Cold Open And Naming The Show

Shawn 0:05

Sounds like a U2 song. Sounds like like sort of like a U2-ish kind of something they do. I see you. You see me. Yeah. I can't do it. I don't have the voice to do it today. I thought what a perfect thing to do. Yet stick and then set up a small room with the dude. I want to share share everything with you guys. Okay. Including these germs.

Susie 0:33

Yeah.

Shawn 0:34

Craig's like, I don't care. As long as we're doing the podcast, I mean I could have fucking I could have the fucking plague over here. You wouldn't. Okay, so what we're talking about is the I want to talk about the difference between the societal um definition of What are those pustules on your face, Shawn?

Susie 0:51

Yeah.

Shawn 0:52

Can you speak closer to the mic? Okay, well, we're here.

Susie 1:05

Here we are. Another beautiful day in Van.

Shawn 1:10

It is ugly out there.

Susie 1:11

50 to 70 mils of rain today, was it?

Shawn 1:15

It's really raining out there.

Craig 1:17

Well, here we are, episode 12, I think it is. This is fun.

Shawn 1:21

Who's counting? Craig is. I'll just say I got I thought it was the Tylenol Cold and Flu, but I kept getting all these weird texts throughout the week. Just random tags, like with like like these names. Like Epoch Epic Epoch or whatever, whatever these strange names. Do you remember any of those?

Craig 1:43

Oh yeah, yeah. I'll I'll pull them up here.

Shawn 1:44

I I was like you were just randomly sending me names because, once again, Craig wants to change the name of the show.

Craig 1:51

I'm that kind of guy.

Shawn 1:52

Yeah. And I I want to tell you something. Somebody that I know um found out about the podcast and like guessed I mentioned it when we first started doing it. Yeah. So they were and they found out the name and they loved the name. They thought that the name was really cool. Current name or the previous name? Yeah, exactly. Which fucking name? Which name are you? Oh basket traffic. They thought it was like they did irreverent and they didn't know what it meant and they thought it was cool. Yeah. And then I said, Oh, but you know, we might change it so we could be more for the man, right? More in the lane. And so and then I threw out what was the one, the scenes and scenes and centuries.

Craig 2:30

They hated it.

Shawn 2:32

He said it was terrible. He said, Do not change your name to the You're making this up. I'm not making it up. I just spent a week with this person.

Craig 2:39

Okay.

Shawn 2:39

Yeah.

Craig 2:40

Well, I also came up with different ones.

Shawn 2:41

Like Okay.

Craig 2:42

You know what? Again, people listening, I wanted to make sure that it kind of combined these of history and entertainment. Okay.

Shawn 2:50

And but the reason you want to do this is because you want to, we're not getting put in the proper space. Is that right?

Craig 2:55

Well, okay. I I got an email from these companies that that basically AI.

Shawn 3:01

It's not somebody actually emailing.

Craig 3:03

No, no, this was actually because I vetted it. You usually get you get that kind of like garbage, right? But they said that the podcast title doesn't really like make any sense for your particular kind of interest. Exactly. So basket and traffic, you know, it's like if you're wanting to know like traffic or whatever, whatever you can think of in a number of things that traffic and baskets have anything to do with, but they don't have anything to do with what we're doing.

Shawn 3:27

Originally, that's what you you changed it to that and you kind of liked it because you like of all those reasons, you liked it.

Craig 3:35

I did. I did. And you know, I I'm I'm I'm sticking with it right now, you know. But we I was coming up with just in time. Just in time.

Shawn 3:46

Just in time.

Craig 3:47

Uh filmy flashbacks. Uh yeah, didn't like that much. Time cast. Um, it's not bad. But then I saw it's being used.

Shawn 3:55

What about all the merch? We got to change the merch again. Oh, I know.

Craig 3:57

I know.

Shawn 3:58

In production, I just got my basket traffic underwear.

Craig 4:02

You can fly back to China and fix all that. Casting Chronicle or Epic and Epoch. You know, these are different names.

Shawn 4:09

Epic and Epoch uh is the one I hate the most.

Craig 4:16

I'll go Rewind and Shine anyway. I don't like any of them to be honest. Oh, yeah. So um Okay, we can do better than that.

Shawn 4:24

Yeah. Um so all of those listeners out there, if you have an idea um that you think taking film and history and sort of putting it together like a Reese's peanut butter cup, that's it!

Craig 4:36

Okay.

Susie 4:37

Sandwich in time.

Shawn 4:39

Then then please um give us a fax. And um we're still faxing, right? And and uh give us a name because I don't like any of those. But I uh you know I appreciate that you're um always you're sort of obsessive compulsive over that.

Craig 4:54

But you know, OCD's gotta come in handy something. It's hot right now. It's hot OCD.

Shawn 4:59

Fucking everybody's got it. Everybody's got it. Fucking great.

Craig 5:02

All right. Uh we have so much to talk about, so let's get straight to it. The last episode, um, we I needed some time. I needed some I needed some therapy. It was uh quite an intense episode.

