Bugonia (2025) — "There's Andromedan code all over your Instagram. You're barely even hiding it."

Weary way. You are a high ranking of fisherman in the Royal Andromedan court. Jesus Christ on October thirty first, The truth we have there days to save planet Earth will shock you. I know what you are. I know you too.

Well, Loogo on the updated r in Select Leader's October twenty fourth, and if we were October thirty first. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I am your host, Cristasio, and I'm joined once again. I wouldn't say as always, but I am joined once again by my dear friend all the way from West Texas. He teaches over there at Texas Tech.

He is the what do you do over there again? Doctor Perlmutter? In light, I'm mos of US Professor of Media and Communication. So you would say, broadly, you have nothing to do with aliens? Is that what you're saying?

Absolutely not, absolutely, unequivocally, not a single damn thing on this episode of the Culture Cast. If you have clicked on it, then you know what we are talking about. If you have somehow wandered into this corner of the Internet by accident, let me clue you in as to what we're going to be talking about on this episode of the Culture Cast. On this episode of the Culture Cast, we'll be talking about the twenty twenty five Oscar Award nominated film. It did not win any Oscars, but it was nominated for four, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Emma Stone.

She did not win. It did not win, which is a bit of a bummer because we're gonna be talking about twenty twenty Five's begone. So the film is directed by a Yorgos Lanthemos on a screenplay by Will Tracy based on Save the Green Planet by John Jun Juan, which is a Korean language film. The film is produced by Yorgos Lanthemos, Emma Stone. Ari Astro is the name that sticks out to me as a fan of ari Astor's work, and the film stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aiden Delvis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone.

Yes, that's about the entire cast, because this movie has out five people in it effective and the film is all about Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delvis as a conspiracy theorist and his cousin who abduct Emma Stone's character, who is the CEO of a pharmaceutical company read Big Tech woman, I guess is the way I would look at it, and they kidnap her because they are they are convinced that she is an alien tasked with destroying humanity. Uh, the film will be spoiled. So if you have not seen the film, go ahead and want it and circle on back. If you have seen it, stick around though, because I think we're going to have an interesting conversation because once again doctor Pearl Mutter is asking to talk about this film intentionally.

So since you are my guest and you have asked to talk about this movie specifically, Doctor Pearlmutter, I will turn the floor over to you. Why Pogonia? Why Begonia and not save the Green Planet? Did you just not want to watch a Korean language film? Is that what it is?

Well, I was watching a BTS video last night. They've got two billion hits on YouTube, so and I've watched K drama and K historical and K videos all the time. So yeah, Flexen is K cred the c and the t T drama Turkish drama. It really is amazing seeing how many international producers have established a form of dominance in the world of media that you probably couldn't imagine that so when I was growing up, you sort of vaguely heard about Bollywood and then there'd be like English actors and a French film would be an art house film. But now we do have this international culture, and I think that's the point, is that, yeah, it is an adaptation of a Korean film.

I did not see the Korean film. In fact, I wanted to wait to maybe at some point do a separate analysis of that, because I've heard a lot of people do comparisons. I wanted to focus on Begonia, and I want to start out by saying that this is a great example that I love to talk about with my students, although I will not assign this movie to my students because I found so many of the situations to be so disturbing. I just wouldn't trust for a general classroom, maybe a very specialized class where people knew, you know, sturbing films of the twenty first century or something. But there was just a lot of stuff here that left me really shocked.

And I don't shock easily about the treatment of women the violence that's in this movie. So it is a movie that really deserves some trigger warnings. And that's okay because I think we know going into it. I don't think anybody walked into the theater and mixed it up with a new Pixar release or something like that. I was going to see Hoppers instead, and I just wandered into Begonia.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to wander into this movie. This movie technically is magnificent. I'm sort of reminded if anybody's old enough to remember the Jang ye Mo Chinese director. He made these beautiful dramas in like the nineties and the two thousands to Live and Joe dou and I remember Ciscal and that's how old I am. I remember Ciskel and Ebert revealing those films and talking about how different they were in color, Like the color was so saturated because one of the last factories to do the old style process of processing film was in China, and you could get those those reds that just blew you off the screen there.

And that what really struck me at first is how different in color palette this film is from a lot of what we've seen where it many science fiction movies, many fantasy movies are shades of beige. Right, Yeah, they're dusty, and maybe that's intentional. I mean Dune. Dune has color, but like it's a desert planet, so there's there's only so much you can you can do there. But definitely here, just in the very beginning, when we see bees, right, and they are you think you're in a David Attenborough nature documentary, right, a day in the life of the bees, because they're just rich and you see them in their detail and you sort of appreciate them, and I think that actually is setting us up for like, Wow, how beautiful planet Earth is without us, right, Yeah, I mean I think that's a point that's made repeatedly in the film, and we'll go back to it, but that saturation of the beauty of the planet is like an establishing shot for the plot to come.

I also like this film because it's a conspiracy theory movie. Now you could say one of the flaws is that there's no possibility that the conspiracy would not turn out to be true, so you're you're not wondering whether or not she's an alien because there are so many signs in the movie that she's not and things could be interpreted different ways. That it's very well done. I mean, it's not like from seeing one oh, yeah, you know, you see her pulling a mask over her reptilian face or something like that. There you could be guessing until some of the very last scenes.

But plot wise, my friend I was watching it with did not. I asked her up until the final reveal if she thought that I must Stowe was an alien, and her response up into the end of the movie. Was no, yes. So I think that's the biggest One of the biggest successes of the movie is the fact that it gets away with I think one of the hardest filmic dodges of all, which is convincing you that something is not true, but yet it has been true the entire time. Yes, absolutely.

I felt that in terms of like relation to the audience, everybody would have been disappointed if it had just been Emma Stone had been a CEO who took a workshop on what to say and do if you're kidnapped to make the kidnappers release you and think that they have a duty to be merciful to you. I think if that would be the end, if like she had just taken the guy back and like hit him over the head and she's freed and she's talking on Good Morning America. The next day about how she was so brilliant and manipulating the kidnappers. It would have been one ending. But I just I don't think the audience who went to the film would have been happy with that.

Edvie. I felt like they had to go alien. It's just a question of how and when. And I want to back up by saying I liked so many elements in this film, but I did not like the reveal system, like not only what she said, but how she said it and. The sort of details.

