard times, just sold for seven figures to revolver and inked mag and they were like, yeah, we're selling it, you know. Yeah. We've never had money now, we have it.

Yeah. And we also get to keep creative controls. That's even cooler. That's, that's the whole Kogan level shit there. Right. So, or Harris brothers, whatever. Correct. So, he self-financed the show to begin with,

and then he sells it off for undisclosed. And so what? So what if CBS buys it, then lays off 50 staffers and cuts the hours of 450 more employees the very next week as a cost-cutting measure? So what? Oh, yeah. That's not the best look.

Yeah, but he didn't have any control over that, right? Like, I mean, and so what if Viacom CBS is going to take what was offered for free to the masses and then potentially put it behind a paywall while doing the aforementioned thing to its employees? Like, so what? That's not him. Not a rock. Yeah.

You know? And so the thing is though, like, he keeps showing up. I want to say he keeps falling off on the wrong side of history and this stuff Right, and he keeps showing up in things that seem to be coded going one specific direction Rich people hurting their workers and ginguistic movies like there's there's a large overlap of those Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's almost like you're like well, maybe that's just an accident right, you know, maybe, it's almost like you're like, well, maybe that's just an accident. Right. You know, maybe he just happens to land on the wrong side of things.

Yeah, over and over and over again. He's the most, he's the uniluckyest, amazingly rich white guy with a beautiful wife. I've ever heard of. Exactly, exactly. You know, and I guess more power to him. I mean, he's getting more money so literally more power to him. But yeah, he's getting more money, so literally more power to him.

But yeah, so his responses to that have been somewhat wooden as well. Of course, he's allowed to be focused just on the work and to do the best job to be the characters that he's hired to play. Like, we've had this discussion about comedians on the scene. There are some of us who say that it doesn't matter what you say as long as it gets laughs, that matters. That's all that matters, that's the gold standard. And other people are like, no, how about you don't be a dick and you make people laugh, like have some artistry into it. And then there's other people who are like, you know, like, hack, you can make a living being a hack.

And there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of places where people I think can hide mentally about this kind of thing, but at the same time, who am I to tell someone not to go feed their family this way? Right, at the very least, try to have some balance. You know, I get it. It's like, okay, we all have things in our act that might be a cheap laugh. But balance it out with some stuff that's thoughtful, some stuff that, you know, We all have things in our act that might be a cheap laugh. Yeah. But balance it out with some stuff that's thoughtful, some stuff that, you know. Has a voice worth hearing. Right, right.

You know, you know, elevates those that can't elevate themselves for whatever reason, you know. Or at least doesn't stop them in the groin. Right. You know, and again, like I've gone through my own evolution on this thinking and I hope I continue to evolve on it. But yeah, it just, I don't know, someone saying that I'm just here for the work, it does feel cop-outy to me. So it's really easy to say.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the path of least resistance as far as answering a question like that. You know, where it's just like, hey man, I'm focused on the work. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting too, because like you have seen

that shift happen in sports too, where our athletes are, in many ways, kind of like, now they're being baited into answering questions, and they're like being confrontational, I'm like, no, fuck it. I actually do think this, you know? Right. So that's been, it's been kind of interesting to see that evolution as well. There was a comic I heard a couple years back, I actually do think this, you know? Right. So that's been, it's been kind of interesting

to see that evolution as well. There was a comic I heard a couple years back and they said, you know, what's something that you've noticed has reversed in your lifetime and he says, oh, it used to be the nerds were the ones who were right and the jocks were assholes. Right. And he's like, now the jocks are standing up

for social justice and the nerds are grabbing teaky torches and screaming. Yeah, wild. Yeah. Is that weird? Yeah. Fuck. I used to say if you watch Revenge of the Nerds, it's one of those things where it's like, man,

the nerds have always been creeps. Yeah. At least the jocks were raping anybody. Yeah. And the movies, you know what I mean? They had consent. Yeah, like, and- And the girls wanted them and they didn't have to, you know.

And that's why we hated them, you know, and it just, it's like, Right, we hated them because they were attracted to the opposite sex. Like that is so like caveman, Oh yeah. Fucking in-sell bullshit. So, so he keeps finding himself here, right? And and he he's

continuing to after the office show up in the same theme over and over again. And his defense of those very movies, those very roles that he does ranges from very valid claims of some sort of artistic integrity claiming that he never thought that there was any inherent conservatism to his roles in his projects, which is possible that someone could stay that naive. And I say this because I remember Julia Roberts didn't understand what Twitter was. And I think that wherever you were in life,

when you made it big, you are frozen in your development on some levels. It could be. It could be. Yeah, political arrest development, it could be technological arrest development. But then again, there's people all over the place who are like standing up and they're like,