Shawn 5:13

I think there's a bit of confusion too. I just want to really quickly clear up. I did not enjoy Alien Earth, just so people know. Yeah, I okay. Thank you. Okay, it wasn't it wasn't clear. Because I think it was I think there was some confusion.

Craig 5:25

Well, I I think the word of the day was vociferous. Uh that was you. And um I have to apologize. I am so sorry that I brought up the comparison of uh White Lotus and Alien Earth.

Shawn 5:39

I will I will go back down there again, man. Never do that again.

Craig 5:45

Because what I wanted to have was this conversation. I wanted to kind of you know elucidate some of my thinking, and then he was like, Whoa, I just I just got it.

Shawn 5:53

I think my exact words were I will not let you go down this.

Craig 5:57

Well, that's right. Yeah. No, you put up a road. So I'm like, okay, so that episode, you know, changed direction, and that's fine. I'm okay with that. Really, what I want to start off with this episode is introducing to you about a man named Alvin York. And then I were Sergeant York? Sergeant York, yes. They make a movie about him. Yes. In 1941, I believe it is. And uh Gary Cooper plays Alvin York.

Shawn 6:28

High noon. Uh, so many great movies, Gary Cooper. Yeah. So I would love to recall more about the Tylenol Cold and Flu is just kicked in.

Susie 6:37

Now the table is rotating around. I'm not sure where I am right now.

Craig 6:41

So I want to talk about a hero and then have a conversation around some of these elements about Alien Earth that I felt like we didn't really get into. So who's Alvin York? He is a guy who was born in 1887 in Paul Mall, Tennessee. Not even a county is being quite generous.

Shawn 7:02

I wonder if that's where the cigarettes come from, because there's Paul Mall cigarettes. Ah. They were big in the uh Right.

Craig 7:08

It's just on the northeastern probably what they were known for. It's just on the northeastern portion of Tennessee near Kentucky. He will end up being considered to be one of the most significant heroes of World War One. But his hero status will be challenged by the Germans and later the Americans, kind of right around the Vietnam War, where there was a kind of really anti-war, anti-hero messaging that kind of takes hold. And is it out of pettiness? Is it counterfactuals? Is it postmodernism, which you're going to hear me talk about a bit today? Let's just tell the story first. He was the third of 11 children, and they grew up desperately poor and also poorly educated. He, however, developed to be a crack shot and a very capable woodsman. His father was apparently really harsh on him. Powder and bullets were quite expensive. And so if he wasted these things, his father got really quite brutal, apparently. And so he needed to shoot a squirrel in the first shot, and not just a turkey in the body, but in the head. And I I think the idea is I'm not, of course, a hunter, so I'm assuming that it's like you don't want shot or you don't want to damage the meat. I think it has something to do with the way And maybe kill instantly. Yeah, the tenderness of it or whatever it is, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn 8:23

It's like a perfect shot, a beautiful shot.

Susie 8:25

Because that buckshot, doesn't it exp like it it hits and then sprays in.

Craig 8:30

Doesn't it? Yeah, and I don't think they're using buckshot for this. I don't know. So I I don't really want to get into it.

Shawn 8:35

It's like a clean shot.

Craig 8:36

Yeah.

Shawn 8:36

No, let's get into this. Um so when you're okay.