I felt there was a lot of problems there in terms of plot. And we'll get to it, but let's just say that for me, ninety percent of this film is technically some of the best work I've ever seen. Yeah, I agree with that. If it had won an Oscar, I would have cheered if Certainly, Emma Stone has proven that for someone of her generation, she is, if not the leads performer, then one of them. Right.

Just you think about the range of her work. Right, especially with Yorgos Lanthemos, which I think is the interesting part. You know, I wouldn't say I'm the biggest Emma Stone van I will say in terms of the people that she works with and the roles that she's given. I don't think anyone outside of Yorgo's Lanthemos has really been able to give her the role that she excelled at. And I you know, I mean Poor Things obviously is what she ended up winning the Oscar for, which is also a Yorgo's Lanthemos film.

So you know, I am inclined to agree with you. I'm actually not that big of a fan of Emma Stone, but when she works with Yorgos Lanthemos, all I can think is, this is in a lot of ways like modern day Scorsese and de Niro in terms of their ability to work well together. Because The Favorite and Poor Things and Bogonia are all pretty great movies, and obviously, you know, two of those three movies have actresses winning awards for Best Actress, Olivia Coleman for The Favorite and then Emma Stone for Poor Things. Like you know, that's that's I mean, a pretty good track record working with certain actresses as a director. So I'm I'm more excited to see what they do together than what she does on her own, because for the most part, I'm not really an im A Stone fan.

Well, to me, she reminds us of a kind of star that existed during the classical Hollywood system. And we have to remind people, say as early as nineteen tens through say the nineteen fifties, there was a propendicular system where you would be identified like MGM would say, hey, this young actress is really good, and they would sign you to a studio contract right where you would only make movies for that studio, or they would lend you out for a fee to another studio. But they wouldn't just you wouldn't just sit at home and wait for your agent to call. They would give you dancing lessons, singing lessons, horse riding lessons, gun shooting lessons. I mean, they would make you available for anything that came along, and you didn't have that much of a choice.

I mean, if MGM said okay, you're going to be in a wrestling picture and then the submarine picture. I'm sort of referring to Barton think, which was a sort of insight into the system here, But is there going to be in that kind of a picture. Your choice was like Okay, I quit the business or yes, sir, mister yeah, and mister Goldwan, I'm definitely gonna do. That, and so the actor Sam to his friends, David Sam to his friends. The actresses and actors that came out of that system were multi talented.

I mean they really could jump on a horse, they could dance, they could sing, they could do they could do comedy one month. I mean, the films didn't take as long to shoot as they do now. So you might be doing a dancing, singing comedy, and then you might be doing a dark film noir, and then you might be doing a war picture. Right. We all within six months.

And whatever you think of that system, it had its flaws. It certainly produced people who not only were good actors and actresses, but they were very well rounded. In m Stode, I mean, you have to give it to her. I mean she said La La Land and she's letter A and I'm forgetting the remember the title there that the the and then she's in this right and then, and let's talk about her role here. It's an incredibly harrowing, difficult role.

I mean I understand that she wasn't actually really obeaten and really electrocuted and really you know, tortured, but like to have to sit there on a set and credibly pretend that you've been through this trauma, and you make a list there of all the physical things and the psychological thing she's gone through. I mean, we're spoiling things here now, you know, to find the basement full of bodies, right right, just any normal human being. And of course we find out she's not a normal human being would be traumatized all along the way here, and yet she very convinced plays somebody who is incredibly smart and savvy and keeps coming back from torture disaster, you know, beating everything and keeps trying to be victorious in manipulating the people who are doing this to her.

So like you're, you're you should, if you're a normal human being, you should feel sorry for this poor woman who's being attacked like this. Then of course there's a backstory that you learn where I mean you were in right away. She's this CEO, very manipulative, not very truthful, not the kind of person in real life that you would necessarily like as a person. But you're balancing all this with like she is. I mean, you're balancing this with the idea, yeah, but this is a human being treated so badly.

Should should I should I feel sorry for her or not right? Who is she right? Because who still can't guess that? Yeah, and let's talk about conspiracy theory here, because the two characters, right, who's. Really the one?

It's really the one with the And I would say it's smart writing to have a the stereotypical kind of easily swayable sidekick or you know, you know also you know, also you know, partner in crime. I think it was very interesting to lean into the Well, there's always the one who seems impressionable that can be taken advantage of. I mean, you see it in the big in the big cases anyways, And I like that they kind of lean into that a little bit. Yes, I think again, this is a tribute to an actor who has self identified as somebody with developmental issues and autism and things like that. And I think that it's a great performance.

The script role he's given has really a lot of depth and nuance. For example, he's one of the only people who expresses a conscience about what they're doing, by what anybody's doing right, and he asks good questions like like it would have been very easy to make him into the dumb sidekick. Well, sure, Joe, whatever you say, Joe, you know, but even when he's saying I'll go along, and you see that, you get a sense, you know, there wasn't a long prologue of their background, but you get a sense that like they've been together a long time as cousins, they've been through some very tough years, They've looked out for each other. He certainly sees the lead conspirator as like one of the only people in his life who cares about him.

But yeah, he still keeps asking like are we is this right? We hold on? You know, it's. To just yeah. I mean, he's asking questions that the skeptic might answer about, like are you sure it's andrama dance?

And I want to talk about the pronunciation of and rama there. But I just felt that this was so well done that a the co conspirator was not just the slavish acolyte, right, just just taking orders and doing He wasn't in the Nazi sense that just the guy who just follows orders and just does any the henchmen or something, which very important that I think makes it part of the drama there. And of course she Emma Stone, who again like your friend, we could just read this and like she is a smart CEO. You know, she's physically trained, She's probably in better shape than both of them, and could under normal circumstances take out both of them. Almost does right in the kidnapping scene, right, she almost wins there there, And certainly she's presented as smarter than both of them, more more manipulative, and so you've got this troika.

There are very interesting characters who are not necessarily checking all the boxes of stereotype. Just going back to Jesse's character, I'm fascinated as somebody who studies conspiracy theories that I've talked about, how we're in the era of the low effort conspiracy theory. Right, Like in the past, say in the sixties or seventies, if you had a conspiracy theory like John F. Kennedy's assassination was a group project and there was the Cubans and whatever were behind it and so on, you would have to do things like you have to go to a library and find books, right, You would have to get a copy of the War in Commission report, you would have to go interview people. There's a lot of effort into producing anything recognizable as a conspiracy theory document.