no, I actually, you know, this is odious and I think it's terrible. So I don't know. Um, it's possible. They'll I'll try to be fair. He's also said, quote, when people look for something that they want to see, I can't stop them from a subjective belief in something, which I tried to trace that quote back. And I couldn't tell if he was responding to, do you think conservatives are jerking off to your movies too much or do you think liberals are getting too triggered? I couldn't find what he was saying or was he saying something about critics like taking

his movies to task for conservative coding. Like I couldn't figure it out and he left it like he never clarified it further. Yeah, I just wish maybe he'd be honest about it, which the honest answer is probably like, listen, I think it's fun to fucking play make, believe, and be a badass hero. Yeah. And like, I think it's fun. I love GI Joe. Right.

You know, like, I wish he could have just been like, you know, there's no secret coding other than I think these characters are fun. And I don't get to live this out in my real life. That would be a step and like if people press him, he'd be like, look, I don't get to live this out in my real life. That would be a step and like if people press him he'd be like, look, I don't care about politics and if I got my wish, he would also say, because I'm rich enough that I don't have to. Right. At least you would be being genuine about that.

Or he could say like, listen, I do care about politics and my political beliefs are separate from the artistic roles that I take. Absolutely. You know, and the artistic roles that I take, I take because I think they're fond. Yeah. Oh, that'd be great. You know, and Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart were famous for being on opposite sides of the aisle, back when the aisle cut through like decency at least. And they got into a fist fight one night and then they agreed to never talk politics again. And I don't remember who was on what side. The part of me that loves Harvey wishes that Jimmy Stewart was the liberal there, but I don't know. But it's just interesting

to look at the movies they played in and to like be like, oh my god, one of them had totally opposite views as the other. Of course, they both thought that the poor should be taken care of. They just disagreed as to how, not. Right. Yeah. So it's different now. Yeah, it changed. Yeah. But that line got real hard in the middle. Yeah. That line got real hard in the middle. Yeah, so I don't know what the truth is to what he says. I do know that I try to take people at their words, but I also think that if you look at his movies, it can be pretty revealing as well.

So we have an almost motto on our show, Ed and I do, and it's this. Authorial intent doesn't mean dick because The artist will absolutely have one thing in mind and it turns out the thing they produced was 100% a product of the times that they lived in Wow, and I we did it with J.R.R. Tolkien He's like I'm not writing an allegory to World War One and and you read Lord of the Rings You're like you totally wrote an allegory about World War One. And you read Lord of the Rings, you're like, you totally wrote an allegory about World War One. It just happened.

It just did. Like Conan the Barbarian, it was not a Reagan wet dream, but it totally was a Reagan wet dream because that's when the movie got made. So just. So in a way, that brings us to Jack. What does this name Jack Ryan? Yeah. This character who, you know, in a time when we have no clear path as far as the government goes. Yep.

No, let's take it back. We're, you know, what, we're still bad, ask. We fight hard. We're the smartest. We're the strongest. We're the most technologically advanced. Yeah. And, and, and somewhere, you know, there's people with Maga hats coming. Yes. Exactly. I mean, that's, that's exactly it. So, and he's got to know that. Mm-hmm. And, and if he doesn't, like, just, wow, like like I would love to have the ability to be that naive. He's not that dumb. No. I refuse to believe he's that dumb. Okay.

So, let's, you know, he very well might have, innocently fallen over backward into a polemic about how right, white, rural people can't speak their minds in this world anymore and because they're under constant threat from others to keep quiet if they want to be left alone. He might have fallen over backward into that, and that just accidentally happened to be the paint that spilled everywhere into the exact pattern.

So let's look at the context of the movie again. It comes out, here's what really gloomy, gloomy way. It comes out a year after Get Out did. Right. Almost like an answer. Yes. Because Get Out was absolutely a horror film about race. And this was a horror film, not about race, because there's no people of color in it at all. Right. Right. So it's simple,

rural American white family. And it is, even from the very first scene of the movie, where the little deaf kid is walking around in like a general store. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, that city is a city and it's dangerous. Right. So it's, you know, and so this movie,

there's nothing over in it But it is kind of an interesting Like nothing purposeful put it that way, but it is an interesting thematic response within the same genre get out had subtle and Amazing symbolism in it If you look at the color palette of white people's clothing Contrasted with the very few black people who were in it. The white people were always wearing reds and whites. The black people were wearing blue.

So it's an American flag and it's a fractured American dream. You know, his girlfriend, you know, the white gal who brought him home, she, she separated her cereal from her milk. So the white milk stayed pure and the colored cereal was in its own bowl. Oh, wow. Yeah, the fact that the protagonist literally stuffs cotton in his ears so that he doesn't get hypnotized again, using the same thing that that that was the impetus for brutalizing black people in America for 300 years. Cotton becomes his salvation like what an inversion that is. Like, that's some seriously good symbolism, you know?