Alvin York Becomes Sergeant York

Hero's Journey Meets Postmodern Storytelling

Studios, Four-Quadrant Math, And Wokeness

Craig 8:41

Yeah. Hello listeners. It's just Craig here. It was necessary to break away from our regular recording and my telling of the story of Alvin York. Because it was at this point during our recording when Sean began having coughing fits, which naturally doesn't make for an enjoyable listening experience. We kept having to stop and wait. So I'll take this time now to continue the story without those interruptions. Now where was I? Right. The story of Alvin York. Despite demonstrating his skills as a marksman, York struggled in life, and it became particularly challenging when his father died in 1911. At 24, he was now the oldest son living at home, and was now expected to take on the responsibility of raising his siblings with his mother. He took over his father's role as a blacksmith, but when the smithy burned down, he was forced to work in road construction and on railroad gangs. He also drank and drank heavily. He fell into a bad pattern of drinking, smoking, gambling, and bar brawling. Apparently, he would often win moonshine drinking contests. But when his close friend died during a bar brawl, York himself realized that he needed to make some life changes or suffer the same fate. That and a young woman he admired who wouldn't have anything to do with him until he cleaned up his act. So he joined a strict Christian fundamentalist church that believed in righteousness and dutifulness, and which forbade drinking, dancing, and just generally many forms of popular culture. It also espoused nonviolence. But on April 6, 1917, America declared war and joined the Great War against the Germans. The country initiated a draft system, and York was one of those men who was called up. This naturally stirred inner turmoil for York because the nonviolence creed of the church weighed on him. He requested an exemption as a conscientious objector more than once, but was denied. He had a choice flee into the mountains of Appalachia or report to Camp Gordon in Georgia. He chose to serve his country. But that didn't abate his concerns. Seeking advice from both his company and battalion commanders, York reconciled his internal conflict by committing to the army. And in the spring of 1918, York set sail for France. And this is where the hero was formed. After having undergone some training at the Somme, York was quickly promoted to corporal, experienced some combat, and then was sent to take part in the Meuse-Argonne offensive in Lorraine Province. The task of York's battalion was to relieve the units of the 28th Infantry Division and charge the heavily defended Meuse River Valley, head through the Argonne Forest to retake the French coal and iron mines. But it didn't start well. American commanders in World War I copied the outdated French and British strategy of frontal assaults straight against German machine gun fire. Despite the losses, the Americans had numbers on their side, but they were pinned down and couldn't move forward unless the German machine gunned nuts were neutralized from the opposing hillsides. To relieve the pressure by drawing Germans away, some units entered into a triangular-shaped valley, of which York was a part. The battalion succeeded in taking ground, but they also soon found themselves pinned down by German machine gun fire on many sides. York and just over a dozen men were given orders to flank and cut through enemy lines and get close enough to silence those guns. York's raiding party, by their own surprise and to the surprise of the Germans, overran and captured a command post and a large number of weary German soldiers who had just arrived to reinforce their own units. They had just set aside their rifles and sat down to eat breakfast only to find themselves surrendering to York and his fellow soldiers. But this was soon interrupted when German machine gunners up the hill spotted Allied helmets below and began cutting down the Americans, but also unknowingly the Germans. And in the chaos, the German commander yelled at the gunners to stop firing. And in that moment, York instinctively bolted away up the hillside to silence the German machine guns. Lying flat, his marksmanship came into great use. York began picking off Germans one by one every time they exposed their heads. When he drained his rifle cartridges, he pulled his sidearm. Nineteen German dead, and the guns went silent on that part of the rich. Now returning back to his men, it was at this moment six Germans with fixed bayonets charged York. Using a technique he learned when shooting turkeys back home, York began eliminating his attackers, starting with the very last man, then methodically working his way forward. A shrewd but tactically dangerous move that only the best marksman would dare. The Germans had no idea they were being picked off one by one. The German commander, after having witnessed this extraordinary act, surrendered. The remaining dozen or so Americans then lined up the prisoners and marched them back to battalion headquarters. A remarkable feat that yielded 132 prisoners, 35 machine guns captured, 28 Germans killed. York was promoted to sergeant and later received the Medal of Honor as well as medals from France and Italy. Even the Supreme Allied commander, Ferdinand Fauch of France, commented, quote, What you did was the greatest thing ever accomplished by any soldier by any of the armies of Europe. When York returned to America, he was hailed as a hero and was honored with a ticker-tate parade in New York City. Now, York's experience encapsulates the many stages of the hero's journey. An ordinary person living an ordinary life is presented with a challenge. The hero to be hesitates the call to action out of internal conflict or responsibility. But mentoring and guidance reveal the necessary path. The enemy is confronted, and enormous obstacles are overcome. Bravery leads to internal growth and metamorphosis. And so the once ordinary individual then returns back to the ordinary world, but now transformed as a hero and is celebrated for his courage, humility, and moral clarity. His example inspires others and becomes a symbol of selfless service. And so, why the story of Alvin York? I tell that story because the tried and true story arc of the hero's journey is being abandoned of late in shows and in literature for more anti-hero narratives, where heroism is deconstructed rather than celebrated, where power and competence is framed as suspicious and or dangerous. This postmodern approach does away with moral absolutes, which downright rejects the existence of good and evil, which replaces the mythic meaning with social commentary, and which the journey itself is considered meaningless. Worse, group character identity is elevated over individual will and an internal strength. And where so-called external systems of power are blamed for all failures, audiences are now exposed to ideas that suffering is celebrated, where victimhood is the central theme and trauma is its cause, and which cannot be overcome. In short, the hero's journey has been flipped on its head and, in my humble opinion, contributes to a general societal malaise, where the journey has no payoff, where the good guy or girl is no longer aspirational, where life itself ostensibly has no meaning. While there can be a place for this in stories, it has become ironically its own dominant narrative, the very narrative it purports to destroy. However, the winds of change are being felt. A backlash is underway. And so as I return you to our regular recording, you'll hear the three of us passionately discuss these very issues. Why is it that we can't have a hero right now? What what is going on where we have these writers today that want to kind of destroy?

Shawn 18:35

I don't think it's the writers, although the I know it's the writers that are are you know creating it, but it's more the studios. The the the the the heads up that have a have a plan.

Craig 18:46

That's the thing. I'm not so sure about that. It's hard to know that.

Shawn 18:49

Uh it's hard to know who. I mean, if it's writers or who it is.

Craig 18:54

Well, and I'll uh giving you an example in a second. Let's go back to Alien Earth and and some of the things that I I wanted to cover because you know, like all your points, I really totally appreciate it. I I totally agreed with you. You know how we talked about last day about strong female leads, Ripley in 1979? She and in in 86, you could connect with her, right? Talk about the hero's arc. And here's a here's a woman protagonist, a strong female character. You compare her compared to what we're seeing today in like Marvel and all that. A strong female character is terribly written, painfully written, actually.