Now we live in an era where honestly, people just post some AI picture on the Internet and a million people go, yeah, I knew it was UFOs, I knew it was bigfoot. We love refer to that as AI slop. Yeah yeah, And unfortunately a lot of people are agreeing with it or liking it, or I'm taking a hundred percent I would use yeah, yeah. Well, as we've talked about before, the sort of the theory that I present the students is the believing is seen. So if we believe something, then we're more likely to accept visual evidence of it than to be critical and sort of say is this picture really correct?

But the point is that Jesse is a sort of old fashioned conspiracy theorist, Like he's done this increast I guess for years, maybe part of his whole life. His mother was a conspiracy theorist, so like it's been in the family, he inherited it from his right dying mother, so he put all this effort into it, you got. I mean, if he put all that effort into I don't know, starting a business, maybe it would have done a little bit better. But you see the parallel between her, who's put all this effort into achieving wealth and power and fame as a CEO, and him who's put all this effort into something microscopic that sounds insane. Because that's another great choice here by the filmmakers is that they didn't pick a conspiracy theory, which in any way sounds plausible.

Right, They didn't pick an easy one, you know, they didn't say, like, okay, I want you to admit that this company you know, accidentally poisoned, right, and then it would have been a completely different movie. Well, a conspira it's not even a conspiracy. That's a fact which is not which is not as fun I think is I mean that obviously becomes in conspiracy theory land, that always becomes the thing, like you said that, it's it always seems like for it seemed like for a long time when we talked about conspiracy theories, we didn't have the the the inherent stretching of even base reality beyond its breaking point. But now with conspiracy theories, it seems like the breaking point that the base reality has been taken beyond is as just they just blew past it like flat earth or what this you know, what Jesse Plemons believes in this movie.

I mean it's no different than flat Earth. Like you are under the impression that this woman is an alien and there is no information that you have. I would say that he has less proof that she's an alien than people with flat earth. You know, theories have like a flat earth is inherently incorrect, but like this guy has no evidence that she's an alien, none tangible. Right.

Of course, in this movie, I'm not sure whether it is saying the Earth is flat because of the ending. I mean I think it might be. I don't know that there is a claim there. Yeah, So that's a really key point, is that all of these people are smart in their own way their contributory, Like they have information that's important. And this could have been a play.

I mean, there's there's no question that they could have just changed some scenes and this could have been an off Broadway drama, right Los Angeles theater drama. It really comes down to these three characters. Everybody else is just and the fourth character who's in introduced and I had some questions there about the police officer. So we're talking about the ninety percent of the film I appreciate, and we'll talk about the ten percent where I was just really frustrated by the decision making. But there's no question that for twenty twenty six, this is a marvelously constructed film that like the dumbness of so much content today where you wonder whether any thinking person was associated with the writing.

Yeah, that's not true here. Obviously really smart people put this together, and really star smart people were on the screen working with it. Well, I was going to say Will Tracy, who is the screenwriter on the film, obviously, you know, like we mentioned at the top, he's adapting the Save the Green Planet John Juna Huan film. That film has a male character in the Emma Stone roll, which changes I think that changes the optics of it and honestly makes it more interesting because it becomes a woman in Peril movie that is actually is not a woman in peril movie. In reality, it just seems like a woman in peril movie on the face of it, at least in what Western audiences would perceive as a woman in peril movie.

But it is actually a men in peril movie. They just don't realize it, which is not something you realize until the second time you watch the movie, because the first time you watch the movie without knowing how it's going to play out. It seems like a woman in peril movie because it's a woman kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists who are bigger than her. I love the juxtaposition of how much bigger than her they are. Almost all the time they always look bigger than her.

And then you realize, like about halfway through the meal, two thirds the way through the movie, it's the old quote from a Watchman. You know, you're not locked in here with me or not. I'm not locked in here with you, You're locked in here with me. Like That's what they don't realize about two thirds of the way through is that she is in fact an alien and she is going to make sure that neither one of these guys make it I wouldn't say make it out alive, but I mean, don't you know, I don't get what's coming to them, because they all get what's coming to them, you know. And and you know, Aidan Delbis's character is probably the only one that you kind of okay, well this is the questionable one.

But everybody else seems pretty downright awful in this movie. Jesse Plemons, Stavroshelkius, and I mean Alicia Silverstone are not good people. I think that's made like abundantly clear. And then with Jesse Plemons, like I think they hammered that point home with having you know her find all these like disembodied heads and disemboweled bodies in his basement, which means he's been doing this and maybe he got lucky this time. I mean, he does say he found two others, but again I don't know if he's worth believing or not.

I like the idea of adapting a Korean film and changing the gender and it working on more levels because of that choice you're making than otherwise, because like you said, it seems like a smart decision to make a lot of the decisions that were made in the creation of this movie seem like smart decisions that were made. And you know Will Trace he worked on The Menu, which I don't know if you saw, I think has its moments. He wrote Pogonia, and then he was a producer on Eddington, which I'm kind of probably not as I'm not as high on as other ari Astor stuff. But he's the former editor of The Onion and he used to work at Last Week Tonight and he worked on Succession as well. So he has a track record, and I think that, to your point, speaks volumes to the adaptation of a Korean script not only feeling like a completely different movie, but also feels like something more in other ways, like it feels like it has maybe more to say than the original Korean film.

Yes, and if I were going to show this to a class, which I will not, I would assign as supplementary viewing a couple of films and TV series, including ones that you just mentioned. We live in an era where if you were in Hollywood and you were going to make a film, and you pitched the film and you said, and the hero of the film is the CEO of a chemical company, you would have a lot of people going like, Okay, how are we going to make him sympathetic in any way? Like the audience just walking into the door, right is CEOs have not gotten a lot of great press lately. I found it interesting that's there's a new TV series which I've not seen, called The Studio, and just from the advertising, I think it's an Apple show.

They have a guy who takes over as head of a studio and there's a little catch line. I just wanted to make great movies, and now I'm finding I'm part of the problem as head of the studio, so maybe he's going to be a more sympathetic character there. But okay, So Succession an entire brilliant, brilliantly written TV show where except for the non player characters like the ordinary people who are treated literally like bleep, everybody in the show is horrible. These are terrible people fighting over something. And yet you've watched with fascination.

It's a very very successful show with the younger people like like my students and sorry, yeah, And I think part of it is, you know, the idea of like what would you do if you were born into a billionaire family, and it's very Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, and that you literally have a roy al family where there's fighting inside for the father's love and to succeed the father and all that stuff. So just there's just a lot of interesting stuff going on there. But the reason I'm mentioning it and then I'm of two quick other readings. One is a Kira curisau is High and Low, which I think was a strong influence. I haven't seen the Korean film, but I have to think it was a strong influence on the Korean film and Bogonia.

