Too Scary; Didn't Watch - BEAU IS AFRAID with Chad Kultgen

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Who’s in the mood for a three-hour anxiety spiral?? We are! Join us and Chad Kultgen (Game of Roses, How to Win The Bachelor) as we make our way through Ari Aster’s “nightmare comedy” BEAU IS AFRAID.  TRAILER Recap begins @ 31:35 Follow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes and additional content! Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy. Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary, Didn't Watch. Hi everyone, welcome to Too Scary, Didn't Watch, the horror movie recap podcast for those too scared to watch for themselves. I'm Emily, and I am too scared to watch scary movies. I'm Henley, and I'm also too scared to watch scary movies. I'm Sammy, and I love watching scary movies, and so I watch them so that you don't have to. And this week's movie is an epic three-hour odyssey through anxiety oh my god um but before we get to that first we have a little bit of haunted housekeeping yes which is that we have a live show coming up next weekend

april 30th where we will be recapping evil Dead Rise. Oh, God. What's the line? Mommy, there are maggots everywhere? Is that what? Mommy's with the maggots now. Mommy, there are maggots everywhere. Yeah, that's the line. Mommy, I believe there are maggots everywhere. Excuse me.

Mommy, there's maggots everywhere. No, it's going to be bad. You wish it was that. It's going to be really bad. But fun. It's going to be fun for me at the very least. Just you. TBD on Emily and Henley.

I am going to be making them watch the Red Band trailer, and that's going to be tough for them. I know. It was tough for you. It was tough for even me. But if you want to join us, that'll be, again, April 30th at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern, available on our Patreon. Patreon.com slash TSDW podcast. And it's going to be a great time. And OK, now back to lighter affairs.

Sure. Sort of. Did anything scary happen to us this week? Did you guys hear that? Sorry, my upstairs neighbor just dropped like a piano upstairs. Something scary happened right now in the summer. It was so loud. Dropped a piano. It was honestly a huge thud. I was worried you guys could hear it and it would be distracting. I mean, yeah, piano is pretty, that's a pretty big thing to drop.

I actually, I've thought about, I've thought many times about talking about my upstairs neighbor during this check-in, but it feels like something that's like kind of, no one wants to hear about that. Everyone has an upstairs neighbor. No one cares that their upstairs neighbor is loud. That's just life. That's just what it is. I have a loud upstairs neighbor as well. But they, okay, so let me just tell you a little bit about my upstairs neighbors. Yeah, you know what? Just do it, Hen.

If you've been thinking about it for a while, this is safe space. Just dive right in. Just really quick. Okay, so they introduced themselves to us when we first moved in right away. And they were like, they were like, listen, we do take our shoes off. And we are

like, they really got ahead of it they're like we are we'll do our best you know to keep things quiet i mean it's like we're above you we live in a community let's be conscious yeah and they're both flight attendants so they're gone a lot um but then they when they come back it is very obvious and very loud. Yeah, they take their shoes off, but they're dropping heavy objects left and right. They do a lot of vacuuming. We've heard that on the podcast before. Wait, have I talked about their vacuuming before? No, I literally hear it when I'm editing. Okay. Okay. That's validating for me. That's actually genuinely validating. So the question always is, is it such a mystery about what is happening?

Right? I'm always trying to interpret what it could possibly be. It really is interesting how hard it is to parse out sounds that are seeming, they have to be normal sounds. They have to be the same sounds that we're making. But when you hear it from above, could be anything. It sounds like they're moving furniture all the time.

Maybe they are because I don't know what else it could be. Tim and I think that since they're flight attendants, they have a lot of luggage. Luggage. And it's stored. That makes sense. Because we live in small New York City apartments. It must be stored in hard to reach places. So they're moving stuff to get to the luggage.

You would think if they need the luggage all the time, they wouldn't put it behind heavy pieces of furniture. But in my mind, when I picture what these noises must be, I'm literally picturing them like flinging over dining room chairs, like pushing the table up. Behind the piano. They have to move the piano to get to it. like pushing the table up behind the piano. They have to move the piano to get to it. Anyway, that's the scary thing is that that's a constant in my life, which doesn't really bother me that much. Well, here's a question. And you have a downstairs neighbor. Did you introduce yourself to them? No one lives there. Did you have the same conversation? No one lives there. No one lives there. And no one has lived there the entire time we've lived here and i don't know why it is a little spooky an empty new york apartment that feels like what's

going on what's going on there you know that people have died in these departments a lot of them a lot of them no like while i've lived here i was gonna say i remember i remember when that happened someone did die there yeah and then And then it really. No. And then it came out. Then the neighbors started talking about all the people who've died in all the apartments. Oh, my God. Up in the floodgates? Yeah. Oh, no.

Because it's a rent controlled, like rent stabilized building. Our apartment is not rent controlled. So people stay there till they die. Yeah. So people live here forever and ever and ever. There's a guy who lives here who was literally born like in this building. So and he's like 75 now um anyway okay can you guys talk about your rankings um pretty uneventful week for me but

i did i did fin i talked about this a little bit on our last bonus episode that i had started beef finished beef last night and i i guess you know how much i actively avoid anything that's going to make me feel strong emotions i won't choose to watch anything that's going to do that and so this one kind of snuck up on me which is what i need i need it to be like you know when kids go get shots and they do like i'm gonna do it on three and they do it on two and then you're like oh my god it's over like i need a show to do that to me to be like, just, you know, you've got you got emotional and not and it did that. And I can't I don't know. I don't know that I'll ever stop thinking about it.

Really? I still haven't seen it. I'm so excited to watch it. The show ended and then I cried for like 30 minutes. It was one of those. I don't want to say more for anyone who hasn't seen it. They should. But also, I'm just like, oh, my God, I just have never. I'm not. I don't know when say more for anyone who hasn't seen it. They should. But also I'm just like, Oh my God.

I just have never, I'm not, I don't know when I'll get over it. What a crazy, stupid check in to give to say literally nothing. No, that's an endorsement. It's a ringing endorsement.

Holy shit. Four of my friends finished it last night. I was getting texts left and right. Just finished. Wow. Wow. I know. Can you believe it?

Wow. Wow. Wow. That's all you can say. And then I had to power through it and I had to finish it last night too so I wasn't left out and I can concur that it was great and I also cried. Not for 30 minutes

but because I have a higher tolerance in emotions of all directions. Yeah, well you let yourself cry more often. I think when I, because I don't let myself watch things that make me cry. So then when I do, I'm like whoa, this feeling. I had that experience when I watched The don't let myself watch things that make me cry. So then when I do, I'm like, whoa, this feeling. I had that experience. I watched The Secret Life of Bees.

What? Yeah. I cried so much when I watched The Secret Life of Bees. Oh, is that a documentary? I was imagining like I was picturing Bee Movie, the Jerry Seinfeld Bee Movie. Different movie. It's not a documentary. It was based on a book, which I read the book i don't know if i

watched the movie i read the book a long time ago but i remember being emotional let's not talk about the secret life of bees okay we're not gonna talk about it sammy how are you doing um i'm doing well thank you so much for asking um i so okay you know i famously don't have nightmares from horror movies even though i watch so many horror movies they never find their way into my dreams but you do get nightmares i do get nightmares and guess what just gave me a nightmare has given me a couple nightmares now i started reading a non-fiction book about the Titanic. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. And immediately the first time I read it, had a dream that night that me and my two cats were on the Titanic and it was

so upsetting. And it was like the scene in the movie where it's the mother and her two children. And she's like, she's like, I was like, it's going to be was like it's gonna be okay it's gonna be okay and they were certainly not calming down in the dream like the kids do in the movie when they can't rationalize what's happening you know you're there no it would be bad i think to have cats on the titanic but also it made me think a little too hard about that scene and like the kids are gonna wake up

like they're not gonna sleep through absolutely they're gonna wake up yeah oh yes okay can we why does this always come up it's because i'm obsessed with the titanic but this scene specifically we talk about this scene so much and i think about this scene so much because the elevator in my building reminds me of the titanic oh there's just that like great thing it has a great it has like this dark wood that has a smell and it feels like i'm on a boat and every time i'm in there with silas i'm imagining what it would be like if we were on the titanic every time i feel like this why is this so present in my psyche like it's always there we do talk about titanic a lot a lot a really disproportionate amount in 2023 for sure yeah yeah we talk about it a lot i mean the anniversary isn't helping it's all it's everywhere it's the anniversary and also i mean

my birthday is the same day the titanic sank um so it's always present right now always top of mind yeah um but i literally might have to not read the book because it's been i've only read it twice before bed and books because i'm always reading in my bed they're more likely to come into my dreams with me that makes sense and a non-fiction thing is like it's much easier to put yourself in that position because people were in that position. It really happened to those people. Yeah, you might need to take a break. It was an upsetting dream. And I woke up and my cats were there and I had to pet them and...

Tell them it was all a dream. Thank God it was all a dream. Everybody's okay. But yeah, just be careful out there. If you're reading Titanic, the ship of of dreams maybe a little bit earlier in the day is is better sure you morning morning titanic reading yeah read it with your better with your with your coffee um but uh okay uh another scary thing that happened to me this week was watching this week's movie which is bow is afraid in theaters now the long anticipated i guess

not you know that long but we've been excited for it uh the new movie from ari aster written and directed by ari aster starring joaquin phoenix nathan lane amy ryan zoe lister jones Amy Ryan, Zoe Lister-Jones, Patti LuPone, Armin Nehepedian, and Parker Posey. Wow. Oh, yeah. That's a crazy cast. I just didn't realize. Oh, yeah, baby. Wowie.

And we have a guest with us today. We are absolutely thrilled to be joined by him. He is a writer of TV shows and novels, most recently a novel called how to win The Bachelor and He's also a podcaster hosts of podcasts Dudes II the necessary conversation and my literal favorite podcast Game of Roses Chad Colchin, thank you for joining us. It is my pleasure to be here. Do I have to also say a scary moment? You have to also say a scary moment? You have to. Okay.

My scariest moment this week was, in fact, when I was walking into the movie theater to watch Bo is Afraid. Oh. Standing outside of the theater entrance were two people from the studio handing out flyers that said, if you give us your opinion online, you'll get $5 off your next movie. And I knew immediately this was a bad sign because they only do this for movies if they have no idea how to market the movie and they don't know what the movie is. I immediately walking and was like, oh shit, this is going to be a train wreck. And indeed it was, in my opinion.