And that's just the more overt stuff that I caught on the first view, and then like a couple of comes through, and it's like, holy shit, this movie is deep. It's a very rich movie about agency, about losing identity and about fitting in. And the horror just becomes the vehicle for it. That's get out. And like you said,

a quiet place is almost an answer to it. You've got a rural family living a solitary life, forced to keep quiet in order to survive because of the dark-skinned, physically imposing, and threatening aliens who will respond to the slightest noise by brutally abducting them, which is shown within the first few minutes of the film when the youngest son's inability to control his joy at playing with a spaced shuttle toy makes noise, gets him killed. Yeah. Wow. So, yeah, the family itself can communicate silently because their eldest daughter herself is deaf.

The father is clearly the leader of the family too. So it's a very patriarchal movie. Yeah, yeah. Like definitely like aged gender roles. Exactly. The typical conservative American household. Yeah. And the mother is a very capable partner, but clearly dad is leading.

Now, they've figured out how to diminish or eliminate virtually all noise from the goings-on of their farm. Maybe they have fart pillows, I don't know. Fart pillows. Something. It really would have been a lot funnier though if they're walking around with like couch cushions

strap to their ass. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you can't go out without that. You know, it's like, that's the play. Yeah, the play is like, we need to, we need fart pillows. Yes. Find the upholstery store. Um, yeah, band in the poll street store.

Or maybe they just bought a whole lot of tampons and just crammed it. It's stuck around their ass. You know, so I think that can work. I don't know. But they've come up with all these different systems that work both for the hearing members of the family and for their deaf daughter. He himself is very smart.

He uses electronics. He farms. He catches fish. And he is built and evidently silently built, a birthing chamber that's virtually soundproof, and he works very hard to take care of his family, and they appreciate his efforts by and large. For sure. It's also a survivalist movie, which we have to admit is a very white people genre.

True. Like, the only survival movie I can think of that's not a white people drama is there's two of them that come to mind one is the deadliest game Or is it called just deadly game so one with iced tea and Rutger Hauer. Oh, yeah, deadly game Deadly game and then the other one is bird box. Oh Yeah, bird box with all Sandra. Yeah, yeah, which was her apology for doing blindside, I think she She's like, look, I can kiss a black guy too. I didn't just promote racism and paternalism with the really tall football player. Yeah. So, um, but, uh, and, and again, I love these kinds of movies. So it did that absolutely true. White people love these kinds of movies. But I love it because of a different reason

than I think a lot of people are digging this. I like to see, like I said, what people do when they're faced with existential terror and what happens to their humanity, what happens to their community, what happens to their ability to adapt. I love shit like that. But this family, it's not about that.

It's about how the family saves them. And the family in the movie is very white and very nuclear. It's not a multi-generational family either. It's mom and dad and kids. Yeah, right. And it's baby boomer kids too. It's, you're gonna have three. You know, that's baby boom shit there.

Uh-huh. So. Yeah, that's, uh, it's interesting. It's interesting to think of, uh, what was the screenwriters true intent. Yeah, that's it's interesting. It's interesting to think of What was the screenwriters true intent did this did this just happen? Or was it purposeful right and I like to think that well I like to again take people on their words. So he's making a family survival film about protecting your children

but the codes that he uses for it are all white nuclear family type stuff. Like Ed is very fond of saying, and then you step back and notice the actual pattern and the wallpaper on the walls, and that pattern has always been there, but you just noticed it. And so you've got a dad who's in charge,

you've got a mom who's pregnant, and the kids do what he says for the most part. And by the way, everybody's pretty much barefoot. So she's literally pregnant and barefoot. And there are several gaping emotional wounds between all of them. He's not a flawless dad. It's not like father knows best meets the apocalypse, which that sounds interesting too. But leave it to be there. Yeah. The apocalypse. Ooh, that would be, yeah.

Like, do they hunt down Wally? Does Eddie Haskell become like a warlord? Yeah. We can all be tough. So he's not a flawless dad. He's a clearly very caring man. He's tender. But at the end of the day, he does what he does for the safety of his family. In fact, if you even look at the way that he uses sign language, it's very curt and abrupt because survival matters. This is urgent. Gotta do it.

You know, whereas other people have slightly different styles. The mother is a little bit more flowy because she's trying to keep beauty in the world. She doesn't care just about survival. She wants the kids to know about life and to live. She's teaching them Shakespeare. Like there's a background, in the background, is very well decorated, but there's a board where they're clearly going over scantian and what Iambic pentameter is. Interesting.