For those of you who haven't seen it, High and Low, Kira Coversawa had an astonishing range of work. He didn't just do Samurai movies. High and Low was an urban noir drama that I'm blanking net Mel Gibson remade into the movie Ransom as I Revolve with a lot of changes. But anyway, in there, there's the CEO of a shoe company played by Tashira Mafuni, and there's a kidnapping, but it's was intended to be a kidnapping of his son, but it turns out they kidnapped his chauffeur's son. They're playing together or they just look alike, so the tension is trying to get back his chauffeur's son.

And what's interesting that in there is that there is this reference to the police who are doing the investigation. They're not necessarily like, oh, yeah, we love CEOs, we love rich people. But because Tashira Mafuni consistently shows himself to be a good man, who really cares, who really wants, who's willing to sacrifice everything, including all of his fortune, to get his chauffeur's son back, you begin to sort of cheer for him as a protagonist. There, So the reason I'm referring to these And then the last one I'll bring up is Rod Serling, Creator is a Twilight Zone wrote an incredible teleplay that was made into a television movie with a terrible title called Patterns, and it was Succession nineteen fifty eight.

It was about a power play fight for control of a company in New York. And so you're getting a view in corporate life in the fifties when it was, you know, a CEO was seen more positively than today. But and one character is a sort of good person who's trying to make the system work good. My point for all this tangent is that Amastone does something pretty incredible, which is that she has all the elements of a very nefarious person, almost an evil person, right, but again because of what's done to her, But because you think this part of the identification this movie is you think, well, what would do I do in this situation? Right?

And she is doing And as you know, Chris, I wrote a book policing the media. I'm not plugging, I'm just saying I wrote a book on Police and the Media, and this is back in the nineties, and one of the piece of advice police have is that when you're in that kind of a situation and you know you're unarmed, and you just pointed it out. While we are specifically shown that she is very physically capable, right, she's taking like taekwondo with a trainer in a particular early scene before she's kidnapped, and and we know just Emma Stone is a fit person. We do know that they are bigger than her and tougher than her. It's just bulk, right.

We do know that she's tied up right and right, she's got all the disadvantages, and so her manipulation, which is normally a negative thing like oh, this corporate ceo is manipulating the public, suddenly becomes a positive and you can sort of sympathize and understand, like, Okay, I understand why she's trying to be manipulative because she's trying to live. Right well, and that's what allows you to have this kind of level of I would say unease with her character because there's a scene and I'm assuming you know, just based on the way you've talked about the film, the scene I would say that becomes the what on the second watch through is the exposition dump of them, which is, how do we have her actually be an alien?

Well, here's how she's actually an alien, which the first time you watch the movie, it would seem like, well, this just is her making this up on the spot to get out of you know, to essentially like lean into his crazy. However, on the second watch that is so far from what is going on because in the second watch you realize this is more or less the truth. I don't know how I feel about it because I'm not sure how well executed it is. Is my issue, and I'm curious your thoughts because it seems like you have some maybe some issues with it as well. Possible.

Okay, here's where like if I were in the studio team, I would give some notes. Either the characters are lying to us, especially her character is lying to the humans and making just stuff up, as you say, off the top of the top of her head, out of her but or there's something seriously wrong with the plot as we're presented. And let me just give a couple of examples of where I just did not understand the choice and what it was supposed to mean. And maybe I'm dumb and I didn't get it, but I really I have no problem, by the way, telling my students or anybody like I didn't get that. I didn't understand what happened there and why and what it meant and people.

I've talked to other people about this and they've given me explanations. I still don't get it. So let me just start out with something very simple and small that I guess because I'm a journalism professor, really bothered me. There is a point where the Jesse character mispronounces a word. He mispronounces a word, and she jumps on that and says, well, I guess you know you don't know grammar.

Basically, I'm rewriting the work right right, yeah, yeah, And it bothered me because her backstory, now maybe that was supposed to be a she's not human, because her backstory is you don't get to be CEO of a company unless you're grew up and had a very good education, especially in communications, right right right, especially in and she is a top notch I mean, you think of all the verbal plays that she makes with her staff about like we want, we don't people don't need to stay past five unless you really have to, unless there's a really important project. I mean that whole CEO speak corporate speak. In other words, she is good at corporate speak. She would know that mispronunciation is not a grammar error.

Now that was a small thing. But again, I you know, you know movies better than I do. But I'm assuming screenplays are read by lots of people. Actors read that, the studio reads them, the screen writers read. I mean this screenplay was read hundreds of times before it was shot.

This was not like a high school production where they just wrote as they went along. Apparently wheel of Time where they're writing it as they're going along. I mean, a lot of people looked at this before it went the screen. So I thought myself, why did they make that simple mistake? Because is the sometimes you don't know is the character making a mistake and that means something or did the filmmakers make a mistake there?

And it's a small thing, but it led to a much larger one. Is that when she starts describing, I mean her big reveal, her plot dump there of the Andromedins and seventy five million years ago and their experiments with humans. It's absurd. It's completely absurd. Like that means every biologist on planet Earth, every piece of fossil evidence, everything we have or science about the history of the Earth is one hundred percent wrong.

Right, And again I'm thinking, like, did they just throw that in there and not think about it, or like no one associated with the film had ever taken an evolutionary biology class. It's sort of like the opening of Prometheus where I'm going like, you know, really, you're going to claim that humans were formed by you know, the engineers dumping their genetics into the water. I mean, just just okay, if it had been like Prometheus, where they just have something inexplicably dumb and just move on with it. And I didn't necessarily think Prometheus was a terrific film plot wise, but here this is like the big moment right right where we're finding out you're right all along, conspiracy theorists, crazy conspiracy theorists, You're right all along.

And here's the explanation the seventy five million years ago, like we have we have a long evolutionary record, right, Like we've found bones, so what the andromedains have been planting the evolutionary record of humankind. They've been planting like fake bones. It's just so wrong, and you can go online. I actually haven't looked, but I would have to think if you like brought a biologist onto this show, they would say, yeah, that's not the way evolution works, that's not the way fossil record tells us. So okay, so what are our choices there?