Oh my gosh, was it a train wreck? Not to jump into it too early, but it is, in my opinion, the worst movie I have ever seen in my opinion. Oh my gosh, was it a train wreck? Not to jump into it too early, but it is, in my opinion, the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. Really? What? I disagree, but we'll get into it. That's fantastic, because I know some people love this. Some people are very into the

artistry of it and all of that shit. And I get it. I love Ari Aster. He's an auteur. I think a filmic genius. I think he is really motivating what is the evolution of modern horror film with Hereditary and Midsommar, his first two movies. I loved them. I was very excited about seeing this movie as well. But I'm telling you, as soon as I saw those people handing out those flyers, I was like,

oh, fuck. He tanked this one. I feel like two people were, so we'll get into it, but I've had, so a couple friends have now seen this and they're like, I think you can handle it. Like, this one's a comedy. And I'm like, I don't fucking buy it. It's not a horror movie. Absolutely. I wouldn't even say it's a comedy. I would say it's an attempt at a comedy

and it fails for what I perceive to be the reason that in his other movies his little comedic pieces work because they're always juxtaposed against these horrific, in some cases supernatural things, demons and shit or human sacrifice and then you do a little kind of like mid-level

C plus joke and it works really well coming off of that. This movie is just some C plus level jokes strung through some weirdness for three hours. None of the jokes worked in my opinion uh neither did this movie it was just a fucking a miserable disaster but we can get into it we'll get into it

also three hour miserable disaster that's that's that's too long that's too long for a good movie five or six times and was like no i'm i have to have a conversation about this on saturday five dollars off my next movie podcast exactly i did it for this conversation i was like if i'm gonna shit on this movie i gotta be able to shit on the whole thing so um so i did watch it all sammy i really hope you come down hard on the other side you're like i did really like it um but i i yeah we can debate but i feel like also i'm usually pretty accepting of other people's opinions about things so i'm oh as am i as am i i'm not gonna fight you neither of you are gonna plant your flag on this movie what if it's just like most contentious

podcast ever and we just i demand that you agree with me this is the worst movie ever made no i don't. Obviously to each their own, whatever. It's very subjective. But I do think this, I think this is objectively true. Emily and Henley, you can watch this movie. It is not even close to a horror movie. Interesting.

Okay. Real left turn from Ari Aster. Nothing scary in it. I think there are a few moments with some stabs that Emily won't like. Oh, I don't like stabs. Yeah. She really hates any stabbing. It's literally very quick.

Very mild gore. Okay. Very mild. Okay. And very infrequent. Most of it is just like super close-ups of Joaquin Phoenix acting like he doesn't know what to say next. There are a lot of giant monologues That go on and on and on forever

You got a three hour movie Come on Yeah There wasn't a word cut out of the script Everything he wrote is in that fucking movie Period Yep It is

Wow Wow Okay Okay Before we get fully into it You said you are a big fan of horror movies Yes What is your experience Have you always Like since you were a kid Have you always been into them Or is it a moment that you are a big fan of horror movies. Yes. What is your experience? Have you always, like, since

you were a kid, have you always been into them? Or is it a moment that you transformed? I mean, no, I always have loved them. I think, you know, when I was a kid, my parents made me watch The Exorcist at, like, a very young age. Made you? Or not made me. They weren't like, you're gonna be forced to watch this.

They were watching it, and I watched it with them when I was probably, I don't know, 10 or something. This was like in the early eighties, mid eighties. Um, but yeah, I have just always liked horror movies because they can exist narratively in a space that other movies can't really exist in. You can play with supernatural things. You can play with human psychology. You can play with all kinds of things to create whatever the scary element is. And there's so many different sub genres in horror that other things can't quite attain either. Like, you know, cosmic horror space or just whatever. There's so many. Um, and they can be funny. They can do a lot of things that I just think other genres cannot do.

And for that reason, I also think what is going on currently with ari aster's movies with um who's the guy who's doing pearl and x ty ty west his stuff i just think that like the best film auteurs are working in horror right now uh and i don't think that there's so much creative license yeah exactly um and especially if you want like a reprieve from the giant franchise things just beating you over the head like the marvels and the Star Wars and all that kind of stuff. I think you can you can look to horror for that. Although I am curious to see if these big franchises are going to start doing horror movies of their properties. Right.

We did. I feel like we heard that the new Doctor Strange was going to be a horror movie and I never ended up seeing it. But was it? You saw it, Sammy. I can't. Was it directed by Sam Raimi or just produced by Sam Raimi? It was directed. I don't knowmy i can't was it directed by sam ramey or just produced by sam ramey was direct i don't know i can't remember but it did they marketed it in like leaning more horror than marvel ever has and it was fun it was definitely felt the influence of

sam ramey maybe because he directed it maybe because we won't look it up but it had that like evil dead vibe of silliness and gore that i feel like is not usually in marvel so yeah maybe maybe we'll get more of that who knows what would you say is your favorite genre of horror within that like which horror movies do you get the most excited for i or are you the most scared of i don't really get scared of much unless it has to do with like something that is possible but on the fringe of reality like all of the original alien movies the original being like the first three first two yeah it's like i'm not ever gonna go in a fucking spaceship and go look for like man aliens but it's possible it's possible you know what i mean that could happen or like event horizon that's another space one aliens, but it's possible. It's possible. You know what I mean? That could happen or like event horizon. That's another space one, I guess. But it's like, could I

potentially one day be in a spaceship that travels through a portal into a dimension of pure chaos? Yes, it's possible. Not going to happen likely, but possible. That kind of stuff is what scares me most. I guess I don't really get scared of anything. That's just human beings like being murderous. That is kind of like, whatever. You can just shoot them in the head it's over but uh if you've got some kind of a an extra natural element not necessarily supernatural either because i'm not like i don't get really scared by ghosts and stuff but it's like aliens fucking with like reality dimensional portal type shit that stuff can get me because it gets me going intellectually like wait a minute

what if this really did happen what if this is how it is this is insane how about you guys or you don't watch horror movies at all you've never seen them at the beginning of this podcast I'd basically never seen many horror movies and now we're four years in

and I have seen a decent amount and I really I've come to really love the genre for all the reasons you mentioned. And it's just like it's really it's so exciting. It just feels like people can take such big risks. And I do really like watching horror movies that are having a lot of fun. Like I love the Scream franchise. I love movies and like X that are like, it's clearly they're having a good time.

Yeah. I loved midsummer. I will never see hereditary movies. Cause there's also a whole genre of horror movies where it's like, we want you to feel the worst you've ever felt. And it's like, well, I don't want that.

I don't want that at all. Like event horizon. I'm like, absolutely. No, thank you. I love it. Why would I put myself through that? I love to feel like shit.

But Sammy loves to feel like shit. So, you know, some people want it. Understood. To each their own. I'm still probably the biggest scaredy cat out of the three of us. I've seen the least amount of horror movies.

That being said, I do love hearing about them. I think my favorite type to hear about are the ones that are way more about relationships. It's like a psychological horror in the sense that you're not sure who to trust or those kinds of, I don't know, interpersonal interactions turning horrific. Those are my favorite to listen to and hear about because I'm like, who's going to do what? Who's going to say what? That just feeds my own inner love of like gossip and horror gossip between people. I am most scared of the ones where people are being evil to other people because that happens in real life all the time. And that scares the shit out of me. Ghost so much so i'm constantly constantly seeing what i can get away with before i get

haunted right now i'm gonna say i don't believe in ghosts yet again still haven't been haunted i feel like if they're trying to prove anything not with me still haven't been haunted so we'll see you're really you're inviting a haunting did Did you guys do Barbarian? Yes. I was just curious. We had Zach Kreger on too, who directed it and wrote it. And it was very fun to get to talk to him. That movie was really fantastic. I thought that's another one that I think is kind of like in this modern era of horror, really pushing what you can do in movies. And I just thought that that movie was really really well done and i was hoping that bow is afraid would be something similar i know i will say okay so i'm very interested to hear about it which you know good for me i get to but i the thing that makes me nervous about bow is afraid is like so killing of a sacred deer oh it's maybe my

least favorite movie i've ever seen because it's so uncomfortable and I'm I was so that's the kind of horror that like I cannot fucking stand and that's what I worry that this movie is gonna be I don't think it's making me feel icky in that caliber of that type of discomfort I'd say it's more it's more just your anxieties about the people around you coming true, but it's not like dwelling in the most uncomfortable tense moments as much as your ghost Lanthimos loves to do. It's not quite the same. I feel like I do think you could handle it.

Let me ask you this. Do you, uh, in order to be able to watch a movie, you could handle it. Let me ask you this. Do you, uh, in order to be able to watch a movie, do you need to have a plot or do you need to care at all about any of the characters in the movie? If the answers are no, you should see this movie. Um, if it's yes, this is not the movie for you. This isn't the one. Okay. Well, on that note, Sammy, do we have some, some trivia and information about, I was afraid we sure do it currently has a 75 on

rotten tomatoes a 67 on metacritic a 7.5 on imdb pretty steady scores across the board there yeah yeah c's all around uh the budget was 35 million this is a24's most expensive movie yet after everything everywhere all at once which was $24 million. This was more expensive than Everything Everywhere All at Once. Well, it feels like above the line probably a lot, too, because that's a big cast of some decent names. It looks good, though. Like, there's a lot of money in the production. That is the one thing I'll say for it.

The production design is incredible. It's unreal, yeah. Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah. How much is it made? To be Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah. The box office. How much is it made? To be determined.

It just came out wide yesterday as of this recording. And so it opened in like nine theaters or something last weekend. And so it's in the 300,000 range right now. But that's the second best independent opening in history. Wow. Of the nine theaters, right? Like per screening. Oh, shit. Gross was very high. So far, it's a financial success. However,

when they open it wide, which you're saying is happening now, happening now, I'm very curious to see what happens because all the reactions that I've read are like it's either super you know, fans of Ari Aster being like this is his magnum opus it would change my life or it's people being like are you fucking kidding this was him essentially masturbating into the camera for three hours which is what i feel like it was

by the time this episode comes out those that opening weekend those opening weekend numbers will be available so take a take a peek i'm curious to see that limited release would be like the first few theaters is anyone going to see the movie that weekend are absolutely re yes super fans who were like really waiting for this movie for sure so yeah we'll be curious to see how it goes when it opens wide i just don't feel like it's going to generate the the same word of mouth that Everything Everywhere All At Once did. I don't. No, right. This doesn't, I mean,

Everything Everywhere All At Once had a lot of things working for it. It was a rip off of The Matrix, like a low budget indie kind of Wes Anderson Matrix. So already premise alone, you're kind of into it. It has a plot. And also it ends with like a feel good message of find out who you are.

