Episode 22: Scott Derrickson Reveals That He Cannot Say Anything At All About Dr. Strange 2
In episode twenty-two of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle interview Dr. Strange director Scott Derrickson in reverse time. They discuss real cinema VS. not-real cinema, progressive Christianity, the horror genre, the spiritual themes of Dr. Strange, and much more. Scott Derrickson is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He co-wrote and directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose, directed The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves, teamed up with producer Jason Blum to write and direct Sinister, Directed Deliver Us From Evil, Derrickson next co-wrote and directed the film Doctor Strange. Derrickson will direct the Doctor Strange sequel entitled Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with a planned May 2021 release. Follow Scott Derrickson on Twitter, Instagram This episode is brought to you by Dwell: the new audio Bible app recommended by Bible teachers like Matt Chandler, Ann Voskamp, and many others! Dwell's mission is to transform the way you experience Scripture. This beautiful audio Bible app comes with 4 unique narrators, peaceful background music, and loads of features to help you dive in to the Word. Dwell is giving all Babylon Bee readers 33% off an Annual Subscription to the app. You can visit dwellapp.io/babylonbee to get your discount...and start using your ears to renew your mind. Stories Of The Week Story 1 - Progressive Utopia Of California Becomes First State To Eliminate Electricity Entirely Story 2 - Always Appeals To Men With Pads Featuring Pictures Of Monster Trucks, Pro Wrestlers Story 3 - Motorcyclist Who Identifies As Bicyclist Sets Cycling World Record Interview: Scott Derrickson (Part one) Hate Mail / Q&A Paid-subscriber portion - Scott Derrickson (Part two) Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
Melting snowflakes like a hot air dryer set on high.
You're listening to the Babylon Peak with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Hi.
Hey, how's it going?
Good.
How are you?
Pretty good.
How's your week been, Kyle?
Last couple weeks.
It's been a bit of a flurry of activity.
Yeah, but I know that you, well, I think we're going to get into this a little bit later, but you haven't had a lot of electricity lately.
Yeah.
And it's stressing you out like you have bags under your.
Yeah, I had four days without electricity last week.
Holy cow.
That's like four days of pre-Thomas Edison.
Pre-Tesla.
Pre-Tesla.
Sorry.
We don't speak Edison's name around here.
Yeah, it's been hard, but we pulled through.
You did it.
We pulled through.
What'd you eat?
Did we cook over a candle?
We did a lot of Chick-fil-A.
Yeah.
We went to the store and, you know, we did the raid on the candle and flashlight aisle.
There's just all these people there.
Yeah, I guess generators are like sold out everywhere.
Really?
Yeah.
Anyway, I guess we'll talk about it.
We're going to talk about it a bit in a bit.
I wanted to update on Brave Ollie Possum, my book.
Yeah.
Because we talked about it last episode.
I didn't realize it's not going to come out on Amazon until November 12th.
So November 12th is the Amazon date.
We've been promoting it and you can't even buy it.
You can buy it from my website.
The best place to buy it is from my website.
I am now selling a package deal with an extra art book because there's like 100 drawings that never made it into the book that I did.
So I made a separate book of just art.
Actually, like more like 120 drawings.
Anyway, we don't even talk for like a long time about that, but you can get it signed.
I'll draw on it.
It's really cool.
Axebearstore.com, A-X-E-B-E-A-R.
Can anybody buy the spaghetti sauce?
No, that was a special thing for ARC advanced reader people.
I'm bummed that mine is lasagna sauce.
Destroyed.
Oh, the lasagna sauce.
Oh, yeah.
What's the difference between lasagna sauce and spaghetti sauce?
You didn't get it the second time?
No, no, they just said here's a book.
Should we fill people in here?
When they were promoting my book to advanced readers, like, you know, fancy people that are going to give us cool quotes for the back cover, Kyle is one of these people.
And his promotional thing, they put a jar of custom lasagna sauce with it in a menu because in my book, the kids' parents are like Italian chefs.
But Kyle's exploded.
He got a soggy book covered in lasagna sauce.
So then when they sent him the book back, he just got the book and no sauce.
So he never got the sauce.
Sad.
You guys could have been drinking it in a circle by candlelight while we didn't have electricity.
We got nothing left.
Let's drink the lasagna sauce.
Chuck it.
Did you guys do anything for Halloween?
Did your family dress up or anything?
Yeah, well, my wife just got a new job at a hospital.
Or it's kind of new.
It's not that new, but except that she has to work.
You know, when your job's kind of new, like you have to work when they tell you?
Yeah.
She loves Halloween.
She had to work.