I actually wrote them down like a professor. I wrote this down. Okay, So choice number one is that hundreds of people involved in making this film have no scientific acknowledge whatsoever, and no knowledge of like human speech whatsoever. I just can't believe that, right, right, right, So then then I think, okay, so it had to have been a deliberate choice, so it could be it's possible, which you see in science fiction films all the time they just didn't care that somebody sit insert science stuff here and just moved on. But we've just made this case that this is one of the great filmmakers of our time with really thoughtful precision and ideas and writing.

Right, this is not this is not a mystery science theater three thousand candidate for you know, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom or something like that. Or the I love Mystery Science Theory three thousand. They have some films there where the science really wasn't thought through. So I don't believe that either. I don't believe that they didn't care.

So choice three, and there's probably others as well, but choice three is the and Drama Dans. It bothered me that she pronounced it that way. The Andrama Dans are completely wrong about their own history and their own science, about how their relationship to humans. Okay, And I was thinking, okay, if that's true, now again, like we'll just think about it. I was thinking about this King Charles the third of England.

He's King of England, right, he's coming to the United States. He is a pretty smart guy, extreme extremely well read. You know, he's read Shakespeare and written commentaries on architecture and things like that. He's a very intelligent guy. But if like somebody put him on the spot and had him explain evolutionary theory, maybe he'd gets some things wrong.

Right, right, So, just because you're the empress of the and Drama Dans, and I have a question about that too, was she the empress or whatever? But anyway doesn't mean that you know science just because you're a member of a species. It's not pluribus where you know what every other person in the whole species knows. Right, So I am a scientist in one narrow area of human knowledge. I don't necessarily speak for my friends who are chemists or evolutionary biologists.

I didn't get that. I didn't get that especially, and again, maybe this is a choice, especially since she's saying one of the reasons that they are thinking about destroying humanity and killing humans, we'll talk about that a little bit in a moment, it's because we're anti science, we're ignoring the science. And then when she talks about science, it's ludicrous science. So I need somebody to explain that choice to be. Well, I feel like, and this is again my perception of things.

Anyways, the reason everything kind of doesn't hang together intentionally is I think, and this is again my takeaway. I think it's maybe just to further reinforce that even within these disparate lines of thinking about these bigger events and trying to quantify it in a way that maybe other people don't, i e. A conspiracy theory or something to that effect, even there they have facts that don't line up with one another in those within those groups, and you know, like you said, I mean, I perceive that Emma Stone is the emperor, empress, whatever you want to call it, of this civilization, and she theoretically should know. And you know, we're also taking the movie at face value that it is telling the truth in those scenes, that you know, what the movie is saying to us in that moment is in fact the way things happen.

But maybe that's not even the case. Maybe that's you know, maybe it's a double dodge and she's actually you know, lying about that too. That could be I mean, you know, that could be the other way of interpreting it. Now, that would be an even headier direction to go, and I think that that might be. I don't know, I'm not sure they went that far.

I will say, in terms of the pace of the movie, the scene where all of a sudden we have her expositioning for five minutes straight, is it kind of grinds the pace of the movie to a bit of a halt from a stylistic position. But in terms of what she is saying content wise, I think it's interesting that there isn't really one. I don't know, it's not that there's not one direction to go, but when you start adding things together, they do not equal zero. Well, you're bringing up something really important here, and you're partly answering my question, and I appreciate it because this is why I talk to other people and not just wander around and alone there. Yeah.

Yeah, Could it be that she knows what she's spouting about the origins of humans and the science is actually intended like she knows it is just dumb, crazy stuff right, boldly live This is a finest final test of humans, that the humans on the screen fail and the humans in the audience fail, because I tell you what, As you know, there is actual research and that research has guided decisions of studios in the question of why do so many film trailers and teasers give away so much of plots, even in mysteries where where there's reveals, Right, why is that so? Well? Because there has been actual research in psychology and my field that audiences a majority of audiences, not all of audiences, but they be sixty sixty five percent of audiences, especially for big budget films.

Mass films do not like to feel stupid. That's a problem when there's going to be a reveal. That's why they want to make sure that the reveal is in less, less intellectual films, less art house films. They want to make sure that the reveal is telegraphed and then and they will even do it in the teaser. Right.

So that's what the research shows, and that drives studio decision making. That's why people say, well, how come they reveal the plot? Because they audiences don't want to feel dumb. They don't want to feel like, oh man, I couldn't see that, I couldn't figure out who the murderer was. They want to make sure that the reveal is foreshadowed and it's like a big red flag, like you'll pay attention to this here there now.

Great reveal films don't do that. Okay, So you've given me a new theory, which is that the Empress of Andromeda is going humans. This is your last chance if you call about my bullshit here, If you say, wait a minute, that's the stupidest story I've ever heard, that makes no sense whatsoever. You kept that can't be true. It's evolutionary biology, and millions a piece of evidence show that you're you're wrong.

She would have said, oh, okay, all right, humans you passed, Yeah, you passed. And there have been some plots like that. It was a great little episode of Babylon five. I'm gonna give away a secret reveal here and Babylon five. It didn't have to do with the arc of the entire fantastic main plot, but just this alien probe shows up and starts asking tough questions of the crew of up On five, like math questions and just like like a final exam for a stem Field type questions, right, and the captain, Captain Sheridan, becomes suspicious.

Basically the probe I forgot whether It actually says like, if you don't give me the right answers, I'm going to kill all of you, right, sure, And the Captain Sheridan becomes a little suspicious and his crew is all working to find like, you know, what is what you know this incredibly difficult calculus problem and things like that, and finally he decides give them the wrong answer to every question. And it turns out the probe says thank you, goodbye. You know, well, this was a civilization that didn't want any competition, so they set these probes out and if you gave the right answers. That means your advanced scientifically, and we're going to have to kill you so you won't competing with us. Well that was pretty clever, right, Okay, I'm sorry if I gave them, if people have watched.

But the point is that you have a new theory here, Chris, that you've developed, which I think makes sense because. Then we go to the flat earth, the literal flat earth reveal in the movie. Yeah, and what's christ you've answered, you know, all by questions. What is that supposed to be some sort of topographic like a Mercador projection or like is this a reveal that wow, flat Earth was right all along? And see, that's what I don't know, because you know, part of it thinks that it's just you know, the a view of the Earth from a specific point of view.

But part of me is also like the way that the film positions it, it is just a flat disc the way the way people have talked about with flat earth. And so that's I don't. It's mocking humans, right, I'm saying you humans are so dumb. This is this is what we represent of you because we think you're you're dumb. There's some other pieces of evidence there too, right, because like, for example, she's the empress.