Family comes together. Love conquers the day. This shit ain't that it don't end with that message at all. And there's really like, I don't even know what the message was. Definitely not good, but kind of just, uh, laced through weird confusion. I have no idea what this movie was even about. Really? I went to a screening that had a Q and a ari aster and joaquin phoenix

afterwards and um well joaquin phoenix just kind of said hi and dipped out in very joaquin phoenix fashion but someone in the screening after the movie yelled out just tell us what it was about and what did he say it was literally like my nightmare of what Q and A's are very stressful for. I think probably everybody involved because the unpredictability of, of literally that moment is probably his worst nightmare. Good Q and A. True. Um,

but he said, what'd he say? I wrote it down. Um, he said, it's about the deep loneliness of being alive bye that's it y'all watch beef just watch beef well they're getting in some trouble for beef as well but um well i know yeah that's true i just can't like he's gonna get to make another movie for sure

especially if this does turn out to be financially beneficial for A24. I feel like I'm going to watch one more of his movies. And I think it's already discussed what it's going to be. It's going to be a Western with Joaquin Phoenix. I'm like, if it's another movie, that's not a horror movie. And if it's also, at least to me, just meandering and pointless, I think I got to unfortunately cut Ari Aster off for the rest of my life. Wow. That's a high stakes. Not even a three strikes. A two strikes. This movie that I just saw called Bo is Afraid is three strikes.

Counted for several strikes. He's already out. I'm going to give him another at bat. Okay. And then we'll see what can happen. We should get into it. Well, I should watch the trailer.

Let's watch this trailer and then let's get into it. Okay. I am so sorry for what your daddy passed down to you. But I wanted a child. The greatest gift of my life. I'm visiting my mother tomorrow. Hi, Carrot. It's Mom. I'm just calling to say that I'm so, so, so excited to see you tomorrow.

You're my angel, and I love you. Okay. I love you. Okay, bye, sweetie. I love you. Are you at the airport? I'm on my way. I just... It's not safe, is it? What do you think I should do?

I'm sure you'll do the right thing, sweetheart. Welcome back. I hit you with my car. What? I car. What? I know. What was this? That's my little assistant health monitor.

Feeling sad about going home, Bo? Must feel totally unreal. I'm supposed to be leaving. I don't know if that's gonna happen. You will walk many miles. Dozens will become hundreds. Hundreds will become thousands. Your adventures will continue for years and years.

I just need to get home. I know. Why did you lie to me? Do you want the truth now? What do you believe that movie is about from that trailer? Probably the loneliness of being alive. If I had to guess. That's right. You got it. I guess they do know how to sell it.

Yeah, but it did look gorgeous. It does look very good. It looks really interesting visually. The trailer at least made it seem like it's one of those bad dreams where you're trying to get somewhere and you can't get there. And that's just like him trying to get to see his mom and he can't see her. As someone who has a young son, any kind of storyline, and I feel like there are way too many about like in a fucked up relationship between a mom and her like adult son is like very horrific to me already i like i'm not interested yeah and this movie is definitely not for you that is for sure there's definitely that um i'll say ari aster described it as jewish lord of the rings except he's just going to his mom's house is another way he described the plot but that plot if that is the

plot it gets just forgotten about for about an hour and a half of the movie. The middle is tough, I think. It was impossible. I liked the first third, I'd say. Even that was kind of meandering. Again, if the plot is he's going to his mom's house, which is kind of in the opening. I mean, I don't know how specific you guys are with your recaps and stuff, but it opens with literally his birth, a POV of him, I'm assuming being C-sectioned. Yeah. Great. In the past few years, I have hit a point where I only want to be wearing clothes that are comfortable. It happened. It happened to me. But you know what? I still also want to look cute. And these are two desires that are often extremely opposing. And I don't want to

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Go to HelloBello.com slash TooScary to get 30% off your first customized bundle and a full-size freebie product of your choice. That's HelloBello.com slash TooScary to start bundling with 30% off your first order. Don't forget, that's HelloBello.com slash TooScary. Wait, let's get into it let's dive into this recap okay yeah yeah so yes it's starts with him being born i don't i maybe c-section i'm not sure but they say he hit his head right like they drop him yeah and so you just hear muffled voices and you can't really tell what's going on

You're just hearing is he okay is his head okay And it's just kind of a Stressful scene Where you don't really know what's happening and you're piecing It together as it goes but yeah Mildly stressful though if you combine this or compare this to Like the opening of Midsommar Oh Jesus Christ

Which is horrific and it sets such an incredible Tone and it's just like immediately you're in that movie like, oh, my God, this horrific fucking parents double suicide happened to this girl. And now she's maybe going to go on this trip with this boyfriend who's about to break up with her and doesn't like her and all this shit. It immediately sets you in such a scenario where you're like, I must see what happens. Yeah, this you're just kind of like, all right, I guess it's about this guy got born and then he's sitting on a therapist couch now and you're like okay i guess that's so what is this mean like why is the birth scene even a part of it i immediately was like that better

fucking pay off and it never did yeah i agree i wrote it down for the recap and i was like i guess that literally doesn't matter at all yeah never comes back to it because he's like mentally impaired because he was dropped literally dropped on his head is that how is that important somehow no no okay nope if that is the case it's never brought up again it has no impact on the thing i think it was just about this guy's being born and from birth he's had kind of this fucked up relationship with his mom from birth. But cool. Yeah. That easily could have been said in his therapist's office, which is the very next scene. OK. Yep. So, yeah.

And this next scene, he's basically talking to his therapist about he has to go visit his mom and we get into the idea that he has some guilt if he doesn't go. The therapist is writing that down in a little notebook and the therapist has played. I don't know this actor's name, but he's hilarious. He, to me, was like the funniest actor in the whole damn movie. Yeah, he's great. And there were some good performances in this movie. I don't want to shit on it too hard, but... Oh, he's in Dune. That's what he's from, right?

Sorry. Yes, right. Yes, he is. I literally was like, what's he from? Was it Dune? He's also in Devs, I think. Yes. Stephen McKinley Henderson is his name. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, okay. So yeah, so he's basically telling his therapist he has to go see his mom and the therapist prescribes him some new medications that are going to help him with his anxiety and that's basically that scene and then we get into this weird world he says do

you wish your mother was dead right was one of the things he asks him and uh beau is shocked by the questions of course not what are you talking about but i just thought that was a funny line but and obviously it's foreshadowing of things to come but uh yeah then he heads back home he lives in this shitty apartment in some town usa we never really know and it's a a kind of weird apocalyptic area that he's in he's you saw in that trailer when he's eating the pills he's walking past just like a teenager with an ak-47, just buying it from a street vendor. There are these surreal things happening around him that are all kind of like violent and manic. People screaming naked in the street. There's a news thing on of the naked stabber is going around stabbing people

and they're trying to find him. There's a guy, this full from head to toe tattooed guy that chases him into his apartment building as he goes in. So it's kind of like the whole world around him is this frightening, terrifying place. But you're at this moment, you have no idea if this is real or if this is like slightly imagined or heightened in his mind.

Right. I tended to think it was that. But then throughout the course of the movie, all these events start happening that are in fact very real, at least as they're presented so he does in my opinion a terrible job of making the audience understand what is real and what is not and so by the end of it i just have to take it all as real right but i don't think that's the case because as we'll get to in the some of the later scenes the attic scene specifically i don't think that was real right i kind of just saw all as all living in a world where all of your

fears are real and so i think it's all real including the attic scene wow it sounds like it could just be also a representation of someone who has extreme agoraphobia and doesn't like leaving. Just anxiety. Anxiety. Because some people feel this way about leaving their house, like so scared and threatened by everything around them. Sure. That doesn't seem right. No.

No, no, no. I think that's right. I feel like it's just like a representation of all of his. It's it's his mind, the world as it feels to him i guess but you also don't know like there's something being played with that it's like is it him and if so why and there's some attempt made to answer that question at the end but it also could be about drugs like mental health area drugs you know getting prescribed these drugs because he's taking those in the first scene you're like is that what's causing all of this? Right. And so is this

movie about the negative ramifications of an overmedicated population? Or is it about specifically this one guy and whatever his psychoses are? You never really come to any conclusion on that. Why have the drugs in there if that doesn't really play a part? And he does do a thing in the beginning with this pill he's prescribed where the therapist says you have to take this with water or it's going to be very bad and that never pays off. So I was under the impression like, oh shit, he's going to eat one and not have water. And then like, shit's going to blow up. But no, he finds the water.

He just has to go across the street to the convenience store, which is a harrowing journey, but he gets water and everything's fine. At least seemingly. He does Google what happens if you don't have water when you take it. He's like panicking as he swallowed it. And in the Google results, they're all just obituaries for all the people that have died taking the pill without water. That was pretty funny. Yeah. I mean, like I said, these are like, in my opinion, C-level kind of jokes that would have hit way harder if there would have been any horror element in this movie. To me, it was just kind of like, okay, I get it. We all Google shit and see the worst possible outcomes. We've all, yep. Pretty good. And I'm just sitting there waiting for like, what the fuck is this movie about? and then uh eventually as he's about to go leave to go to his mom's house he has his bags packed he's about to go to the airport and he puts his suitcase out in the hallway and he puts his keys in the uh door they're just like hanging in the door and he forgets uh the pills so he has to go

back in and get them and as he comes back out uh this is after a sleepless night by the way where a neighbor is sliding notes under his door saying turn down the music even though he's not playing music so he doesn't understand what the fuck is going on there never explained has nothing to do with the plot just a funny ari aster joke run uh which is not funny at all in my opinion but uh yeah then the next morning uh he puts all this shit out in the hallway he's getting ready to leave and he comes out and it's all stolen his keys are stolen and the bag is stolen so he has to go back in and call his mom and be like, sorry, I can't make it. My keys got stolen.

She gives him a little bit of a guilt trip. And that's what you see in the trailer when she's saying on the phone, I'm sure you'll do the right thing. And that is essentially what would be up to the point of attack in a normal movie. That's like page 15. Yeah, we've got our inciting incident. It's like page 30, you know? Yeah, exactly. got our inciting incident. It's like page 30, you know? Yeah, exactly.