Yeah, you know, which itself is about the sound of words, which I got a kick out of. And I don't remember what the quote was up there, but I bet you it's about something having to do with what kind of people we really are or something. Of course, that's most Shakespeare quotes worth quoting, but at the end of the day, it's a very frontier, wasp-oriented fantasy with a vague enemy out in the woods, like Native Americans. Right, we win. So, and I can't not address the monastic tie-ins

for this movie, too, by the way. So, in many ways, they're living on a monastery. They're living on a self-sustained farm. Their last name is Abbott. So, the dad is the head Abbott. Oh, interesting. It's very Catholic vibe there, especially since a lot of monasteries take a vow of silence. Interesting. Which gets them closer to God, and then they can further foster the insular community,

and they also tend to walk around barefoot. So just kind of cool things that they're playing with here too, but it does seem to all aim toward like, you know, the nuclear white family. So the dad is the main character and he's also, like I said, technology proficient, which reminds me of a great deal of the ham radio community and the home electronic solder soldiers who are a small subculture of white people who tend to be distrustful of outsiders. They tend to hold up an isolation due to that distrust. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole, I think that's the whole word, tinfoil hat kind of comes

from, you know, where you're like, let me get my radio transmitter, you know. Yeah, and there is that community. And I thought the same thing. And I mean, when you say he's technically proficient, he's not technically, he's like a hacker type where he's like, I'm gonna, good radio scanners. And I'm gonna create, I'm gonna, I'm working on this, air piece for my kid, trying to make it work better.

You know, like, he's definitely my kid, trying to make it work better. He's definitely like, do it yourself, science guy. That's a good point. I mean, he's achieved a lot of things. He's very good at a lot of things. He's a real renaissance man. He's like, I fish well, I fucking, all silently. Right.

I need fish. I like it. And then he's the one that discovered that if there's another louder noise nearby, you can actually make noise and stuff like that. You have that whole scene and we actually get lyrics. We actually get dialogue, you know, of funny if like his son's first words were like, all right, here's some too short. Yeah, he's all woke up quick. I it. This is where it's. Yeah, the whole thing is

Yeah, you know, as we talk and I've always I've known this about you for a long time, but you're not a person that can just casually enjoy something. You know, you are not wrong. Yeah, you're definitely like I could get stoned and just like throw something on and be like cool digest it, go to sleep, wake up the next day. Be like, I'm always pretty bad ass. But you're like, I saw that they were, you know, discussing Shakespeare on the on the bed. I was like, I would have never in a million years now.

Well, I'm the guy that's just all like, how do they fart? Right. And yet which, which, really, which question blows open the whole movie? That's right. So, yeah. So I'm over here intellectualizing about, you know, how they made the little cone traps for fish so that they could fish at a distance. And you're like, yeah, but farting would destroy the whole movie. I'm like, oh fuck, yeah.

I can't really miss that play. Yeah. I never thought of the farting. So, yeah, you're not wrong, you're not wrong. But that's literally the point of the podcast. So. Yeah. Yeah.

But, so this farm kind of reminds podcast. So, uh, yeah. But, um, so it, this, this farm kind of reminds me of what Ruby Ridge, that family wished it could be. Right. The Ruby Ridge family. Yeah. So, yeah, interesting. Yeah, I think, I think you're right. Yeah. So the mom, yeah, we share there weren't aliens, but it's true true No, just feds who yeah, something much scarier. Yes Yeah, so isn't it weird that you had a situation where the white supremacists were the good guys in that one yeah, wild who? The 90s so even a broken clock is right twice a day right exactly just So even a broken clock is right twice a day. Right exactly. Just

It's like my friends who are communist. They'll they'll get on and just bash the shit out of liberals and then you know the maggots and Trump hands these are like yeah, yeah, and then my friends are like yeah, so come to our meeting and you know And they're like what that's communist. We're like right. We also hate liberals. Yeah, yeah We finally found a place for we can meet. Right, so the mom handles most of the domestic chores. It would seem. She's literally her barefoot and pregnantness while doing the laundry is kind of what drives the plot in the second half of the movie. She's close to full-term, so labor is expected any day now. And while the dad is out getting food having taken his son with him

Which mimics the sexual politics of a battleship board game box from the 1960s Right And also it's it's very I mean Andy Griffith You know, yeah, I can't expect them to whistle except they can't Yeah, can't whistle But she's doing the laundry while her daughter is off doing whatever teenagers do I mean it's so It's so much like at 1956, come almost, or family drama. Right.