You know, empresses tend to have like a security detail. If the Empress went missing, people would sort of know that. I mean, there's a lot of holes, right, Like for example, she drives a Mercedes, very very high end Mercedes, and I couldn't believe that they took the Mercedes when they kidnapped her. The FBI would have found followed that they follow cell phones, they follow things the whole. There were a lot of holes in the plot, which now you've suggested to me, it's all mocking the stupidity of humanity.

All these holes are not holes, they're just saying, you humans, you're so dumb we can get away with. Although Jesse the character killed a bunch of and drama Edins, which again is to me, is a plot question, Like didn't Emma Stone as empress, notice that some of her people have been missing for months or years? Well, did he actually kill them? How many? What?

She asks him? Again? Yeah, she goes how many did you kill? And he goes too. Right, now, are we meant to believe that he.

Actually killed Andromedins or is he just saying that believing. That he had, he believes that he has. But does she believe this yeh? Or does she did he actually kill them? Is the question that's I mean, And that's the thing about the movie that's never determined is how much of what jesse Plemons is saying is real, Because we realize by the end of the movie that what Emma Stone has been saying is possibly all true if you take it at face value.

But how much of what Jesse Plemmons has said is real as well is the interesting part. To answer your question. On that map where Emma Stone is using a spike to kind of kill humanity, it is ringed by white like a white ice wall, like the flat Earthers believe rings the flat earth. So I don't know it. You know, I wouldn't say it's Kubrickian, but in a certain sense, like kubrick is has been you know, it has been laid claim that Kubrick did not do anything unintentional.

I do not know how much of that is real. I do not know how much of that is people just wanting to see things where there are not things. But if you go by your Ghostlanthemos is doing everything intentional, then to me it being a circular disc on a table that's supposed to represent our earth. It might be flat earth. Yeah yeah.

And so we're left with this question about whether the director did something which you are definitely forbidden from doing in Hollywood, and that's mocking the audience, right and questioning the intelligence of the audience, including you and I. And I'm fine with that personally, like like, if somebody can trick me, like whoa, that's great. You know, I appreciate the movie or the television series or the digital game better. And I don't mean trick me as a jump scare of like oh gosh, there's a monster in the closet. But like I thought a plot or some dialogue meant one thing, but now thinking back about it, maybe it meant something else.

I don't think we have an answer, and I don't. I hate it when people give an answer expost factor. The answer has to be in the film where it's not so it's meant it's meant to be a question mark. I want the director giving an interview in New Zealand or something saying oh, yeah, I was openly mocking the audience. Anybody who leave that speech of hers as an idiot which I wouldn't suggest advise him to do.

But well, that's what David Lynch always stopped himself from doing, which is why I always respected David Lynch so much, which is David Lynch never took it upon himself to answer questions as to the meaning of his movies because the moment and you know, I mean it's Salinger esque, right, I mean, that's why Salinger didn't want his book, you know, catchering the Rye adapt He didn't catching the Rye adapted, because once the book is adapt it's kind of hard to unsee the actor who has been cast as the main character. It's hard to see them as any other thing. It's it's it's hard to see them as the character you've conjured in your mind versus the character that someone else adapted or conjured from that character in their own mind.

And that is the thing about I mean, that's the thing about this movie. Like and you know, again, like you said, like with David Lynch and other people like David Lynch make sure that there is room for audience interpretation, which is not a guarantee anymore. Audiences in a lot of ways don't even want that the audiences like you said, they want to feel smart, and feeling smart sometimes means removing complexity or ambiguity from something entirely, which is a shame in. My mind always. Yeah, you brought up Eddington, and I love to see the online discussion about movies, and I find interesting that a lot of what you're saying and we're talking about is missing from the online discussion.

But Eddington is a great good example. I saw so many comments of people who were angry at that movie for not taking a clear stand right or what they felt was a clear stand right about about certain political issues and political parties and so on and again. It's everybody has to decide what kind of film appreciator, television consumer they are your social media I mean, I'm not going to say that you saying, Hey, I want to go watch Project Hail Mary, and I want to just have a fun time on a roller coaster to ride with interesting visuals and a great adventure. That is terrific. Good for you.

But if somebody wants to make a completely different kind of film, I'm wondering, should you get mad at them for making that different kind of film. I don't think so. But I'm also of the mindset that the things that I want to watch are challenging me beyond the reasonable expectation of what challenge most audiences are looking to get out of their film. I think a lot of people are expecting to go into a movie and not have the film challenge them in any substantive way, and I think that's unfortunate. And like you said, with the movie trailers being the way that they are, I think that's indicative of a society that is not necessarily interested in going along with the director or trusting the director in the ride that they're taking them on.

They want to know ahead of time, Like you said, they want to be smarter than the filmmaker. And you don't have to be smarter than the filmmaker to enjoy a movie. You can go along the ride with the filmmaker and they can take you through those moments with them, as opposed to you having to see it ahead of time and enjoy it, you know, retroactively is what it feels like as opposed to in the moment. I like that there are directors still that work within the medium that actually feel like they're pushing mainstream audiences in a way that when we talk about like Christopher Nolan. Like I always think Christopher Nolan is not as clever as he used to be.

I mean, I think Chris Nolan, frankly, in a lot of ways, has just kind of given up the ghost on trying to make interesting movies and he's just making big broad movies with big broad strokes and that's about it, which is fine if that's the kind of movie you want to make, but it's not the kind of movie I resonate with, because as a film watcher, I would like to see a movie that's actually engaged in challenging me as a viewer, and not pretending to challenge me, but doing the barest of bare minimum to get to that point. Yes, And I think part of the problem is when audiences collide. That is, a film that would have had one kind of audience with one kind of expectation finds itself in front of a different audience.

And we've all been there where like You're going, huh, this is a great show, But I'm not the audience for this show, right, And I'm very lucky in my life. I think I've mentioned him before, but I was a student as an undergraduate student, and then I got to be a teaching assistant for the great film scholar Amos Vogel. Very interesting guy. He was a refugee from Nazi Austria. He founded Cinema sixteen in New York, and then he became a film professor at University of Pennsylvania.

And he wrote a book which I still think is like a must read classic, called film as a Subversive Art, and he wanted to give attention to thousands of small films, experimental films that never with a few exceptions. He talked about Woody Allen, but he talked about people who were breaking rules of cinema or doing things differently, or experimenting. And we watched some of those movies, and I have to say some of those movies were unwatchable in the context of like, here's an experimental film where they tried this, and they spent three hundred dollars, right, and they tried this new technique and I don't think it worked, but I appreciate, like the director and the actors trying this and doing something different and interesting.