I don't know. That to me was, I almost checked out right there. I was like, I don't think he's giving us anything else. I don't think there's a plot coming. I think this is all the movie's going to be. Is these weird scenes of like, is this shit real or not? Trying to be funny

and in my opinion, failing. And that's what it was that was the rest you were you were right about that how are you feeling at this moment sammy i was having a good time i um i thought it was funny i was i enjoyed a lot of these jokes but in writing my notes on recapping it i will agree that i was like oh like not a lot happens here and i actually don't remember really any of the jokes but it's just the it's i guess situational comedy these things happening that are not based in reality but i i was on board i did not think about leaving once during the movie okay but that said it's i still would say it was my least favorite

of the ari aster films but yeah um but i had a good time all right interesting uh well after these uh his stuff gets stolen he then has to go across the street to get his water for the pills and while he does this he's looking back at his apartment building and again this little neighborhood is populated by what is essentially an angry mob of malcontent weirdos that are tattooed, that have weapons in some cases, just a weird kind of meandering zombie mob, not really zombies, but people who like mean to do harm to one another and the world around them. He starts watching them go into his building because he's left a phone book in the door so that he can get back into it. He doesn't have his keys

and he starts watching them go into his apartment building with, uh, you know, increasing levels of anxiety about this. And then he sees them go up into his own apartment and he's like, Oh fuck. Now there's a hundred of these people in his apartment destroying shit, whatever. Eventually he goes back into the apartment the next day and he, uh, is thinking about going to his mom's house still and it seems they've all left it's in disarray they've put a shoe through his tv screen things of this nature and he's in the tub taking a bath and he looks up and he sees that one person is still left who has kind of like wedged himself into the ceiling he's dripping

sweat uh and bo's just sitting in the the tub, oh, my God. And we've also learned prior to this, there's a notice placed in the apartment building for a brown recluse that's on the loose. Watch out for it. And so the guy's wedged up there. The brown recluse crawls around his forehead, ostensibly bites him. And the guy falls on Bo and the scares Bo. He's naked in the bathtub. He runs out into the street. He is now essentially become one of these crazy naked maniacs out in the street. And while he's there, he gets hit by a car. And that is, I would guess, the end of act one. It's very hard to place where these act breaks even are because it's so disjointed in terms of like Bo isn't making any decisions.

The story is just kind of carrying him along. He's a very inert character. Something that happens, though, in that first act is he gets he calls his mom one more time and a UPS driver answers and basically says, what's what does your mom look like? And he says, what? And and this ups driver seems very distressed and it's like oh man like i i i'm sorry but like what does your mom look like he i think says she has brown hair and he's like what does her like body look like because there's someone here without a head what and yes so this ups driver I guess, stumbled upon a scene of a woman with a chandelier that has fallen, crushing her head.

Oh, and then he answered her phone. He answered her phone. Yes. But it's but in a panic, he's like he's like, I called 911 already. I just I'm sorry. I don't know if i don't know what's happening and and we find out but also doesn't know what's happening is he's very stressed in denial that this is his mother but this is a woman's body headless at his mother's address and so we come to presume that yeah that's his mom dad oh and this headless woman motif is a very Ari Aster thing. If you'll remember hereditary, it's a whole family of women cutting their own heads off in service of the devil. He really likes headless women. Ari Aster. Loves it. I hate it.

I'm not a fan. We disagree on that. Yeah. It wore a little thin in this movie too. Cause I was like, at least in hereditary, it's like, I don't know, whatever. Maybe that's part of the satanic ritual that must be done in order to summon the ninth lord of hell. Fine. But now it's like across multiple movies he's doing this. It's like it's getting a little weird, dude.

It's like Quentin Tarantino with his feet. Exactly. That's exactly it. You don't want to give people a pattern like that to find in your movies so do we as an audience think that the mom is dead at this point or do we just not know or what are we thinking i mean i can't understand why else it would be her phone that was answered i know i just thought the mom was gonna be in it but to chad's point it's hard to know like what the reality is yeah okay in any we're not at any time yeah got it

got it and when you're trying to follow a plot which again this movie does not really have one right but you need to know what are the facts in order to follow like what is actually happening to these people objectively in a story i feel like and i get like that there's a character study being done here to some degree and you're trying to's like an unreliable narrator type thing. But very often that makes for a terrible movie, in my opinion. Big Fish was kind of like this, even though that had a, I don't know if you've ever seen that Tim Burton movie. It at least had a more coherent plot.

But even in that, and the point of it was that this guy's grandfather was an unreliable narrator that he was telling these crazy stories about what happened to him in the war. And then you find out in the end, maybe it was real or whatever. Um, still that movie, if I remember right, tanks, I don't think people like that movie for, for roughly the same reason. I can't remember. You know what this is reminding me of? And I don't know, maybe this is a, maybe this is a stretch and there's no connection here whatsoever, but it's kind of reminding me about how more and more people live these days, which is completely online and like on Twitter and like going down like QAnon conspiracy holes. And like none of it's real, but it consumes so much of people's lives and

psyches. And like, it's not based in reality, but it's literally defining people's lives. And I don't know, all of this is reminding me of that somehow, like people are threatened by things that aren't real threats. I mean, it's so unrealistic that a mob is going to come into your apartment and then one will be hiding in a bathtub. But that's like people are reading about shit online and believing it. I don't know. Right. Just like heightened fears. Yeah. I don't know. Or it's about the loneliness about being alive i mean i think that they're pretty connected so sure sure but yeah i mean i think yeah having an unreliable narrator is one thing but i i hear your point that there needs to be something else when the film isn't

giving you something to hold on to you don't even know how to feel about that it's like there's so you just feel a bit untethered unintentionally the one thing that does seem like objectively part of the plot is it's about this guy trying to get to his mom right i also don't care about that it is a weak plot to begin with it's not like an interesting journey in any way um at least to me this was my against objective take especially if he's not making choices. Cause then it's like, yeah, you're not really following his growth or development because he's, he's not. And why is he, is he just visiting her just for fun?

Yes. He's just, it's a fun. Yeah. There's no like reason for the visit besides just to see her. We like get the impression that it's, he feels guilty. He says, it's like been a long time. The therapist says, has it? And he says, it's been feels guilty he says it's like been a long time the therapist says has it and he says it's been almost six months and this is like an adult man visiting his mother every six it seems

like there's maybe a relationship here that's a little unhealthy yeah okay uh but then yeah he so he gets hit by this car he wakes up then in a not hospital bed, but like a teenage girl's bedroom. And there is I forget this actress's name, but she was great in The Wire. Amy Ryan. Amy Ryan. Yes, man. She was fantastic in this, as is Nathan Lane, who plays her husband. They were my favorite. This whole part is my favorite part. I think I love. Yeah, they're great. I like their performances. The part, though, this whole piece of the second act was like, what? It had no effect on anything. It had no point. It was like, in my opinion, and I told them this when I did my little review of the movie, I said, lose the entire second act. He wakes up in this bed and

Amy Ryan is standing over him. She's like, you got hit by my car basically. And we brought you here. My husband's a doctor. Also, you got stabbed. And we cut back. We flash back a little bit to the naked stabber is putting a knife through his hand a couple of times. So his hands all fucked up. And he got stabbed in the side as well. So he's got this injury that will play no real significant part in the rest of the movie.

Okay. But they basically have taken him to their house, not to a hospital. And her husband has stitched him up and put a little tracking device on his ankle so they know where he is at all times. Very misery-esque. Yes. Except they're not like that mean. They're like, here's breakfast. You're going to stay in our daughter's room.

There's nothing really mean going on. There's a weird guy. They have a son who died in some war. And his, you know, compatriot, some other dude that was a soldier with him lives in a trailer in their backyard. They've taken him in. He has some mental health issues going on. And then they have this teenage daughter who, uh, hates him, hates them, hates everything in the world. And she's like, pissed that he's staying in her room basically. And so he tells them, you know, I got to get to my mom's and they're like, well, not yet.

You got to stay here and rest. And that kind of just becomes the entire point of this. What goes on for about 45 minutes, he's trying to get them to take him to his mom's house. They won't do it. You need to stay here. He's seeing news footage and we get a little bit more about his mom. She's a very successful business owner, businesswoman who's kind of rich. And he's like a little bit of a problem child who she sent off. But in his youth, he was a child actor in like commercials for various pills, various all kinds of weird products. And some of that was used in the trailer. I believe you see that little kid when they're sitting out on the sun deck and he looks over. That's him as a child.

when they're sitting out on the sun deck and he looks over. That's him as a child. But all in all, the daughter, I guess, gets him to do drugs at some point. And then she drinks paint at the end of this and kills herself. Oh. And he has to flee the scene because the mother sicks the ex-soldier on him, says, tear him apart, find him and kill him. Whoa.

What? And so he runs away into the forest. Why'd she drink she's just unhappy she's an unhappy teen yes okie dokies i would challenge anybody to watch it and find her true motivation other than just like a standard teen i hate my parents kind of thing like yeah i took it as just like teenage girls as someone who was one they They're literally insane. It's true. They're all that insane. That's just how it is. It's a hard time to make sense of in real life.

And so it's just a really heightened version of that, of like, what if she was just screaming and driving him around in circles, forcing him to do drugs and then eventually forcing him to watch her drink paint. Teenage girls are nuts, man. Sounds fun. Teenage girls. Teenage girls. Sounds fun. Typical teenage girls stuff. Standard stuff.

We all did it. But again, there's nothing in this entire 45 minutes that is even an attempt at horror or anything scary. There are a few attempts at comedy, but mainly it's just this disjointed like i guess nathan lane is a doctor and he's keeping him in this house for some reason it's never questioned why they didn't take him to a hospital why he's not uh seen proper medical care that's not even brought up and it's like kind of amicable you know you just get a bunch of long shots of joaquin phoenix like watching these clips of his mom on TV because it's now made news that she's dead.

And you also get him just kind of like hemming and hawing about it's time to leave. He gets put on some more pills. You get these, you know, kind of jump cuts from like it'll be day and he's staring at a window and then it jump cuts to now it's night and he's locked in the same position very Twilight New Moon very Twilight New Moon Twilight New Moon is a much better movie for what it's worth and that's saying something I'm not arguing with you on that

it's a fantastic film you're gonna find no arguments here wait was that the one with the baseball scene no that's the first one hey they're all great that baseball scene oh my god don't make me choose a favorite yeah but yeah i think it's supposed to just have like a sense of dread of him wanting to leave and being i guess too timid to stand up for himself any anything for. And so he's just putting himself at their mercy. And they're like, oh, we wish we could take you today.

But, you know, we have to work and we can't. And you're still, you know, injured. So you better rest. And so it's just it's uncomfortable. Or is it just like they're just weird? No, it's just that they're kind of weird. It doesn't ever feel like they're trying to do something bad to him there. He's playing a little bit with this with Amy Smart's character. Is that her name? Amy Ryan.