And so while she's doing the laundry, she catches the laundry bag on a nail, which pulls the nail up, and now it's at stabbing position. And the nail becomes check-offs gun. And inexplicably, she doesn't actually check on what dragged and carries with her all the laundry and carries on her womanly chores and it's like I'm sorry if I had something that got caught on stairs I would check right especially if it made a ripping noise yeah you know speaking of hearts yeah real so the family is on a farm like I've said a number of times

I cannot make this point strongly enough though because they're on a family farm in rural America They're in the heartland these are the kinds of people that Chevy would make poem commercials about during the Super Bowl Yeah, you know that that is true. It's Everything about it plays very traditional 50s family. Yes. Or this rural heartland kind of value of where are the real Americans? The heartbeat of America. Yes, Chevrolet.

Yeah, you remember that commercial with, there's a farmer. And it's like, which is funny, because if I recall correctly, and I might not, but if I recall correctly, that poem was but if I recall correctly that poem was Actually pointing out how fuck the farmers get by big business, but whatever so There's a family fun family farm which is run by the dad tended by the mom with a couple of kids to help out They own land which is an implication They're not city dwellers. There's another thing. The cities are where minorities tend to be and Those are desolate wastelands, which is something we find out in the first few minutes as they're wandering through a dead town

So you know just just fill in the blank with all the the Discussed that rural America has with city America. Right coast coastal elites right, You know, the big city folk, you know, with their coffee shops. It's also the site of a horrible family tragedy because their son got killed because he doesn't keep quiet enough and one of the scary dark skinned aggressive creatures kills him. It's also a city that's textually, the movie is textually laid in with various newspaper headlines in the background too. Cities are bad, farms are good, families are good, dad and charge is good, keeping a child is good, homeschooling is good. Like they didn't even talk about a boarding. And finally, this family is very well well armed. They've got guns and they've got a fair amount of them based on where we find these guns stored throughout the movie.

Right, not to catch you off of it. Let's go back a little bit. You know, at some point, you would have thought John Cruzency's character would have thought like, all right, do we keep the baby? What's going to make less noise? Yes, you know, I mean, yeah, I thought it has to cross their mind if he's looking to protect his remaining children Right absolutely Like you know, there's a movie about the Jewish resistance in the woods. I think in Poland Leaveschreriver was in it. Um, and it was true. It was based on a true story. And, and there was a group of, uh, Jews living out in the woods, keeping themselves in each other's safe, but they had a rule. No babies. So not no fucking just no babies. If you have a baby, you'd better or if you, if you get pregnant, you'd better take care of that shit.

Right. Like that. Yeah. I mean, just the fact that that's never even discussed at all. It's not, you know, not even the passing. It's just baked right in pro life, you know. There it is. Which again, like, hats off to you for wanting to have kids and like rebuild this world, but, you know, like, babies cry.

Like, this is going to be. I'm saying that there's some unexplored conflict there for sure. Yeah. And like I said, they're very well armed. The parents, their only overt identity is spoken to each other really, where they say, where the mom says, who are we if we can't protect them? We have to protect them. And so the parent identity is that of a protector. And the mom is saying

this to the dad and then encouraging him to go do it, which is so tropey, like go do the dangerous thing. Right. You know, yeah, take care of business, Pa. Yeah. Now in fairness, she literally just gave birth. So it's not like she has the energy to go do that, but this really does feel like men writing what they think women are. Yeah, it does. You know, because the mom literally just gave birth, which is the most mom woman thing that a man thinks a woman can do. And then she says that, you know, go protect them. And previous in the movie, she told her kids, as a way to comfort them, your father will protect you. Your father will always protect you. And is that true?

Well, no, like, I mean, ultimately I suppose so, but, you know, like, you know, beat by beat, no, you know? And that protection, by the way, is done ultimately with guns. To the point where at the very very end The mom is cocking and loading the shotgun like a badass who's had enough Terminator two shit. Yes. I mean straight up Linda Hamilton, you know, she racks the gun and now Yes, very so pro family Pro like I was kind of surprised there wasn't a Bible upon the, you know,

second or third time I watched it. Right. Or some sort of like, she's gonna quote the Bible about a man's job or something like that. Like that wasn't there. And I was like, okay. But maybe that was too obvious. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah. So they're like, let's, you know, let's go for the, the straight flesh, not the royal flesh. Some folks. Yeah, enough's enough, you know, we got go for the the straight flesh not the royal flesh Yeah enough's enough, you know, we got all red cards were good And yeah, naturally all of those things would have to happen in such a world right you would need to protect your family You would need to husband weapons you would need to find a way to grow food and all that But it's also a pretty clear choice to show that they're thriving more than anyone else in the film in this particular instance. And Krasinski was pretty clear and has been very consistent about his claim that this movie is about parenthood and the need to protect your young.