Shawn 19:32

Well, it's it's so on the nose, though. We didn't think about Ripley as a strong woman character when she came out. Exactly. She was a character, period. That's right. We didn't sit here and proc talk about it and dissect it, and it was a great film. That's it. Yeah, that's what I want. I want, I want to be, I didn't go, wow, a woman up there doing this. Wow. Yeah. I I just went, wow, this is great. Wow, what a great. Now it's so on the nose, it's like, whoa, we need we need a woman and we need all of these different things because we're woke and we need this to, we need to not offend anybody. We need this to appeal in such a broad way.

Susie 20:07

It needs to be totally inclusive.

Shawn 20:09

This is a business and we need to sell it all over the world. And did you know, too, that like, for instance, Marvel has eight or nine different cuts of all of their movies so that they can put them in different countries and not offend those countries. So can you imagine going in as a creative person writing, going, Oh, by the way, we're gonna take this scene out, this scene. That's the studio. That is not writers making those decisions.

Craig 20:31

No, no, and you're absolutely right. The executives quite literally want to push for this quote global four quadrant theatrical movies. That four quadrant, I had to look it up. So it's this idea that there are movies that appeal to men 25 under 25, men over 25, women under 25, and men, or sorry, women over 25. It can be done, but it's not smart because you end up losing so much. And when you're trying to appeal to so many, but obviously the bottom line there, it's money.

Shawn 21:03

And that is a business. And and I get it. I get that Disney's not stupid. They bought these things, now they want to generate money, so they have to spend these things. Right. But and and I get like, listen, I'm old. I get the age thing. Now, if I grew up and I was 10 years old when Iron Man, the first Iron Man came out, and I, by the way, loved the first Iron Man. Uh I thought it was amazing. Like, if I was 10 years old when that came out, this would be my wheelhouse. That I would that I would be going to the movies to see Marvel movies because that's that's the age thing. Now, I just so happen to not be 10 years old. Yeah, and so that's the thing. Yes, of course, younger people are gonna be into this.

Craig 21:44

No, but they're not though.

Shawn 21:45

So well, some of them are, obviously. No, the here's the thing were what are the top grossing movies of 2024?

Craig 21:52

Oh, I don't know.

Shawn 21:53

Well, we're gonna pull them up. Let's see. Yeah, I guarantee you nine out of ten of them are Disney movies.

Craig 21:58

Okay, all right. Number one in Inside Out 2.

Shawn 22:01

That's Pixar, Disney, right?

Craig 22:03

Yeah, Walt Disney. And it is grossed 652 million. Well just six hundred and fifty-three million. Deadpool and Wolverine, number two, six hundred and thirty-seven million.

Shawn 22:14

And who that's Disney and Marvel.

Craig 22:17

Wicked number three, four hundred and thirty-three million. Okay. Moana two.

Shawn 22:24

Disney.

Craig 22:25

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Then Despicable Me, which is Universal. Okay. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, which is Warner Brothers. Yeah. Uh Dune, Part 2.

Shawn 22:35

Okay, there's there's a good one. Okay.

Craig 22:37

Another Warner Brothers. I'll do top 10. So Twisters, Universal, and then Godzilla and Kong, which is Warner Brothers. And then 10 is Kung Fu Panda 4.

Shawn 22:50

Okay, so how many of those are original movies that came out? They're all how many of those are sequels? I mean, and how many of those are uh Marvel movies? And how many of those are Disney? They're all Disney, pretty much.

Craig 23:01

Okay. This is interesting. 10, 11. Bad Boys, Rider Die, Kingdom of the Planet of the Ape. Sequel, sequel. Gladiator 2. Sequel. Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Sequel. It ends with us, Sony Pictures. That's Sony.

Shawn 23:15

Oh, that's the Blake Lively thing. And the only reason that did anything is because of the uh feud and the feud and the lawsuit.

Susie 23:21

Yeah.

Craig 23:22

The The Wild Robot Universal.

Shawn 23:25

Oh, that's actually I enjoyed that movie. That was an original animated. I really enjoyed that.

Craig 23:30

Venom The Last Dance. Okay, another Marvel. Another sequel. Yeah. No, uh Venom The Last Dance, Sony Pictures. Okay.

Shawn 23:37

But but Sony and Marvel are sort of connected.

Craig 23:40

And then 18, a quiet place, day one, Paramount Pictures. Mufasa, the Lion King, number 19.

Shawn 23:46

Hey! Yeah. Let's get into that. No. Yeah, right.

Craig 23:50

128 million. And then rounding off 20 for 2024 is Ghostbusters Frozen.

Shawn 23:55

Lose an Empire.

Craig 23:56

Yeah. Yeah.

Sequels, CGI, And Theme Park Movies

Shawn 23:57

Talk about peppermint patties, man. That one. So there you go. So look at that list and really think about that list. Now that is saying, now the studio will tell you, looking at that list, that that's what people want to see. That look at the numbers.