So I took my two youngest out.
But the best thing was Calvin, my youngest, he's two.
And so it's just registering what Halloween is.
So he just was walking around in complete shock.
And like, he'd walk up to people just kind of staring at him with his jaw hanging open.
He wouldn't say trick or treat.
He'd just look in disbelief as they dropped free candy into his bucket and then walk away just in awe.
Like, is this happening at multiple houses?
And he wouldn't let go of the bucket.
Like he wouldn't let me take it or help him carry it.
People are handing out candy?
This is amazing.
Yeah.
How do you guys do?
Yeah, I just stayed home and handed out candy.
I dressed up as the green arrow.
See, I try to get the heck out of the house because we always forget to buy candy.
Well, we were worried that we weren't going to have power, so we had like backup plans and going to different places, but it worked out.
But this month is crazy.
I've got like four or five different things going on, like going out at night events.
Oh, yeah.
Which is not normal for me.
So I have to leave the house a bunch.
So tonight I'm going to Switchfoot.
Oh, yeah, my wife and kids are going to Switchfoot and I'm staying with the two young ones.
Oh, really?
and then I'm seeing because I only listen to old timey music yeah Yeah.
We're going to go try to see Kellen Erskine, I think.
Yeah, we're going to try.
If we can make that work.
And then I got the following week I have MXPX.
Jeez.
Look at you.
It's like 1999 all over again.
Yeah.
For me.
Right before the apocalypse.
Right.
Well, I guess it's more like there's no electricity, so it's more like 1799.
All right, let's do some stories.
Before that, let's get into a sponsor here.
We got a new one.
Today's episode is brought to you by Dwell, the new audio Bible app recommended by Bible teachers like Matt Shandler, Ann Voskamp, and many others.
Dwell's mission is to transform the way you experience scripture.
When you don't feel like you have time to read the Bible, Dwell is there to read it over you.
This beautiful audio Bible app comes with four unique narrators, peaceful background music, and loads of features to help you dive into the word.
You can browse popular passages or curated playlists that include select verses by theme.
You can also use their listening plans to help you cultivate a habit of seeking God in scripture every day.
Or you could always take the traditional approach, pick your favorite book of the Bible and dive in.
Best of all, Dwell is giving all Babylon B readers 33% off an annual subscription to the app.
You can visit dwellapp.io forward slash Babylon B to get your discount and start using your ears to renew your mind.
We're so thankful for Dwell's support.
Definitely check them out.
All right, let's do some stories.
Let's do it.
Oh, you know what?
I forgot I have a button for that.
Where is it?
I'm not all set up here.
Topic of the week?
No.
Stories.
We need to get Dan on this.
There are stories.
Wait, that was too...
That was so quiet.
That was so quiet.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
I like how this board is supposed to make things smoother.
But then we call out every transition.
We go, here comes the transition.
And then we press the button.
I got to train Dan, then I don't have to do it.
Yes.
He'll be ready.
Progressive Utopia of California becomes first state to eliminate electricity entirely.
Hey, hey.
So there it is, Kyle living in his dark home.
Yeah, so.
I live like five miles from you and we haven't had any issues.
It's absolutely bizarre.
They basically are picking areas at random and going.
It's random?
They're trying to minimize fire risk, supposedly.
So it's been really windy.
Because they're knocking over telephone poles.
Is that knocking over electric wires?
Yeah.
So their whole thing is we're going to just high-risk areas.
We can turn off the cables and then, you know, whatever.
But it's crazy because we've had worse winds by far, like last year.
And now all of a sudden it's like, nope, now we got to turn it off.
Well, it didn't sound where the government blamed them for the fires or something like that.
So they're having to.
Are they kind of pointing the fingers at each other?
Like, they're like, well, government's making us do this.
And the government's like, didn't Gavin Newsom say that this is all capitalism?
It's fault.
It's just capitalism.
Which is crazy because they've basically granted a monopoly to PG ⁇ E in our state.
The state gave this utility a monopoly and says, you guys have the power.
So there's no competition.
Like another electric company can't be like, well, we're going to provide power since they can't.
So the government grants this company monopoly and then we get screwed.
And then they blame the company that they granted the monopoly to.
I'm going to start yelling like Alex Jones.
He's like, Kyle's shaking.
Usually Kyle's the like laid back.
The deep state lizard people running the electric companies.
Well, it drove me mad because they didn't give us any notice.
And our power just went off one night.
It was off for two days straight with no notice.
And I'm like checking the website.
We're trying to call.
And they're like, well, we don't know when it's going to be back.
And then they go, and then I just find some generic press release on their site.