He talks about it in interviews repeatedly, he makes plenty of sense with it. He just had his second child and I'm a Emily Blunt, so that would definitely be weighing on his mind. And I think that consciously, that probably was his intent, but subconsciously, if you look at every thread that he's pulling on, and that it entered production in 2017 at a time where white men were loudly shouting

their fear of obliteration and their relief at a president who understood their preciousness, plenty else got written into this movie. And you know, as I watched it the first time around, I remember thinking like, wow, this is very, this seems like a fantasy movie. It's almost like a fantasy movie where the family is like, what'd it be cool if we were just taking care of ourselves? We didn't have to worry about gays and race. Yes. Libertarian frontier fantasy.

Right. Yeah. That's why people moved to Kentucky from Vermont in the 1820s. Right. Or why race is Californians? We're like, I really am thinking of moving to Boise. Yes, or state of Jefferson. Right.

So, yeah. Now, the main characters have to remain silent, or, as I've said a number of times, the dark skinned, overpowering, dangerous, hyper-reactive creatures will kill them. Right. In all... Like every bad stereotype. Oh, yeah. You know know, like I'm a little surprised that like if you played music, they'd start dancing. Didn't pop in. Right. What

I was carrying the box. What's going on here? It's they've got like the red bandana. It's just breaking. Oh, and then ozone falls down the stairs again. This movie would have been a lot better with just the ozone cam. Yeah. Yes, it would have every movie be better with ozone. That's right. That's very, you know, I, I think we should, we, we need to crowdsource that. That's for sure.

That's the thing. He's all exhausted. He's like, please stop. Please. I'm very tired. So in August of 2017, white men who were armed with teaky torches stormed the streets in Charlottesville, Virginia, led by Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler, ragefully shouting that quote, Jews will not replace us. They whipped themselves up into such a false narrative

based on fear that it quickly turned into rage because the city voted to remove a hastily and shittily made statue of Robert E. Lee that went up in 1924 as a response to a growing movement in the 1920s for equal rights for black people. Prior to that, there was no statue of Robert E. Lee in that park, and yet it went up 54 years after he died, which is a weird number. Anyway, I bring this up because those young men felt murderous rage enough that, at the fact that a statue was going to be removed legally, I might add,

that they shouted their rage while marching, intimidating and attacking counter protesters, up to and including the murder of Heather Hire. I bring this up specifically because the old man in the woods that the father and the son run into. He is alone, he is afraid, and he is angry. And he sees two people who have relationship with each other, a father and a son, and that's the last fucking straw for him. He doesn't sing out, enjoy, and he doesn't come in order to commit suicide because he shouts out his last words to the world aren't some beautiful poem. They're not carpenters lyrics. They're not even a name of his beloved wife.

His last words are a rage filled howl, and that's what he shouts out. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. So, all the characters in the movie are white. They are the super majority, and yet they're terrified of the consequences of what they say, because what they say can get them killed. And this is absolutely, even without meaning meaning to lining up perfectly with plenty of people who bimonde the fact that PC culture has made it so that you can't say whatever you

want to anymore. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, we can't even fart. Oh my God, there's your metaphor. Yeah, we can't even fart without the left trying to take us down. Oh wow, yeah. Used to be you could just let out whatever methane you wanted. Yeah, back in my day, you could just fart as you walk into the country store. You could fart in the white section of the bus. Yeah, I see. So... Now, again, this doesn't have to be purposeful for it to be true.

The movie still is carrying that water. And the birth of a child and a boy at that, by the way, has to be stifled because, again, noise means death. So they didn't terminate the pregnancy, but instead they chose to keep the baby cool. That's part of being pro-choice too, but you could do a little math there. But they have to keep that desire quiet too.

Can't even celebrate the birth of a good white boy. Yeah, yeah, we gotta keep it indoors. We don't know who's gonna be judging us outside. Exactly. And if we let out the wrong celebration cry, then we're done. We're all gonna get killed. We're gonna get canceled. Yeah, you can't some cry, then we're done. We're all going to get killed. We're going to get canceled. You've canceled called Chase Thomas.

So when the dad trying to save his children who are now being kept safe in the family truck, queue up the Chevy commercial, he kills himself too. He screams out to distract the monster from them. He doesn't say their names. He doesn't say, I love you. He does before that. He signs to his daughter, I love you,

I have always loved you, which is a really sweet moment. Yeah, that's hard for me as a dad, but he doesn't say their names. He doesn't shout out his love for them He doesn't sing a line from Harvest Moon, which was the only song we hear in the entire movie You're right. I cannot casually enjoy anything He screams out in dire pain and sadness and with some anger involved and Then giving voice to his anger. He is killed by the object of all their fear

and the reason for their forced silence. There you go. A martyr. Yes, because he dared to speak out, right? By finally letting his voice be heard, by finally shouting out and enacting his rights as a father and a man to be heard in this world, he was able to rescue his children from the predations of these dark, imposing creatures.