Craig 24:11

Yeah.

Shawn 24:11

But that's not true. No, no, no. No.

Craig 24:14

No, no. I agree.

Shawn 24:15

Because you give it to us doesn't mean we want to see it.

Craig 24:20

You're listening to Basket Traffic.

Shawn 24:25

I'm so tired of the way they light and make things look. And you know why they do that? All the movies look the same digitally now, so that they can fix anything they want in post. So they can't light it specifically too much because then they can't change it. So if they go, hey, we don't like the outfit that uh Ariana Grande is wearing in this scene. So let's just digitally remove it and put this outfit on. You can't do that if you light it a certain way. You have to light it in a generic, sort of flat way so that you can change the background, you can change the outfits, you can change somebody's put somebody's head on somebody else's body. Oh god. No, it's true. It's all true.

Craig 25:03

You know, you look at all these old films, whether they're animated or not, you had foreground, background in clarity. Yes. Now you have all out of focus. It's all out of focus. It's like mid-shot. Yeah.

Shawn 25:13

It's a mid-shot, it's like a medium shot, what they call. So you don't get to see as much in the background because that's all digitally enhanced, anyways, right? Those extras are put in there digitally.

Craig 25:24

So it allows them to chop it up for post-production.

Shawn 25:27

They can say, I don't like the castle, the studio execs, not the writers. The studio execs can go, we don't like the castle in the background in the shot. Let's put another castle in there. Like so, this is how they work now.

Susie 25:37

And I'm sure it must also include the writers and be this cyclical thing where the writers are going to write something and then the studio execs are going to review it and that's always been the way.

Shawn 25:48

Yeah. They've always had notes like that, but this is on another level. Yeah. This is this is on a way different level. Deeper.

Craig 25:55

It's new. It's a relatively new thing, too. And it's not working. All I have to do is talk to my students. And they're just like, no, it's crap. And and because, first of all, the boys can't stand it. Because the lot look look at all of the movies that have come out now. All of the men are bumbling idiots. Even Raiders, the last one. It's so embarrassing what they did to Harrison Ford.

Shawn 26:21

Well, he did it to himself. He's the one that got the movie made. He he wanted to make that movie. He lobbied to make that movie. Yeah. And I love, of course, I love Harrison Ford, but he's the first one. There's a big article about him talking about that. It's like it's my fault. He was so interested in telling a story about Indy being this old broken guy. What happened to him at this age and all that? And I'm like, nobody wants that story. Oh yeah. No. I'm like, what? And you know what? Let's just be honest. It ended with the Holy Grail. Leave it alone, dude. Totally, totally. It's a great trilogy if you leave it at the Holy Grail.

Craig 26:56

An example of that is like, look at Tom Cruise. Here's a guy who's also an older actor, not as old as Harrison Ford, but he's still doing at his age crazy stuff. And his own all his own stunts.

Shawn 27:09

But that's what I respect about that is that they're all live action, mostly that stuff.

Craig 27:14

Very little CGR, virtually no CGR.

Shawn 27:16

Huge on the you have to go to the movies to see this movie. He is totally not a streaming guy.

Craig 27:22

Chris Hemsworth in Thor. Why did they make him out to be like a beer-drinking fat slob? There's another example of just generally men being turned into stupid idiots. And this is the point that I'm trying to make why boys aren't watching this anymore. I mean, Disney apparently quite literally like put out some kind of message and going, we want these young Gen Zs or Gen Z back to go to the film to watch the shows, and they're just walking away from it. I don't blame them because I think two things men have been tray portrayed as no longer a hero, but instead of an idiot. And we're now, you know, we're propping up women into these positions, which is great. But the problem is it's done so poorly. Instead of having men and women fighting together where they both share that hero's arc where you see them both struggle but overcome their challenges, instead, men are just portrayed as idiots. It's just so unintelligent and I'm so burned out on the superheroes, but totally.

Shawn 28:26

And these are I I mean, I call these these are like theme park movies. And my concern with them, and I hey, I enjoy every type of thing. Like I like to go see stuff. I can see a Marvel movie, I I can put it in its place, I get it. But my concern is that they're taking up all of the screens in in the theaters, these Marvel movies when they come out. Like they're they're not just showing once or twice or three times a day, they're showing 18 times a day. So smaller films that I like, independent maybe, which never go to the theater anymore, anyways, but say comedies or whatever, they don't get to go to a screen because Iron Man 6 is coming out. Yeah. Or Jurassic Park fucking whatever is coming out. So that's my problem. And yes, I do like Jurassic Park and all those things. Even when they're bad, it's like it's like fast food, right? You go see it. But I also want to see good things. And we used to be able to go in one weekend and see something like you know, Top Gun, and then go see Terms of Endearment or go see, you know what I'm saying?

Susie 29:31

Like varieties, more consistently really good, different options back in our day.