Right. I would have been angry as I am if they'd spent three hundred million dollars to achieve a complete failure. So that's where I think there's pushback against the megalopoliss and the bride and things like that, where honestly, they should have spent a million dollars to make an experimental, small film an art house audience, but they spent the medical healthcare budget of a small African country on I think, and irresponsible in self indulgent type of film. And that's really that's not the case here. We want to say that's not the case here.

You will be entertained. I mean, obviously, if you're triggered by certain types of violence and so on, please don't watch this movie. But like, if you're willing to put up with the horror of this movie, it's from the very beginning to the very end, this is an incredibly entertaining movie and successful well. And I also think, like you said, it has a couple interesting kind of positions it comes at things from. I think the other interesting idea and position it comes at things from is you know, like we've said, there's a reveal at the end of this movie that Emmastone is clearly an alien, and then there's the other reveal that the aliens are actually trying to help humanity and they're doing everything they can, and humanity is just kind of being the way humanity is and refusing to play ball in a substantive way.

And I love the reveal at the end of the movie that it would seem that the Earth is better off without us, and that the alien's entire goal by the end of the movie as well, in the original film they destroy Earth. In this remake or readaptation, they just remove humanity, which I find to be such an interesting and important distinction to make, because by allowing Earth to exist, this movie is saying, well, Earth in and of itself is saving maybe humanity not so much in the In the original movie, it's you know, you know, baby out with the bathwater. And I think it's very interesting because this movie, I think is a tad more hopeful in that way, which is odd because on so many you know, faces of it with this movie, this is not a hopeful movie.

This is a very cynical and nihilistic. Yes, I do overthink everything, and so the Chernobyl ending, where like there's this place where there's no humans but the the wildlife just I mean, there's a final shot there of the bees right right, the bees are okay, back, I have to say, and everybody should probably stop listening to the podcast at this point because I'm going to reveal something which shouldn't be a reveal. But like the problem with all the humans. I mean, I, first of all, maybe you and I agree that it is a problem for all humans to die. I mean, like, we're not that blood thirsty, So it's like that that is a problem.

Although within the stories, the diegetic, within the story line, okay, you see why they would do that, at least according to their own rationale. But Chris, you and I are animal lover's right, and the problem is that those bees and those cows and those cats and those hamsters, they're sort of dependent on them right now. I mean, I guess it would have been sort of ridiculous where and then the drama dens land and free every hamster and train it to live in the wild, and every cat is taken in by the drama den to be a pet. I mean, but I it's a pretty hard I mean, obviously, wiping out all human life is a horrible ending, but like a lot of animals would go too. Right, Yeah, Domestic cats that can't leave the unintentional cages that they're locked in aka their homes or apartments or other things play.

Yeah, it's it's a weird ending because the ending is supposed to be, like I think, I think my perception of the ending is meant to be somewhat of an uplifting ending. But by every approximation, you know, like you said, humanity being wiped off the face of the Earth is pretty stark. The fact that, you know, if you actually sit and think about what the ending is proposing for more than five minutes, it doesn't seem as kind of uplifting and maybe hopeful as it seems like it's the Andromedins are not any better than humanity. They just have an easier means with which to make decisions because their technology allows them to do so. I think that's a very incisive way of putting it.

In the Day the Earth Stood Still, the alien is definitely portrayed within the movie space as like they're superior to us, right, you know, their morality, no war, no atomic weapons, you know, peace on Earth. They're supposed to be morally and ethically superior to us, and that's why they're threatening us, because like you have to get with the program of evolving your ethics to the point we have right right right now. I mean, maybe somebody could write some other interpretation like, well, they're imposing they're willing us and they're sort of conquering us, but maybe in a more benevolent way, whatever the point being, Yeah, the Andromedins seem to be deeply flawed to the and again, if we go back with the Chris theory, they're also mocking us as they're planning to kill us.

Their whole reason for killing us would be wrong if there's one interpretation of the way that they see science, but their interpretation. If the interpretation is the other way, which was they're just testing us and we the audience failed to test, then yeah, I guess the Andromedins were right after all. Well, and that's I mean, that's the other thing. You know, we see Jesse Plemons's character poising his own mother with anti freeze, and that's because Emma Stone, you know, her thinking was, if I tell a crazy man to go to the hospital, someone will see him, someone will stop him. Someone will surely stop you from poisoning your mother.

And it turns out that no, in fact, Jesse Plemons is able to get all the way there poison her and you know, and then run away, which is only then when they seemingly catch him. And what's what's interesting is, you know, Emmastone is complicit in the murder of Jesse Plemons's mother up until that point anyways, because she has created a product that is, you know, that has caused his mother to go comatose. And so what's interesting is Emma Stone is contributing directly to the death of humans long before she destroys humanity, and in trying, in trying to save humanity, she's killing more of us than she's saving. Really, I mean, how many people has she really saved in this movie? None, which it seems like their goal, by their own, by their own kind of admittance, their goal is to save humanity, but they realize, like you said, with the day, the earth should still humanity, you know, it's the opposite of that, humanity does not get to that point.

We're beyond saving. Yeah, I think, I mean, you could take away from this film the moral of the story kids is humanity is beyond saving. Right, That's certainly one way to view it. I did. I guess this is where I know we need to wrap up.

But like I did find the other puzzling thing, which you're going to solve for me, Master Chris of all knowledge of all film of all time is okay. So there seems to be an issue at the very beginning where you've got this conspiracy theorist and he believes he's found evidence that there's these and Rama Dans and they're manipulating human events and they're secretly controlling the planet, and they're doing all these evil things. And yet his demand is I get to go on the ship and meet the emperor of the Andrama Dans and negotiate on behalf of Earth. And I'm thinking, like, wait a minute, if the Andramaedaans are evil, what what's your plan for that? Like, how are you planning to what's your bargaining chip?

Right? Well, and that's right, Like what I don't I don't you know what they say. I think with some conspiracy theorists, they don't think that far ahead. They don't think that far ahead as to what would happen, what would it mean if aliens were real? I think some conspiracy theorists only think about how can we expose the lie that aliens have been covered up?

But nobody really thinks about what happens when you know? And I guess I guess Steven Spielberg will answer this question in the upcoming Disclosure Day film, But no one seemingly is interested in asking the question as to what happens when it's revealed that aliens are in fact real? That's much more interesting than what's been the cover up this whole time. I think the ramifications for humanity are much more interesting in terms of what does it mean for aliens to be real? Then what does it mean that we covered it up?