So he sacrificed himself nobly, fulfilling the promise that the mother made to the children earlier. And by the end of the movie, the remaining family members have put it together what they need to do, right? And the very last scene is them preparing. Two more creatures were drawn by the sounds of the shotgun being used Against one of the creatures that couldn't handle what noise was coming from the daughter's cochlear implant And her ability to overcome her disability with her father's help was too much for the creature

We fixed it ourselves. We didn't need any of that government health care. We didn't need any like there's a lot of like just Boots straps. Yeah. Grab your boot straps. Yeah, and the fact that he did it caused the creatures head to literally explode. There's a metaphor there. Right? It's funny you would say that. I literally have written next.

That's quite the metaphor. But yeah, wow, like you know, it's just liberal tears, you know. Yeah, right. So, anyway, the know, it's liberal tears, you know. Yeah, right. So, anyway, the children are armed now, because frankly, in that world, I could see that making sense. But at the same time, we're watching this movie. And children are now armed. The mother cocks her gun. It's a shotgun. And the movie ends with them prepared to violently oppose those who are gathering around them. Wow. That's timely.

Yeah, yeah. 2018. You're going to take your guns from you. You're going to keep them by. Well, and do you know what was happening in 2018, by the way? I mean, a lot of stuff, but midterm elections. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

So did Krasinski Beck and Woods set out to make a movie that responded to the ideas of black identity and the near lobotomization of black men in order to fit in with white society? No, they didn't. I don't think that they're that devious or that clever. Did they set out to make a movie that represented white frustration at not being able to say whatever they wanted, consequence free in a world where their dominance and supremacy were no longer considered a given structure in society. I don't think they set out to do that.

Yeah, you don't have to to do it. Right. They made that movie anyway while trying to look at the difficulty in keeping your family safe. Because the underlying context there is to keep your family safe in a world that's increasingly chaotic and unreliable.

To the point where even the richest among us feel some sense of dread at the spectre of it, as Krasinski did when his brought his baby daughter home, I think that that absolutely feeds itself into the very substance of the movie. And yes, I think that they made that movie. the very substance of the movie. And yes, I think that they made that movie. Yeah, I mean, whether it's intentional or not, they made kind of a white nationalist movie. Yeah, right?

Which sucks because it's, again, far too side, I think it's a very well directed and well crafted. Oh yeah, cinematography's great. Oh yeah. Special effects are good. Oh yeah. Yeah, well acted. Mm-hmm.

Well, very well directed. I mean, just, you know, again, the sign language thing that I brought up, the fact that he has his own style in Soda's mom, that was a deliberate choice. Like, there's so many good choices that are made in that movie. It's also a white nationalist movie. First of all, I love thinking for making me think about them maybe but it does for whatever reason it definitely shows how you watch a movie and how I watch a movie I mean I was watching the movie and I was like five minutes in I was like

somebody would fart and they'd all be dead this movie's down yeah I just painstakingly watched the rest of it. Right. Missing most of the metaphors. Well, and again, I don't think many of those metaphors were intentional. But it's how to put, you very often end up with art not being what you intended as being what people carry away from it. Right.

So I, you know, I mean, there's somebody like sad love songs out there that I'm sure weren't intentionally trying to be a song that's like, well, this is just a song about how much I hate my girlfriend. For no other reason than just not wanting many more right yeah I can yeah I mean half the Beatles' discography is like really horrible toward women you know and at the time it's just poppy song of like oh this is what young romance was because that's that's what passed for romance at that time right and I mean yeah even like I want to hold your hand,

where it's like, in a different context, it's like, I'm gonna fucking chase you down. I'm gonna make you love me because I desire you. Yeah, yeah, like my desire is that, and you should be flattered. Right, you know, I should wear you down to the point where you say yes. Like it's, it's like how many rom comes from the 80s

are basically stalker flicks? Oh no, it's fucking creepy as fuck. Yeah, and the one time that you reverse it, it's called fatal attraction and Glenn Close is a stalker. Yeah, it's a horror movie. Yeah. Well, while Camp I'm You Love, the kid's like, I'm a nerd, nobody loves me,

so I'm gonna make this woman, I'm gonna make this teenager a fucking prostitute. Yes. Just so I can a fucking prostitute. Yes. Just so I can skip popular in school. Yeah, it is. That's dark. It is, or say anything. I mean, he's standing outside with the boom box.

It's like, get the hoax. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're just like, hey dude, this is like, I'm in fear for my life. Yeah. I'm not charmed. Yeah. I'm not charmed. Yeah. I'm locking the doors.