Shawn 29:39

But now filmmaking has so drastically changed the studio system has changed again. Yeah, and it's a lot like after it changed after this the 50s and the 60s, yeah, where they were doing all these musicals and then the studio system crashed. Yeah. And then all these auteur directors came out, like Coppola and Spielberg, and then they, you know, had a rebirth that whole thing, you know, it blew up again. And it was like, oh, film's back. And and then we had Jaws, which we've talked about in a previous episode, which changed the game entirely. Now we got into blockbusters and into summertime, and now we're here. Yeah, right? So is it Steven Spielberg's fault? Damn you, Spielberg. Oh, God. No, it's not, but I'm just saying this is the this is the arc, this is the journey of movies, right?

Craig 30:22

So, in in a little bit of my research here, I came across a term that I have not heard before called second screen. Yeah. Some of these movies, they because they know kids now are so stuck with their phone that they will now, they can't, their your tension is split so many different ways that they know that they're gonna flip through their phone while watching a show. So they're actually apparently like designing the show to not be so kind of you know intellectual, because they're actually designed to be a second screen movie, knowing that the kids are gonna have half a mind on the show while they're flipping through.

Shawn 30:56

That's very true. Yeah, and the other thing I noticed with streaming is that, and this is, you know, probably everybody knows this, but is that you have that option now when you're in the middle of the show to go, oh, I wonder who that actor is, or I wonder what they've done. You can literally, while you're watching it, you can pull up the menu and it's got all of their credits. It's like an IMDB kind of a thing. Yeah, but it's interactive with. I noticed Prime does it now. I just push down on my thing and it's at all the actors' names and all the right in the middle while they're doing their scene. Yeah. And I'm thinking, oh, now I've I didn't hear the last seven lines that they just spoke. Distraction. Because now I'm into this, into what he's done previous or what he it just blows my mind. And so I'm I'm just as guilty. But I think I I think I've hit I've hit the streamer. Um what what's the word I'm looking for? I'm exhausted from streaming.

Craig 31:48

Yeah.

Shawn 31:48

From streaming shows. Like, I gotta more episodes. More like it's like almost like an addiction.

Craig 31:53

Yeah. Oh, totally.

Shawn 31:54

Like, and I I feel it now, and I'm like trying to pull away from it and go, I'm just gonna watch an old movie tonight. Yeah, like like that has nothing that I really feel that way. Yeah, I have so many shows on my list, and it's like giving me anxiety.

Susie 32:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Craig 32:08

I was listening to Justine Bateman on a podcast with uh Coleman, Conversations with Coleman. I don't know if you ever heard of it. Was I think quite interesting. She said that the audience is no longer the buyer. You know what? You talk about going to the movie theater. Well, there's something very that transaction is very important. You decided to go to a movie theater, pay your money, watch a show, and enjoy a period of escapism for about an hour and a half to two hours. Well, because now the system where the we you know, follow the money, as they say, money is no longer in the the movie theaters, it's into the streaming world. So you pay your monthly subscription and that has created this kind of new phenomenon now where Apple or Netflix or all of them, they now have like live analytics. They can watch the the popularity of their shows unfold and make decisions on the fly. And what that means for companies like Amazon, they're driven to also go to their store. So there's this kind of like connection to sell products.

Second Screen Viewing And Streaming Burnout

Shawn 33:12

Business. There's it's I don't see the art in this. No. And this comes to what Scoreshacy talked about with Marvel. And and I don't want to be the high art guy because I'm not, I like it all, but he said that the Marvel movies aren't cinema. They're not cinema. That that cinema is going to a theater and having a one-time experience with a story. Yeah. Not one where where you know there's gonna be eight sequels or characters that you've already seen coming back, yeah, or telling a story that makes you think, yeah, that it gets an emotional reaction out of you, maybe changes something that you thought you believed in before, you know? Like whereas the Marvel movies, they're fun. I'm not trying to make them out to be these serious things. They're not, I get it, but there's nothing at risk or at stake in those movies. You don't connect with the characters, you don't. Like you said, it's junk food. It's like going to McDonald's and you know what you're gonna get. You're gonna get your McChicken or whatever you're gonna get. Yeah, and and then you're gonna taste the same. Yeah, then you're gonna be sick half an hour later.

Craig 34:16

And it's not even visual, like you said, it's not also not even visually appealing anymore. Let me just use Alien Earth as another example though. It's something that we didn't delve into that much at the time is we just touched on it. The xenomorph is now, in a sense, communicating with Wendy, and we find out of that that the xenomorph from all the previous movies was just a cold-blooded killer. It didn't think, it didn't, it didn't have issues or whatever, wasn't anthropomorphized or personified.

Shawn 34:47

Like they did with the Predator, which we talked about.

Craig 34:49

Which they exactly. So this is a little kind of postmodernism. That's right, and give them a personality and and this is where this postmodernism philosophy is kicked in. It's exactly right. It's like there's something really interesting going on because now you've got this creature in alien earth that's turned into a victim.