I don't care if it's revealed that aliens are real. I don't care that they covered it up. I don't care what reason they had to cover it up, because the fact that aliens are real is such a much more important and I think reality bending situation that it's I don't know what Jesse Plemons was attempting to do. I don't think he thought that far ahead. I think then that's the point.

I mean, again, the short sightedness of humanity, like he just wanted to expose the conspiracy. He didn't really think it through as to what would happen if he was on an alien ship, if they would just tear him apart? And you know two to Lou that's. It, Professor Chris, you've educated me. I believe everything you're saying.

And what'd be on the exam? Kid? What do you think? I mean? I don't that's my that's my read.

I mean, it's you know, I think it's a comment again on conspiracy theorists and their inability to really understand that if you reveal what you are saying is true to be true, have you thought about what the ramifications of that truly are or are you only concerning yourself with revealing what is what you perceive to be hidden to be true and what does that mean? They don't think about what that actually mean. Well, you've just stated very well. Is that My understanding from reading a lot of conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorists is that they believe the reveal is the goal and that they will be the revealer and acknowledged by the rest of humanity as like, yeah, you know, Joe Stephans of Munsey, Indiana was the hero of Planet Earth revealing the alien conspiracy dot dot dot to be filled out later.

I really, and again it's not like I've read every conspiracy theorist or have the stamina to do so. But like I do think there's a dot dot dot, there's there's an ellipsis of like, okay, you've revealed the conspiracy, what's going to happen? But here he goes beyond that and he says he's going to go on the ship and negotiate, So so he actually is doing something somewhat like even more ambitious than the average conspiracy theorist or hopes to. And yet in the end he ends of just being a head exploding head flying out of a closet whacking Emma Stone in the forehead. Which I think was a terrific physical comedy.

Yeah, the movie is rather funny. It does have its kind of humorous moments. The moment where his cousin kills himself, as kind of horrific as it is, Emma Stones's reaction is is very funny with her kind of just covered, you know, face face to face to toe and blood and her just like Jesus Christ, like it's I mean, it's it's she is so expressive, her face is so expressive that the movie I think is rather like you said, it's rather funny, but I also think it's rather I think it's rather nihilistic, and I think Jorgo's Lanthemos has kind of revealed himself to be maybe a bit of a nihilist with his films, which is okay. I mean, I like a point of view. I like a distinct point of view.

I like someone who has something to say. And often someone who has something to say doesn't necessarily believe in the positive traits of humanity. It's very hard sometimes to see those because there are very few and far between, and so it's not surprising that the end of this movie is well, it turns out the conspiracy theorist were right. However, to what end and at what cost were they right? And the cost that they were right was humanity has now been doomed by their inability to just play ball or like you said, not be stupid.

So I enjoyed this movie immensely. I had a great time with it. I can understand now and see why the people that I trust, opinion wise, were very high on this movie because it is a dark movie. It is not necessarily the most upbeat positive film I've ever seen. But if you're willing to meet the movie where it wants to be met, I think it's a fantastic.

Yes, and let's go back to where we started. I do want to give a real highlight to Emma Stone here because, as you mentioned, I was thinking that in the history of Hollywood, there's not many actors or actresses who are what I like to call full body actors. Right. There's a lot of people who can talk well and their facial expressions are very well done, but there's very few. And I would put yes Sehorn, who is the star of Pluribus and was in Better Call Saul in that categor Gory, Mary Tyler Moore, very very famous people who can move their entire body to support the part.

You know. You know, if you go to like our Redded Acting or like early acting school, one of the big question what do you do with your hands right right? When you act? Right? They a lot of people when they first start learning acting think acting is just speaking.

But we know from the very great stage performers where and of course in the stage. That's one of the reasons that I think Britain produces so many great actors over the centuries is that they have this regional theater tradition. Right before you start in a TV show, you may have played a small role in Macbeth for five hundred calls in small theaters around the aisles. Right, so they learn that the audience there's no direction, right, there's no camera. So like the audience is seeing your feet, they're seeing your hands, so you better be in order to satisfy that audience.

You've been able to do something with your hands, with your knees, and she the whole film. There are definitely times where there's a close up, but I've noticed there were a lot of full body shots of her where she's reacting or doing something with her whole self. And maybe that's metaphorical for like humanity, like the we're being judged as a whole. But I just felt like it was one of the standout performances I've ever seen. Well, and you mentioned it.

You know that actors, you know, anymore, there's not the expectation that you're going to be the the the complete package. You know, that's not you know, it used to be the tradition of you are a multi talent, and that is still the case in Indian cinema. That still exists in Indian cinema. The expectation of those actors they can sing and dance and be physical and be funny and be sexy and serious, all all in the same breath. And I miss that tradition because it is a shame, like it is a shame to not really have like what one would consider to be a movie star, any like a genuine bona fide start that they don't come around very often.

And I think I think Emma Stone is one of those actresses that has one hundred percent like she didn't need to prove it any further. But I'm I am in awe over acting ability because to go from easy A to Pegonia is pretty wild. And you know, I think there are just some directors out there who get the best out of their actors, and I think your ghost Lanthemos gets the best out of Emma Stone that anyone has ever gotten, and I'm excited to see how they work together in the future. But this movie, I think has a lot of interesting roads to go down, kind of you know, threads to tug at, and I'm I'm really glad that we got an opportunity to talk about it together. So thank you for pitching this one across the plate, as it were.

To use a baseball metaphor, because it's Opening Day, everybody. If you don't listen to baseball on the radio or watch it on TV, maybe you should because it's as American as poisoning the environment, killing the bees, and having aliens blow up the planet. So as for me, you can find me over at the culture Cast, which is what listening to now, or weirdingwaymedia dot com, where this show and so many other great shows are posted. If you want to kick a couple dollars my way to help fund the cause of creating movie content that doesn't suck, head on over to my Patreon patreon dot com slash culture Cast and you can kick a couple dollars my way. Five bucks gets you bonus episodes.

Ten dollars gets you access to the bonus episodes and the James Bond podcast I do once a month with Mike White and Richard Adam. Though to be fair, we're recording the last episode of that show this weekend, so it's coming to a cloe. Doctor Pearlmutter, thank you so much for joining me. This was fun. I would not have watched this movie otherwise.

Thank you. Watch the guys, and. As always, we'll catch it on the next episode. Books where the books will be