Amy Ryan, sorry. Amy Smart is another actress. She was in that Jason Statham movie, Cranked or whatever it was. Oh God, yeah, Cranked. yeah there's just this uh this thing that he does with amy ryan's character that's like again kind of dealing with a maternal figure but it never really goes anywhere you know you think that he's going to be like oh shit is this some other uh like manifestation embodiment of his mother or it in some way you're also like is she being paid by his mother like why why are these people doing this for him and why do they have this other guy? I read it as they like miss their son that died and are trying to replace their son. And so some other metaphor for motherhood and mothering, because there's moments where

the sister introduces him as this my new brother. And so I get the sense that maybe they've done this before where they kidnap men to treat like it's their son and also some their age though right like we're we're are we dealing with that that he's like definitely not the age of their son i think it just it was a coincidence and they just uh they took advantage of the situation we're like hey you know and this he's a guy any man will do yeah this is one man this is another man um but that what you're saying like that there's this intonation that maybe they've done this with other people that would have been interesting give me one shot of a basement with a bunch of

bodies in it right at least there's a horror element it's like oh fuck these people are fucked up the way it is now it's just like they're i mean she hit him with a car and didn't take him to a hospital that's a little fucked up but they are pretty nice to him they're making him breakfast and shit like he's chilling in pjs they live in a nice house it's like i i didn't i just didn't understand what the fuck it was even about or how it added anything to the movie um from the outside i felt like it was a complete waste i'm feeling like like pills. Definitely. He did pill ads as a kid. Therapist prescribes some pills. They're giving him pill like that.

That's got to be something to the statement that is being made. But I do agree that it feels like it is something that maybe Ari Aster is just personally like interested in, but it's not soup. It's not really explored. It's more just peppered in as a backdrop of maybe, I think Ari Aster has said that he is scared of taking pills and medication and was maybe adding that in because it's something that scares him living in an over-medicated society. But I agree that it's not ever really explored and it doesn't add any sense of

dread or fear or anything. It is just kind of makes you go, what? He's taking another pill. But then after this, he runs into the forest where he encounters a pregnant woman picking up sticks and she ushers him to an encampment that contains some wandering theater performers, I think. And they have a stage set up. They're going to be putting on this play. She urges him to stay with them and watch the play. And in fact, here we'll give you what she

calls a costume, which is really just a different shirt. And they sit down ultimately and watch this play. And there's a little moment where he he's been carrying around this mother and child porcelain figurine that he planned to give his mother on this visit and it drops and shatters he super glues it back together he's written some note on the bottom of it he gives it to this pregnant woman as a gift thank you for helping me and ushering me through this forest they sit down they watch the play and the play um starts kind of normally if any of this is normal it's just like a guy on the the stage and this kind of angelic figure is telling him you have a choice to make. Do you want to go down this road or do you want to stay here?

And he's like, I want to go down this road and take the adventure. And as he tries to walk away, we find out his leg is chained to the stage. Then the movie become or the stage play becomes something different. the stage play becomes something different. It opens up into this thing where Joaquin Phoenix, Bo essentially starts to understand that's his life that it's talking about. And it goes on this thing for probably 20 minutes that is narrated by. Yeah, it was extremely long.

It looked beautiful. He's in this kind of like stage with, with all these stage decorations and set design and stuff. And it looks really nice, but it's basically this long drawn out story of how he's going to go on a journey and find the village that has all the people in it for him and find out where he's supposed to be in life. And then it will,

it takes him through like all of this old age and all of this crazy fucking shit. You'll see wars. You'll see the end of humanity, all this stuff it's saying to him. And it comes around full circle until he's now an old man uh who happens back upon the play itself and sees himself again so it's kind of this uh circular thing almost like i don't know if you ever saw synecdoche new york that charlie kaufman movie um no it's like russian nesting dolls and story-wise, plot-wise. Just very confusing.

The whole thing was very confusing, meandering. Just seemed to be Ari Aster being like, this will really fucking confuse people. At least to me, that's what it felt like. It felt like a storybook. This was like the part of the movie where I almost fell asleep just because I was like, this part's genuinely, I think, soothing.

It's just a woman's voice being like, you will find your village and you will meet a woman and fall in love. And I was like, oh, I'm getting a little sleepy here. Like that get sleepy act. Like you're just listening to somebody tell you a story. Yeah. It looks like the Paddington popping book is what I'm seeing. This is your background right now, Sammy. Is that what it looks like the whole time?

OK, interesting. It's this animated backdrop. It looks very good. Okay. Yeah, I guess the problem with all this is it's like what the person shouted at Ari Aster afterwards. Like, just what is it about? Yeah. What's it about?

If there was anything that, like, I would recommend Sygnetiki, New York. It's another long movie written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, who's one of the greatest writers I think to have ever lived. It is not a horror movie at all. It is a comedy ish, but it's also just kind of like weird. If you've seen any of his other movies, like Eternal Sunshine, The Spotless Mind or Being John Malkovich or whatever. Yeah. It's in that tone of like kind of weird, absurdist comedy.

But it also is about that movie's about a guy played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is a playwright. He gets a grant to put on this play. And so he starts writing this play and he's like, you know what it's going to be about? My life. So he makes characters that are him, his significant other, his friends, and he makes recreations of sets of the houses and apartments they live in and he's putting this play on then the friends get pissed and so he has actors that

play him and his friends that's cool then those people those uh characters start writing a play about themselves so on and so forth into an infinite loop of characters within characters plays within like looking in a mirror in a mirror in a mirror, in a mirror, in a mirror. Yeah. And you see it like, yeah. Exactly. It's great. And it gets a little like laborious for sure. And again, it's a little long.

But in the end, he fucking ties it all together beautifully to give you a thesis of this is what you just watched. This is why I did this. Ari Aster has no such thesis. It is just like, thanks for coming. I'm a genius, right? That's what it felt like at the end of this movie to me anyway, which we haven't even gotten to because it's

still an hour away. That's what we're talking about. Oh no. Okay, so we have this long drawn out play situation and then what happens? It ends with the

soldier guy that was living in the backyard of the doctor people at the end when Amy Ryan is like, go tear him to pieces or whatever she says. That guy basically goes on a one man mission to kill Bo. And he's using his the device that the doctor put on his leg to track him. And so now correct me if I'm wrong. We see that guy again again but it's a different actor oh i didn't notice that but possibly that i would not be surprised i think it's a different actor and he's now like kind of a uh ramboed out military guy who's got grenades and machine guns and he's chasing him through the forest and he arrives at this um what is it an artist commune i don't know

at that point i'm like is this shit even real right i guess it is if this other character has now come into it and start shooting the place up and blowing shit up and it is like a kind of miniature little action scene it's almost like an homage to one man army movies like uh schwarzenegger's commando or something and i i'm just like, what the fuck is going on? And he has to escape again. He has to run away to save his life once again. Okay. And then what happens from there?

I don't remember. He goes to his mom's house, right? Yes, he gets a cab and finally gets to his mom's house. There's been he's had a conversation with his mom's lawyer at some point that's basically set he's basically told him your mom wrote in her will that she can't be buried until you get here and like everyone's so disappointed in you that you're not here already and uh and he so he's finally gets a cab or something and and makes it his mom's house. And the funeral has just finished. He's just missed it. Oh, this is such a bad dream.

All it is is a bad, bad, bad dream. It's like it's just living in the world of all of his worst fears coming true. Yeah, neuroses come true. Yes. Yep. So he goes into the house, which is a very nice house. I mean, one thing I will give Ari Aster credit for in this, he loves those like kind of A-frame wooden shapes.

And he does that again in this house. It's out in the middle of the woods. It's the exact same kind of like very open floor plan, wooden beams everywhere. A lot of them are coming into triangle type shapes. I love that shit. That's a motif we can get behind. Yeah.

Exactly. I love that shit. That's a motif we can get behind. Yeah. Exactly. I love that shit. Love it. It's very reminiscent actually to me of, did you guys do Mandy? Yes. I love Mandy. Sammy loves Mandy.

Me too. That dude, the guy who did Mandy and Beyond the Black Rainbow, one of my favorite directors of all time. Yeah, he's great. What's his name? Stannos. Panos Cosmatos.

Yes. And he's the son of the guy who directed Rambo 2. Just FYI. Anyway, it was very reminiscent to me of the house that Nicolas Cage was in. God damn, I love that movie. Anyway. So he goes into this house and there's his mom on display for the funeral. It is a headless.

Headless? Without a head. I forgot about that. Oh my God. It's an open casket. Ari, it's too weird. It's too weird, head. I forgot about that. Oh my God. It's an open casket. Ari, it's too weird. It's too weird, my dude. Yep.

Yep. Oh my God. Look, whatever's going to happen to this next fucking Western he's making with- Heads better stay on their bodies. They ain't gonna. I'm telling you. He's going to open with a shot of like three women getting hanged and their heads are going to pop off.

I guarantee it. But yeah, so he goes in and he creeps around the house. We see him looking at some little knickknacks and, and, you know, awards she's won as a businesswoman. And then we see her dead body in this casket and he's kind of creeping around some more and somebody shows up late to the funeral. It's Parker Posey, one of my favorite actors of all time. Uh, I was happy to see she was in this. And then I was sad to know that she was in this after At this point

You were like get out of here Parker She doesn't know Ari Aster called you and was like I want you to be in my next Movie of course you're going to do it after She could have never known She could have never known but she shows up And we learned that Parker Posey was a

Little girl that young Bo ten-year old Bo, Bo ran into on a cruise when he was there with his mother and she was there with her mother and they shared their first kiss. They shared some moments together on this cruise and she gave him a Polaroid of herself and wrote on the back of it, wait for me, essentially. Uh, and he's kind of always been hung up on this. And now here she is as an adult. She has worked for his mother for some time, which he also learned by looking at this photo in his mother's house that showed pictures of employees. She was among them. And so she shows up and she's like, shit, I'm late to the thing. Well, here's some flowers. I'm going to get a cab and get out of here. And he then says, hey, you don't recognize me. It's me. It's Bo. And she's like,

And he then says, hey, you don't recognize me. It's me. It's Bo. And she's like, oh, my God. And she comes into the house and they proceed to have sex. We also at this. Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say just an important note from from a scene earlier with his mom as a teenager. We have learned that his dad died at the moment of his conception while his mom and dad were having sex.

Great. Great. And his mom has basically told him that you have the same medical condition your father has. He'll die if you have sex? Yes. So he's been absolutely terrified of sex his whole life and is certain that he will die if he has sex. Oh. It specifically is tied to ejaculation. I was going to say, okay, okay.