Shawn 35:10

And once again, when you are a company and you buy an IP from somewhere, you need to generate money and more things out of it. That's what business is, right? So of course you're gonna go, well, how do we how do we that's what they did with Predator, right? Dan Trachtenberg did that with Predator. It's like, okay, well, if we make him uh sort of the hero, then we can spend more stories out of this. So we can't just have him kill killing people every time, right? Like it's like we've got to make the audience go with him on a journey.

Susie 35:42

So how do we make this work in today's market? Like that's that's what it is. It's a business decision.

Shawn 35:48

Yeah, it's not like an artist came in there and goes, I have this great idea. Yeah. It's not. It's the studio saying, here, we bought this, now do something with it. Make it make some money.

Craig 35:57

For people who don't know what IP stands for, it means intellectual property.

Shawn 36:00

And that's all that's being made right now. That's right.

Craig 36:02

And listen, the Barbie, like books, comics, games. Yes. So The Last of Us is the game portion of it.

Shawn 36:09

Video games, board games. They're making you ready for this? No. They're making Monopoly the movie, and they're making Uno the movie. How the fuck do you make Uno the movie? Well, I can't watch these are this is not a joke.

Susie 36:22

It's coming.

Craig 36:23

I won't watch the movie then because uh whenever I played Monopoly with Susie. Susie, my wife here, you are like Are you a Monopoly cheater? No, no, no, no. She is.

Shawn 36:32

Or you get really uh personal. Is it get personal? Are you a sore loser? She's a freaking capitalist. Well, let's do a whole podcast where we just have a Monopoly game. She becomes evil.

Susie 36:42

I'm not allowed to play with my family anymore.

Shawn 36:44

Oh, well, we gotta play somehow. She she becomes you know what? I can relate.

Susie 36:49

Hey, can I just I lent you money?

Shawn 36:51

I made it out of jail.

Susie 36:54

I let you live a few more rounds around the board.

Shawn 36:56

Can I just tell you something really funny? The guy that I just hung out with, which is an old, old friend of mine.

Susie 37:01

Yeah.

Shawn 37:01

Uh we we've known each other since we were like six years old.

Susie 37:04

Yeah.

Shawn 37:04

We used to play Monopoly and we would dress up in suits. I'm not joking. Oh my god. And we'd go to these, like this little party, this Monopoly party. We knew we were playing that night. Yes. And we'd have suitcases. Oh my God. And we it was so fucking annoying to people. But we did it this. It was a whole gag we did. I would totally do that. And we played together, and then we would be like, we need to, we need to conference. Hang on a second. And we'd talk about business deals. Like, we'd it was hysterically funny for us. Everybody else hated it. This is like a sickness because I gotta tell you, I just watched the new Frankenstein movie, which is Guillermo del Toro. Yeah, we just watched it. Yeah. Um, and okay, great. So loved it. I mean, I thought it looked amazing, which all his movies do. So I'm not surprised. Like they're like candy. Yeah. But did you not feel like Frankenstein was a bit of a superhero? He had this regenerative like Wolverine thing where you like you shoot him or something and the bullet comes out. Like I just went, no, you didn't. Yeah. And then he's throwing guys around and they're in the middle of the scene where he's throwing all these guys around and go, oh my God, it's it's like the Hulk or something. Yeah. And so I and then I go, is it me? Is it is it me? Am I just seeing this now every time because I'm you know what I mean? Like I'm or is it actually there and it's like so yeah, I don't know. So what you're saying is Sergeant York would not be made today. And if it was, he'd be a superhero. Exactly. And he'd have some some cohorts join him that had similar powers, maybe. Yeah.

Craig 38:32

There has to be, in my estimation, a little bit of a reset. You talked about this kind of addiction element where every time there's a new superhero, he or she's got to be just a little bit more powerful. A little so we ended up going through this down this addiction road of like power, but it's gotten to the point where everyone is so powerful, and now we're dealing with multiverses.

Shawn 38:53

It's just there's nothing at stake. There's nothing at stake. So you can't die. No, they can't die.

Craig 38:59

So why do you care?

Shawn 39:00

And and I remember seeing Man of Steel and Zod and Superman battle for half an hour in that movie, pushing each other through buildings, and I'm going, what's the point, guys? Yeah, you can't hurt each other. Yeah, no. So it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm thinking about films like that really blew my mind, maybe you know, that I don't see anymore. Like, I'm gonna say Pulp Fiction, I'm gonna say The Matrix. Yeah, I'm gonna say the original Gladiator, I'm gonna say there's one more. But that these are the movies I'm missing. And and yes, like I'm gonna go back to the age thing. I'm old. I get it. I get it.

IP Cash Grabs And A Reset

Susie 39:35

But maybe this is also what you were talking about before. Like when the movies were all musicals and then they then the studios crash and they have to rebuild themselves. And if if young males are not listening or young or Gen Zeds are not watching and not going, you know, maybe it will, maybe it will crash and write itself differently, and and they'll have to open up the screens to the indies and bring people back in some other way.