I'm thinking about moving. Yeah. It's, yeah. So yeah, you don't necessarily set, and that's again, like we were talking about with Venge of the Nerds. Like you don't set out to make a rape pick, but that's what it was. Yeah, and I mean, and now as you look back on it, it's one of the only things that sticks

with you is like, wow, these nerds were peeping Tom's, they were fucking rapists. Like, it was, it's gross, you know. Yeah, there's nothing there about it. There's a case, if you said, that's one of the most problematic movies in the entire 80s. Yeah, it's almost a distillation of what was wrong with us in the 80s.

It really focuses on those things specifically. Right, and obviously, thank God, you couldn't make that movie today. Right. God, I would like to see a Re of the nerd's movie made today though. Like I I'm shocked. I saw that they they re-implored the movie zapped and they remade it in 2014 or something with a female protagonist I was like how they pull this off. Oh shit. Yeah, wow Yeah, it yeah, it's so. Zaps also very problematic. Is it? Oh my god. Take it. Watch it sometime. Okay. All right. It's

you'll just be going like well This is a weird and sell jack-off fantasy. Okay. I'll go give that a look. Is that the one that starts off with somebody hanging upside down and shooting somebody in the back with a paintball? No, okay, I must be a different movie. It could it it's not it's with of course Scott bail. Oh, oh, Jesus Christ in it Okay, really really aims. Oh wow The old Charles and charge crew. Yeah, yeah Yeah, it's a yeah, it's something. It's just like the only way I'll get a girl to like me is if I have secret powers. Oh, Jesus. Oh,

telekinesis like a maker shirt pop open, you know, it's and she'll think that's good. Yeah, it's pretty. Wow, that's damn. That is, yeah, that's bad. That is bad. I mean, it's not on the level of a quiet place as far as being problematic. Well, you know, different time too. And that's the thing. It's like this movie, very, very popular,

and now we know why. Like, it's pulling on those anxieties of the culture and the skin that it's wearing is absolutely like you got to keep your family safe, but that's such coded language now to a large segment of our panic deaths culture. Right. And of course, there's going to be a mega-half people that, you know, are watching it cheering, but even worse is that there's the liberal types and the progressive types among us that are watching that and loving it, not even knowing what it's saying. But there's something inherent in them that's like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It absolutely tickles that part of me that's a

dad of like, Jesus Christ is terrible stuff. But then it it's like oh, let's zoom back a little what yeah, yeah, and I was being used Tricked yeah, yeah And that's why you need to like you know, you have a lot of guns like wait a minute wait a minute So cool so normally I ask Ed or he asks me what what you got from this? What did you glean? But we pretty much been talking about that the whole go. So. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I would say more than anything. It's just that I need to pay more attention during movies.

You know, I'm the kind of person to just digest something very quickly. You know, I mean, I'm more, I look at music and like lyrics of music a lot. That's where I get my like my deep dive on stuff. And sometimes with movies, you know, but I got to be honest without doing this podcast. I probably wouldn't have noticed the sheer amount of Hidden in plain sight Right-wing symbolism In the movie and I'm not sure I mean they might want to listen to this they might not even know how much there is oh

Yeah, yeah, the people who wrote it Yeah, Krasinski Krasinski. Krasinski, the peg. Well, you're looking at the same way. You could, you could reach out to him and ask him to give this a listen. That'd be. Yeah. I'll hit him up on Twitter. So like, yeah, dude, we really rake over the calls for your, for your secret right wing

agenda. Yeah. You're, your polemic movie about black people. Yeah. He's like, wait, what? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You heard us.

I wouldn't mind the, I would not mind the bad news. The public. God damn it. There's some bad news. There's a racist. Don't worry. Good news. There's still a lot of people that like you for that. So good

news, still rich. Yeah. So, well cool. Hey, Johnny, where can people find you on the social medias? Oh, I'm at hipstrockercy on all the things, hipstrockercy on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, which I don't use that much. But more than anything, go listen to my podcast, Hipster Ocaracy, wherever podcasts are streamed. They're on all of them. Just now got on Spotify. I took a minute. I don't know why. But yeah, we're on episode three, episode four is out next week. And yeah, listen, rate, review, subscribe. And it was fun. Thanks, Damien. No, absolutely. Glad to have you, man. So everyone, you know where to find me at Doh Harmony on all the things and you can find us at Geek History time and you

can also argue with Ed for not being here at EH Blalock but mostly check out at Hipstrochercy because that's where you're gonna get a lot of your shit. So yeah. So hey Johnny, thank you so much for a geek history of time. I'm Damien Harmony. I'm Johnny Taylor. All right, and until next time, what does Ed say, keep rolling 20s?

Yeah, that's a roll in 20s, man. There you go. All right, thanks, bud. Thanks. Thanks.