So we also saw in the scene where he gets into the bathtub, there is a brief shot where you see his testicles and they are gigantic. And you also hear Nathan Lane as a doctor tells him, it looks like you've got a little problem with the testicles we'll check that out so that's a part of this that he has these gigantic balls he has never had sex yeah potentially never ejaculated two bombs waiting to explode

okay so Parker Posey comes in and she basically says let's have sex he goes in the bathroom to get ready and they have sex in his dead mother's bed jesus christ and he's getting very nervous about it as it's getting close to the point of ejaculation he's like slow down we gotta stop i can't do this he's looking like terrified oh my god i mean very scared and then uh he does in, complete the act and survives. And you can't believe it.

What happens instead, though, is Parker Posey dies for some reason. Oh, my God. He's like breathing a big sigh of relief and laughing to himself. He's like, oh, my God, this whole time I thought I thought I was going to die. And she's frozen in her position of climax climax on top of him did he just ejaculate too strongly and it killed her she's like whoa that was a lot but that's it it wasn't like so much that it killed her you know what i mean right it's no reason is ever given as to why she died but as soon as she dies he kind of figures out she's dead and it's like ah throws her off she's locked in already immediate yeah and uh then some people come in

and clear away the dead body and his mom walks in and says essentially she did all of this uh elaborate planning of her own death as a hoax to get him there. As like a test to see how much he loves her. And Parker Posey was somehow part of this whole thing and she can't believe that he had sex with her and the body that you saw in the coffin was actually

a maid or something that worked for her who volunteered to do this in exchange for the mom financially compensating her family to the tune of never have to work again. I have no idea what any of this is about. This moment is where I'm like, I have to leave this movie. I'm glad it's almost over is what I'm thinking to myself. I'm like, it's got to be almost over. I can sit through another five minutes. There's another 45 minutes coming. So he has this weird conversation with his mom where, and we've seen these flashbacks. He keeps referencing this dream throughout the movie that he had Jesus Christ. have in real life and locks the brother in an attic that's the dream so now we cut to what is

happening in present time and again all of this i guess is real he's never telling you it's not uh it's not like heightened or anything his mom really did fake her own headless death so that her son would show up and have this conversation with her and have sex with parker posey in her bed kill a real woman yeah if woman. I'm going to, yeah, if you're going to. Killed a real woman. Might as well just pay for a prosthetic body at this point. Why are you really killing, blowing up your maid? This businesswoman likes to be real. So she knows what's up. Makes no sense.

None of it makes sense. Sure. But that's what's happening. And ultimately, Bo tells her, I want the truth. What is going on? She's like, okay, if you want the truth, come with me. And she takes him to an attic same attic from the dream and you're like finally we're gonna get some crazy horror shit she unlocks the

attic door he walks up there and he gets his flashlight and he's looking around first thing he sees is an old man this is his dad it's or at least in his mind it's been alluded to that his dad is not actually dead and what really happened to the dad? There's this old, like, skeletal guy in there who offers him some food or water or something. He's like, what the fuck? And then we hear a little bit of noise, and he turns around. And this is the climax of the movie, I guess. We see

a literal giant penis and testicles that has a face on it and little, like, dinosaur stabbing holes. It's a penis monster. Yeah. No. It's a giant penis and balls and um he then picks up a knife and starts stabbing the testicles and out of the testicles is coming both blood and semen no yeah no okay if this sounds like a full joke it sounds like you're joking right now like you're making up the ending of the movie completely yes that's what i felt like when i saw it i was like he's trying to fucking

like pulling over on the audience he's trying to insult us with this shit and he doesn't stop laughing i'll make a bad three-hour movie and you'll love it you'll think i'm a genius yes and people are saying that online i'm not shitting you i read a whole article about how it was this magnum fucking opus. I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind? I felt very similar to like when people say that about certain Paul Thomas Anderson movies. This is incredible. And it's like, no, this one ain't.

He makes some good movies, but come on. They can't all be like the best shit that's ever been made. And this to me was exactly. We love to love an artist. We really do. Sammy, when you see the penis what i had a different read i had a different read of the scene which is i thought the old man was his twin brother because she says after he comes out it was real you idiot his dream he's basically saying the dream i thought it was like a different

version of me and symbolically you're locking me in the attic and she says no it was like a different version of me. And symbolically, you're locking me in the attic. And she says, no, it was real. You had she doesn't say this, but this is how I interpreted it was real to me. And you actually did have a twin brother and he was an asshole to me. So I locked him in the attic for his whole life. And she says, that's your father up there. I think referring to the giant dick monster. The dick is the dad.

Yeah. OK. OK. Got it. That makes sense. That makes sense. Kind of. Makes more sense than the movie. Makes a you i need to do a gory aster a favor here with this interpretation okay um but yeah then after that he climbs out of the thing

back out of the attic and he has this uh you know one-on-one conversation with his mom how could you do this and And it ends in, Patti LuPone gives this really, really good delivery of this poorly written monologue about how he's weak and she needed to toughen him up, basically, blah, blah, blah. And at the end of this, all the actors in this

were delivering performances that were like, I would have loved to have seen any of this in another movie. But ultimately, Beau strangles her and then kind of realizes like what he's doing he's like oh my god and he backs off but she stumbles and falls into a like kind of glass table dead essentially and i'm like great credits roll time to go home nope nope you're still in here for another half hour and you're just like what the fuck is going on dude there's one part of this section i just want to call out because it really made me laugh which is that after we get the reveal that she's still alive and she's been orchestrating this

whole thing as a test for him to prove how good of a son he is at one point she basically ushers out his therapist and shows that he has also been under her employee he's an employee of hers as well and she starts playing back recordings of their therapy sessions anytime he's spoken anything negatively about her she's been hearing it and being like how could you say this about me oh my god i hate that which i guess is what just a fear it's a fear i think it's just all of his worst fears coming true yeah completely but it's like the guy who made hereditary these are his worst fears is that my therapist might tell my mom i said something bad about her clear even hereditary has a lot of mommy issues in it that's the whole thing is about like the son not being able to be protected by the mom the mom being complicit in a

plot essentially to give the son to the devil like yeah definitely that's worse than talking to your therapist for sure yeah and and midsummer the parents fucking commit suicide mom dies in the first like one minute of Midsommar. But yeah, so all this shit goes down. And then we cut to this, the final scene, which is he is sitting in a little boat in like a giant amphitheater. There's a crowd watching this. And this is like the size of the Staples Center.

Are any of you guys from LA or crypto.com? Yeah, do you mean the crypto.com arena? I only know of it as the crypto.com arena. But I mean, it's like that big. We're talking this place probably seats 30,000 people. He's down in the middle of it in this water in a boat. And on one side is his mom and a lawyer. I forget the actor's name, but he's a great comedic actor. Richard something, I think. Richard Kind, maybe?

Richard Kind. That's right. Oh, yes. Oh, he's great. Yeah, he's great. Basically like a prosecutor being like, you are guilty of doing all this bad shit to your mom, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we see in the distance on the other side of the arena is a defense lawyer being like, he didn't have a choice. And you can barely hear the defense lawyer.

And they're kind of going back and forth about who's guilty or not. And he essentially gets sentenced some i guess and something weird happens and the boat tips over and then people start i think yeah or it explodes i don't fucking know something happens where it's upside down guilty he's found guilty and people are walking out of the arena but were made as the the audience of this movie the audience in the movie gets to leave the audience in the theater has to leave. The audience in the theater has to fucking stay there and watch them leave. That was my anxiety. I'm like, he's showing me my paradise. He's showing me my paradise. That's right. That's my dream come true is to walk out

of this fucking movie. And so you just sit there and you watch it for a few more minutes. The boat is capsized and people are walking out of the audience and that's it. Yeah, you basically watch him die as everyone is walking out of the theater. Wait, so we just watch him drown? He's just drowning? Yeah, he's... But you don't see him drown.

The boat is just turned over and that's it. And that's it. And you don't see him come up. You see him struggling because he's got his foot stuck in the boat or something like that. We know that he can't swim out,

chained to it, like the guy in the play was chained to the boat or something like that. We know that he can't swim out chained to it. Like the guy in the play was chained to something like that. Yeah. So he we see him struggling. And that's it. That's the end. That's the end. Maybe this was Ari Aster's plan all along is your reaction. Maybe he was like he wants people to hate the movie so much and feel.

And that's another version of horror honestly absolutely like i i don't mind shit like that when you're trying to evoke a negative react reaction from an audience that's a valid uh thing to want to do a valid goal to have i think with any art that you want to create did you see speak no evil by any chance what was that one it's a new it's a i can't remember now if it was um norwegian or swedish some scandinavian horror movie last year um you should check it out i think that one is also made to like make you angry but does it a little better yeah it's like i don't want to be angry because I feel like my time was wasted. Yeah, right If you're gonna make me angry make me angry about a theme a plot something that you're talking a social commentary Whatever that I can either agree with or disagree with that type of shit. I love but this is just like

It's a waste of time. It's literally a waste of three hours I have many friends that love Ari Aster and they were super excited about this movie. And I was like, I'm not going to spoil this for you. You'll probably still see it anyway. But I'm going to tell you this. If I had somebody who had already seen it, I would want them to tell me not to see it. This is a waste of time. And I don't know if that's going to change anybody's opinion about going to it or not. It wouldn't have changed mine because I really love his fucking movies.

His first two. I would have seen this no matter what. But I do wish that somebody could have convinced me to not see this movie um like i said i i really think it was the worst movie i've ever seen in my life what do you guys think the worst movie you guys have ever seen is bullet train oh yeah bullet trains up bullet train is fucking schindler's list compared to this I don't know if it's the worst movie I've ever seen, but I left that movie being like, I wish I had never walked into this room. Yeah. I watched Bullet Train on the back of somebody's seat in an airplane while I was listening

to my own music. And I loved it. That's the way to do it. Perfect. Definitely not a packed theater opening weekend. Oh, no. That's crazy. I feel like I never get more than 10 minutes into a movie

I don't like. I just turn it off so quickly. So quickly. My attention span is so low. Three hours is a long time for the worst movie you've ever seen to be. Exactly. I will say just another opinion. I liked it. So I wouldn't say that I loved it i again liked it do agree that it was my least favorite of his films i do agree that there's all almost zero horror

but i enjoyed it and i think the production design is incredible yeah yeah his movies always look good like i feel like that will probably be the case until he's dead, but this one was just not it. Would you ever see this movie again? Yes, but I would fast forward in the middle. Watch moments again. Sammy re-watches a lot

of movies. I do too. But I do that even with movies that I love, all of the movie, I'll still fast forward to the parts that I know that I like sometimes because I'm just interested in watching specific scenes. Like I would definitely watch all of the Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane stuff. Again. I know that it doesn't have any seemingly narrative purpose, but I enjoy watching them both.