Shawn 39:59

There is great material out there. Most of it's like limited series and streaming, but the independent film, I'm talking about film industry, is not healthy. Okay. No, Hollywood is not healthy. Yeah. And one battle after another would be a great um definition of that because it's the most successful independent film so far right now. I'm not familiar with that one. That's Leo DiCaprio's big movie. Oh, and and it, it, it, it made a lot of money for an independent film, and it's not even gonna get close to breaking even. Oh wow. So, because people think, well, why do I have to go to the theater to see that? And that's my whole thing with independent films.

Craig 40:36

And I know, and and I love the fact that you're you're a filmgoer and a film supporter. It's a movie. Yeah, totally. Yeah, and and you're right.

Susie 40:43

We don't do that. We wait and we watch it.

Shawn 40:46

Right. And so we're we're part of the problem is that we're not supporting that because we can just and let's not throw let's not forget this. It's fucking expensive to go to the movies. Yes, it is, right?

Susie 40:57

If you have a family. Tickets for five people is like, uh, no, we aren't.

Shawn 41:02

We used to all go to the movies all the time, didn't we? Or when we were kids, you could afford it. Tuesday.

Susie 41:06

They used to be $2, $2.50 Tuesday. Yeah.

Craig 41:09

And that's an and then there lies a whole other topic. Just having a supercomputer at your hands where you can access anything anytime and do it alone. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so that's it's you're right.

Shawn 41:19

That whole sense of technology.

Craig 41:21

It's the whole sense of community is being just wiped out. Yeah. The movie experience could be on its last leg. That's what most people think. Yeah.

Shawn 41:29

And it might have been over already had Tom Cruise not done Maverick during the COVID thing and then it re- you know, billion dollars, right? And it just re-kind of juvenated that whole thing, right? Yeah.

Craig 41:40

You know, someone said something interesting to me. They're like, Disney never really did the the boy stories very well. It was all very princess-y. Now it's got, and it knew it, so that's why it bought Marvel and Star Wars to kind of like get the the boy element, but it feminized it, and boys are now walking away from it. They're not interested. And now they're realizing that. So that's what Avengers Doomsday is coming back. They're trying to bring back that kind of the boy who are who like technology and they like the idea of this the horror hero uh story arc. And they don't want to be sent messages, you know.

Shawn 42:15

Yeah, and and really quickly, too, I want to say, I forgot to bring this up, is that I hadn't seen another totally different movie, it's off base, but same kind of things is I hadn't seen the second Gladiator. I just watched it, by the way. Gladiator one is obviously, and I know it's epic. I mean, it is the one of the greatest films, right? And so I watched the second one, and I was I was willing to go along for the ride with almost anything in this movie because I love that time period. And I was just like, I just like, yeah, I'm so down with this just watching this. I was really excited. And then all of a sudden, they throw these CGI's baboons into it in the arena. Yeah, and they're so blatantly CGI's and bad. Like, and you're just going, oh my god, what did they do? And then they they fill up the arena with water and they have boats going around and sharks. Oh my god, and no, I couldn't fucking believe. And this is Ridley Scott doing this. Whoa. And so I'm like, they got to him, the studio got to him. Yeah. And he took notes and they he took their notes, but I couldn't believe how bad. And once again, I'm thinking superhero, gladiator's now a superhero. He's fighting CGI baboons. I mean, it's so it pissed me off so much, man, that I was just like, okay, what else can you guys ruin?

Craig 43:33

So I had a I had an interesting thought, and maybe it's a little bit too geeky, but that's how I think. You know how in in the world of finance you have the stock market and you have asset bubbles where the value of something inflates so much that it's totally disproportionate to the actual value of it.

Susie 43:51

Yeah.

Craig 43:51

We're in intellectual bubbles right now, where in movies you have such absurdity that's so removed from reality. And you now, as an audience member, just like you said, it's stupid. And it's not fooling anybody. It's not obviously fooling our generation, but it's certainly not fooling the younger generation, too. It's it's like there's gotta be a freaking reset.

Shawn 44:15

Yeah, it won't be this summer with all these these um Uno coming out and and Monopoly. I can't wait for those. Somebody, somebody put me in jail, actually, for the summer. And do not get out of, don't let me get out of jail. Okay.

Susie 44:30

No pass.

Shawn 44:31

Oh my God, man. Just it's unbelievable. We need some original, original movies, some thinkers, some some something we'd never seen before. Hey, we got a Nolan movie coming out uh in the summer. So let's all we're we're very excited about that. It's Odysseus. Oh so I mean, talk about uh like it's gonna be amazing, all shot on IMAX and like it's it's Nolan. So it's gonna be there's somebody we can we can rely on. All right, guys. Okay, I think we uh we got our message across today. Yeah.

Craig 45:03

The message. The message. Okay.

Shawn 45:05

Okay, next week we're gonna be talking about Alien Earth. So uh oh wait, we've done that.

Susie 45:09

Yeah. To death.

Shawn 45:39

I know it's you picking us up too. Halls, you can send me a fucking crate of these. I'm gonna plug you right now. Halls, mentaliptus, the blacks, okay? Those are extra strength.

Susie 45:51

Oh, those are strong suckers. Hey!

Shawn 45:55

Move your basket.