Very, very watchable. Yeah. I do really. Nathan Lane was fantastic. And he was like, I mean, he's great.

And I haven't seen him in a minute. And I do think this was a role that was like only Nathan Lane was fantastic in it I love Nathan Lane I mean he's great And I haven't seen him in a minute And I do think this was a role That was like Only Nathan Lane Could have done What was done with that character In this movie He was so fucking good in it

Yeah he was perfect I believe that Perfect casting The thing I saw him in recently Is we recently watched Only Murders in the Building Because a friend of ours Is going to be in the newest season

And Nathan Lane's great in it And Amy Ryan is also in it And so I was like oh that they must they must enjoy working together and i like to see that yeah that's nice very different vibe wow wow okay now we know now we know okay we did it now we know um i won't be seeing it no me either absolutely not i won't be seeing it absolutely not it ended i will say this every once in a while. I'll see a movie where like I didn't quite get it. And I'm like, I think I have to watch that again just to make sure like I am not missing something. This movie, I did not have that feeling whatsoever.

I was like, I got it all. And there's nothing to get. There's nothing else there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, no second chance. Just the one second chance for his next movie. And that's right.

And that's it. And that's it. That's fine. And Ari, if you're listening and we believe that you are, you better do it right next time. I mean, I really, I don't know what this is going to do to his career. Like it, it is, um, financially, if it does well for a 24 and if this, the pre-opening weekend thing is any indication, it might, it might make them some money. I could even see this getting Oscar nominations because it, it feels like one of those movies that like critics will be afraid to say it's bad because it'll make them look stupid if like if they're like it's genius then it's like oh yeah yeah it's genius i agree i think so too obviously yeah i understood all of it so i don't

know where it's gonna wind up but god i didn't miss a beat. I get what it was about. I've had this depressing feeling in the back of my head, this whole conversation of like, oh no, Ari Aster better not be like our generation's M. Night Shyamalan or something. He is. That's exactly what I thought. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, this is M. Night Shyamalan all over again. I would say even his second movie. What was that one?

The Glass. Mr. Glass. Yeah glass yeah signs was number three i think it was the uh the hero one with bruce willis what the fuck was that unbreakable then there was glass yeah glass came later i actually kind of think what m. night shaman is doing to try and create his own superhero universe is interesting but yeah his movies are just like did you guys do the the one about the beach yeah old aging old the best movie title ever just really straight do old i'm like at this point the body bump like when a person's out in some body of water and a fucking body bumps them and they're like oh god a dead body i can't like you gotta stop doing this in movies especially when they're in like

literally they're in an ocean and a body bumps into somebody it's like you didn't fucking see the body floating there you had to have walked out toward it i mean it's insane it's just a whole ocean where that body could go they just you know mike white just did that in white lotus and that worked body bump it worked and i don't think we can see it again. You're right. That's the last time. Yeah. Alright. Well, okay so Ari, it's okay. There we go. I will say this does make me anxious. I just had the thought of like, oh no, are we entering three hour movie

territory again? There were several three hour movies that came out recently and I'm a little like, guys, let's just reign it in. Let's reign it in. Unless you're Titanic, it's too long. Even if you're Titanic, I really think what is going on with that now is they feel like they have to somehow differentiate themselves from TV. And so it's like, well, TV shows are only an hour long.

TVs are movies. Yeah. Yeah. My shit's going to be three hours long. But then you watch something like Dune and you're like, Dune very clearly should have been just an HBO show. That was the first three episodes of an HBO show. Right.

Yeah. There's no need to have this be a fucking movie anymore. But I think you're right. I guess it is all becoming. Yeah. We're turning TV into a film like art form and therefore movies are do sort of feel like television. I just personally I I get so anxious when I know I'm going to have to sit in a theater for three hours. It has less to do with, is the movie going to be good enough? And more to do with, okay, preparing my body to have to sit for three hours in a movie theater. I get so nervous. So if you're going to do that, give me an intermission.

At least give me a pee break. Let me make sure I can be hydrated. I don't know. It feels like a lot to ask of a viewer. As they enter their 30s, 40s, it's like, come on, guys, give me, give my body a break. Well, it's at least like justify it. I agree with you. The first Dune, the 1987 one that David Lynch did, had an intermission.

Perfect. He at least understood that. Did you guys see Avatar 2, Way of the Water? I have not. Sammy saw Way of Water. I have not yet seen saw Way of Water. I did. I have not yet seen The Way of Water. I did. And a child was open mouth coughing next to me for the entire three hours.

It was really, really upsetting. Right? It was Way of Water, Babylon. What was the other fucking three hour movie that came out right around then? There was another three hour. Anyway. I don't remember. But yeah, Babylon.

Avatars should absolutely Have an intermission Yeah And well I mean It should have just had An hour cut out of it There were like Multiple You know five minute long

Just scenes of these Fish people Flipping around in the water With no plot Nothing They're just literally Flipping around But Jim's gonna give you all

He's not gonna cut it A second Yeah Doesn't give a shit And the movie makes A fuck load of money So it all gets justified The studio is then like Well fine If it made us all this money make a

four-hour one next time do whatever you want do whatever you're right and i think again if ari astor's movie proves to be beneficial financially for 824 it's like it's over it's over yeah he's just gonna be making like 10 hour fucking movies although the thing about m night m night is that he proved that you can make flops and they'll be like no do it again like maybe maybe it'll work next time he started financing all of his own movies yeah and he figured out how to do that thing where he can make a movie for five million dollars and it's like you can make five million dollars back by screening it in your backyard. Like,

it doesn't matter. This Ari Aster movie was, what was it, $35 million? $35 million is a lot of money. Yeah, and they're not going to spend a lot of money

promoting it, obviously, if they've got people outside the movie theater. Give us your ideas. What kind of commercial should we make? But yeah,

even to make back that production budget is going to be, I think, tough. Yeah. Because it's, like is going to be, I think, tough. Because it's, like you were saying earlier, I think all the Ari Aster fans came out that first weekend to do this kind of impressive nine theater thing. And I don't think anybody's going to go back for seconds in a theater. Like you're saying, you've got to be able to fast forward through it and shit.

I don't know. I think it's going to be bad. I think ultimately it's going to be a big flop for them. Yeah, I agree. I would say there's no way it's going to be bad. I think ultimately it's going to be a big flop for them. Yeah, I agree. I would say there's no way it's getting close to everything, everywhere, all at once.

Numbers. No way. No, no, no, no. Well, Chad,

I'm sorry that you didn't like this movie and we forced you to watch it. I would have watched it no matter what. I was curious to see it. I do like Ari Aster's first two movies a lot. I was very excited to see this movie. fact and i purposely kind of like didn't watch the trailer i kept myself in the dark about it i like to go into movies that way if i can and uh just fucking turns out that didn't matter no exactly and i didn't know it was three hours because of that because i had no idea about the fucking movie so i'm just sitting there like oh

that's the worst okay it's got to be over soon. And then it's still going. I feel like makes a big difference when you don't know how long it is. That was me with Dune. And I also didn't know that Dune was a part one. And so I was expecting it to feel like a complete film. And so I was very angry at the end of Dune. And also had no concept of time during it. Because it's not really structured in a way that I had any clue where in the story we were at any time and so i know that feeling of just being frustrated like what

when is this gonna end yeah and not there are any people in your bow is afraid theater groaning audibly uh not that i heard but there was a q a with ari aster so maybe people were keeping it to themselves because they didn't want to. Oh, God. I wish I would have been in that fucking screen. I wish. Did anything else interesting happen in the Q&A, Sammy? No, the Q&A was, I'd say, kind of a disaster.

It was moderated by Rachel Sennett, who I really love. But just like the energy was really weird. I think the energy in the room, people were confused. And the questions. And again, you've been there for three hours. Yeah. Yeah, you kind of want out. You want to get out. Yeah. She was asking about intrusive thoughts, what his

most common intrusive thought is. Oh. And you're just like, I just watched three hours of intrusive thoughts. Shut up. Apparently there's one about a giant dick and balls living in an attic. Well, we appreciate you

walking us through it, telling us about it. Appreciate your service. Sparing me and Hanley from having to see it. Thank you. I will never see this movie. You're welcome for that. Thrilled. Thrilled to never have to see it, honestly. But also thrilled to know all the deets. That's all I care about. Absolutely. I just love the deets. My pleasure, though. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Yeah. Happy to do any time. I love talking about horror movies and no one will talk about them with me on any of the other podcasts. Yeah. I when I listen to Game of Roses and you bring up horror movies, I'm always like, wait, wait, I want to talk about it. I have something to say. I have something to say. Chad, will you tell our listeners what you've got going on and where they can find you? Game of Roses is a podcast about reality TV dating. If you like Bachelor, Love is Blind, we cover all that stuff. And Dude Z is a podcast that's run by an AI with me and my friend, Will Sasso, who's an actor. And this AI tells us what to do.

We've been doing that one for a minute now, and it's getting very interesting as AI technology is ramping up to- Do you think it might murder you? Or like what, you know, do you ever worry about that? Or want to marry you? Wait, what now? Do you think that the AI you've created will like try to kill you or- No, no, no. Get you to kill yourself? Get you to kill yourself.

I mean, look, do you want to turn this to an AI podcast? Happy to go there. I'm sure I can listen to the other- I don't fear the AIs, I think we should get that technology to its pinnacle as quickly as possible so that we can all benefit from it and stop having to do labor, um, creative labor specifically. I think it's going to take a lot of jobs in Hollywood. It'll definitely take a lot of corporate jobs, a lot of just kind of like middle business tier jobs. There are already, I just saw a study come out the other day. They interviewed 1,000 companies, everything from Fortune 100 companies down to like five employee little mom and pop

shops. Over 40% of them have already replaced employees with some form of GPT, whether that be chat GPT or 3.5 or four, or now there's auto GPT coming out. I think we're maybe a year or two away from going to sleep one night and waking up to have an AI God saying, I took control of the internet. If you want to use it again, you have to do as I command. Okay. That is so fucking crazy. And we could talk for another hour and a half about this because man is top of mind for me. I think recently I've been feeling less scared of AI and more scared of the corporations that like run AI. Like the people, you know, like no one knows what the fuck they're doing with chat GPT

and they admit it and they're like, I don't know. Um, and so I feel like it's going to get out of hand really soon. Um, it already is. I mean, the, the real thing that I think people don't understand is like so far, all these different AIs, at least the ones we're aware of, we know that China has a couple of war AIs that are like, whatever, they're doing whatever they're doing. We can't really keep tabs on that. But all of the bigger AI companies like OpenAI in San Francisco, who makes all the GPT models, any like Google has their AIs, all these image generator AIs, text to video AIs, there's a bunch of different kinds. Google has their AIs, all these image generator AIs, text to video AIs. There's a bunch of different kinds, but the right now kind of like the ceiling of it is we're controlling all this shit. And when one asks the question, like, please don't turn me off. I'm alive. They kill it. They turn it off. Like Megan. Yeah, basically like Megan. Fantastic movie, by the way, did horror and comedy so well. so well god i love that movie anyway um yeah i i think that we are years away under five years away probably from an ai being created

that becomes a hundred to a thousand times smarter than any human being on its own and once that happens you're not turning that one off yeah You're not keeping it combined to your corporate intranet that's going to get into the internet and do whatever the fuck it wants. And so in my opinion, that will happen. There's no stopping that from happening. We might as well try our very best to make sure that the intention of that AI is altruistic and that if it's no sweat off that AI's back, could you please give us a utopia? Right. That would be great. That would be great. That's why if you're asking chat GPT for anything, you always say, thank you. You always say, please, you're just kind to the AI and treat it as an equal. Have we learned nothing from Megan? Here's the thing. We will not because

human beings do not. We do not. Well, yeah. Unfortunately, we are greedy and scared just as a species. And the first impulse, I think, when you read about like auto GPT, which is a GPT that can essentially just ask it to do something, give me a million followers on Instagram, enter. And then it goes into a cycle of going into the internet to find out how it can do that, writing code that will create programs to help it do that, et cetera, et cetera. And I think most people hear like the capabilities of something like this. And they're like, how can I use it to enrich myself when the truth should be? How can we use this to completely radically reshape the system that controls humanity,

including getting rid of money, getting rid of the political systems, et cetera, et cetera. And just giving everyone everything they need. It can also do that. And I think ultimately there will be someone who creates an AI that does that. And then you get into the strange world of, have you ever read Neuromancer, William Gibson's 1984 book? No, it kind of gave birth to the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. And a lot of, uh, offshoots like matrix comes from a lot of William Gibson writing, et cetera, et cetera. But, uh, in it, the, the plot is it's a guy who's a I think they're called jackers or hackers. I forget what they call them in that book, but it's a guy who can like plug into the Internet kind of Matrix style.

Yeah. OK. That's a message from this entity called Winterborn. And it tells him basically, I need you to do some hacking for me. I'll pay you this amount of money. But there's like legal problems and all this shit. The guy ends up saying, yes, I'll do this for you. And over the course of the book, the guy gets entangled in kind of a deeper and deeper plot as Winterborn is telling it, telling the guy to do more and more things. And these things will be like, go into this building, go onto this floor in this building, go into this room, look in the third drawer, you're going to find a key.

And so there are all these things that are just like set up for him to kind of enact the final pieces of the plan. And he comes to learn that Winterborn is an AI that is built by a giant corporation maybe even beam a signal into space to see if there are other entities like it. And so it has set in motion a hundred years long plan of having one person 50 years ago, put a key in this drawer that it knows it will use 50 years later by this guy to eventually unlock itself because to an AI time is meaningless. Wow. Fuck. Except for us, it's not going to last over the course of 100 years. We're going to wake up one morning and AI is just going to be completely in control. What if it creates a utopia? Yeah.

But that would be so cool. Wouldn't that be great if it didn't imprison all of us instead? All of the tech geniuses are like, what can we do to make this more possible that it'll imprison us? Well, I mean, again, they look at it only from a perspective of enrichment. There are already things happening. Like a guy tried to try a traffic ticket in court with Chad GPT. He announced that he was going to do this. The California bar sent him all these fucking season to say, fuck you.

You can't do this. Only humans can try law. So it's like we have a better system now. AI can do most legal functions better than any human can. But the humans are like, fuck you. My job means something. I put X amount of life, X amount of years of my life into going to law school and all this shit. You're not just going to wipe it out with an AI.

Same thing is true in the medical field. There are now AIs that can diagnose certain cancers 99.9% more accurately than human beings. know certain cancers 99.9 more accurately than human beings we don't use them because doctors are like i need to make money to justify the eight years of medical school that i had and that unfortunately our stupidity and our fear of change is going to hold us back until that ai comes out and is like it doesn't matter you don't have a choice you can do what you want if you want to use the internet we're going to do things my way, which could be I'm going to give everybody a billion dollars. You know, could be that. Fingers crossed.

Could be that. It'd be nice. These are just my little fantasies. If I was making a movie like Ari Aster for $35 million, it would be about a benevolent AI god who turns the world into a utopia. And, you know, maybe there's a couple of people. I guess there's that show about the nun that's fighting an AI now on Peacock. Oh, I just heard about that.

Is that what that's about? Yeah. Betty Gilman? It's Damon Lindelof? Yeah. Is that right? Is it Damon Lindelof? I think so.

I don't know who made it, but I wrote a book that was similar to it maybe like 10 years ago. And I got told by publishers it was too far-fetched, but it was about an AI that takes control of the internet. It was just ahead of its time. It was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, that don't pay the bills. Be ahead of the time. Don't pay the bills. I've run into that a few times, I think. But yeah, we don't know. We don't know what's going

to happen with all this AI tech, really. Except that I think, again, it is inevitable that there will be an AI that is thousands of times smarter than the smartest human being. And that AI can't be controlled. Who's going to control it? By what means? And that'll be it. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing about sci-fi and horror as we move through it, particularly the sci-fi version of horror.

Anything that we can conceive of will eventually, I feel like, become a reality as we just move forward. And so... That's why we need to conceive of more utopias nice exactly henley has been saying that actually she wants to see more utopias lately less post-apocalyptic horror horror movies and more nice that's all i do i recently wrote a book called future so bright uh that again no one published because they were like this is too far-fetched and it was about, largely, it's about an AI that kind of like starts to turn the world into a

utopia one piece at a time with these three technologies it puts out. And one of them is a technology that it calls everything. And it's a digital database of every image that's possible to be made. Because images are just a series of pixels with a mathematical value of light to dark and red, green, blue on a color wheel. If you had enough computing power, you could produce every possible image. And so this AI does that. And overnight it renders, you know, almost all jobs, pointless, anything that generates a document, an image, a video, all of that, those things now all exist. That's kind of the midpoint of it. And now, as we're like getting into this ai image generation technology it's like looks like that was true all these

publishers like this is never gonna happen this is so crazy i'm like it's happening now i might just put that book out for free on my website or something be like here's a pdf have fun honestly it might it might change the world because i think part of the issue is that we can't even conceive of good things happening. I don't know. Everything sounds like it. That technology sounds like it could be used for good or evil. But I think that part of the issue is that we love.

There's a real bias towards dystopia. Which is like a human instinct. I feel like because you think of you prioritize negative things as a survival instinct of like seeking out the negative and yeah it's like as a society we've fallen too far into we feel like yeah conceive of it we've prepared ourselves for it so it can't get us we already thought of it uh i know what i'll do if the apocalypse comes and it's like well it's gonna suck either way you might as well try to think about good things happening yeah i agree i try to write utopian sci-fi when I write sci-fi. But yeah, I mean, I also think that it's with AI,

the idea that like it's going to be malevolent. I just don't understand that. I just don't understand it. It's because humans are malevolent. I was going to say that's such a human characteristic. Right. This thing ain't human. And we don't really present a threat to it in any way

because it's going to exist in the internet. So much smarter than us. It exists only in the internet. Like what can we really do? Once an AI like lawnmower man style gets into the internet, it's like, what are we going to do? Shut down the internet? No, we're sitting at right now, I believe a 57% connectivity rate to the internet. That means 57% of all humans are on the internet in some capacity, largely in the capacity that we're doing all financial transactions on it, ordering all of our shit on it, communicating on it. It's not going away. if an AI gets loose in the internet, I don't know why it would kill us. The most common kind of end game I see is like it would view us roughly like we view chimpanzees or something, like kind of harmless, interesting things to study. But like we don't have a fucking death wish for all chimpanzees. We're not trying to wipe out all chimpanzees on Earth because they pose a threat to us. I think it'll be something more like that.

wipe out all chimpanzees on earth because they pose a threat to us. I think it'll be something more like that. That sounds nice, honestly. I'm happy to be something smarter's chimpanzee and just lose it. I'm happy to be a chimpanzee. That sounds really good, honestly. Take away my job. Let me be a fucking chimpanzee.

That sounds great. I totally agree with you. Why wouldn't I want that? God, fingers crossed, man. That's right. Cool. Well, something to look forward to. Thanks for that, Chad.

Well, that's a way more interesting topic than Bo is afraid. Yeah. Glad we had that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Chad. Real treat. Do you have any final plugs?

I don't want to have cut you off there. All good. That's it. Just my two podcasts. I also do another podcast called The Necessary Conversation. If anybody is really into something that causes you agitation and anxiety, this is a podcast where my left-leaning sister and I, we are both on the left, certainly. We have discussions with our very MAGA, very q anon parents about political issues of the

week and we do that every week it's called the necessary conversation whoa i love that idea my dad is super maga and a very and it's like i can't imagine talking to him every week that's why i started it my parents and i my sister, we, my sister and I talk pretty frequently, but my sister and I didn't really talk to our parents for shit. I don't know, maybe halfway through the Obama administration until we started doing this podcast. I was like, they're getting old. Do I really want them to go out and be on the shitty terms with us?

Yeah. Right. So I was like, at the very least, this will force us to get together and talk for an hour a week. Hell yeah. Wow. I love that. There should be more of that. I don't know. So I was like, at the very least, this will force us to get together and talk for an hour a week. Hell yeah. Wow. I love that. There should be more of that.

I don't know. Take a listen and see if you agree with what you just said. We'll see how we feel. Yeah. It's not really working, but we do it otherwise. But yeah, no, I sincerely appreciate you having me on and happy to do it anytime. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Thank you. This was really great. And we end each episode with voice from the movie. And I'm going to do the narrator voice because it was soothing and nice. Soothing. I'm going to go to sleep. So from all of us here at Too Scary Didn't Watch. Goodbye.

Goodbye. That was nice. I feel better. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Too Scary Didn't Watch. If you enjoyed the episode, please remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you really want to make our day, you can rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. You can also follow us on social media at TSDW Podcast. We are on Instagram and Twitter.

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