Like, we're helping you by stopping fire risk.
And it's like, that's all there is.
They didn't tell us.
And then there was a day with power and then they shut it off again.
And there was a day with power and then they shut it off again.
And every single time, no notice, whatever.
And then like after all the outages and our power was back, they texted us and said, you may get some power outages.
Oh, thank you.
And we're like, yeah, so I usually work from home and I type articles and then I'll come in the office and type articles a bit.
And I just, I woke up and I'm like, well, I guess I'm not working today.
So I just have to fight my way to the office and traffic.
And I get to the office and you're already here and your hairs are all messed up and you look like this is a zombie.
It's like power's out again.
Well, I would have been able to like blow dry my hair, but I had no electricity.
You do that normally?
You blow dry your hair?
No.
But it's the government's fault.
My hair is the government's fault.
Who knows?
I wonder if that made a funny sound.
He's pounding his fist on the table.
Yeah.
Next one.
Always appeals.
Always appeals.
That's good.
Always.
Okay.
I'm going to try that again.
Always brand.
I was really having a tough time reading this.
Always appeals to men with pads featuring pictures of monster trucks, pro wrestlers.
I would buy some pads with John Cena doing the elbow drop off the top rope.
So that's a always is women's products.
Thanks for laughing.
That's not the word always.
You came off like a dad trying to talk about periods or something.
And it's these women's feminine hygiene products.
These women's products.
Have you ever had to buy these things for your wife?
Yes.
Alone?
Yes.
Like, do you know, it's baffling to me, the whole section.
She tells me what she wants.
Yeah.
And I'm like, what do all these do?
This isn't.
I don't even, I don't let my mind go there.
I just.
Well, yeah.
I just try to.
Well, she sends me.
But even just trying to find the right thing.
It's like, I remember what she gave to me because I can't think outside of the exact words she gave me.
Like, I can't be like, oh, yeah, I understand this slightly different genre of hygiene products.
So yeah.
Yeah, she gives me a picture.
She takes a picture of the box.
This.
Yeah.
But what if they have a different brand that I'm lost?
It has to be the exact picture.
Like if there's like or if they change the logo or something.
I don't know if they use doves.
But in your, in this one, you did, you did the Photoshop on this.
It was excellent work.
Oh, thank you.
You had monster trucks and John Cena elbow dropping guys because this is a maxi pad for men.
It was supposed to make fun of always they removed the gent the female gender logo from their products to not offend trans people, which just seems silly to me.
But this article actually ended up.
It was like the little circle with the plus thing coming out?
Yeah, I think so.
But the article actually ended up doubling.
It was like a double joke because all the men are like, oh, well, now I can purchase this for my wife and not feel weird.
Yeah, that's actually true.
I'd buy that one.
Except where she'd be like, I don't use those ones.
I don't use the monster truck ones.
Yeah, or whatever it is.
I don't use the big flappy kind.
I use the little other kind.
I don't know.
It needs a string on it or something.
I don't know how they work.
That's not a pat.
Yeah, but there's all these things there that they serve the same purpose, right?
But it's like, what?
Well, not similar.
I don't know.
I guess the same.
The ultimate, the ultimate goal is the same.
Dan's like trying to laugh out loud and he's next to me.
Dan's giggling.
You understand female hygiene products better than I do, Dan?
Not at all.
No.
Okay, just checking.
Yeah.
He's giggling.
So when I don't know if I should tell this or not, we can edit it out.
If we know we, my knowledge of how this isn't about your mom, like peeing or anything, is it?
My mom didn't tell us anything about women, though, because we were three boys raised by a single mother and she was just terrified to tell us anything about anything.
Like you didn't know that women existed.
Well, my concept of how a period worked.
I found this out when I was like 25.
I had thought my whole life that the whole purpose of these things that women wear was that at some point during a certain week of the month, that everything will gush out at once.
It'll be like you're water breaking.
It'll be a horrible mess.
And I'd gathered this from commercials I'd seen in the way that women described it.
Because that was the only information I had.
I hadn't paid attention to sex ed.
So I didn't learn until I was 25 that this has been therapy.
My girlfriend at the time was like, Ethan couldn't stop laughing for like a week when she found out that that's how I thought it worked.
And how does that make you feel, Ethan?
It's fun.
It's fun to laugh at yourself.
I do like that idea of like here it comes.
Like I always thought that, oh no, I'm not wearing one.
I might have been wearing one.
Button down the hatches.
Chevelle comes on.
The red.
No.
Lady in red.
No, the red.
They sing that song, The Red.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Chavel.
They're a Christian man.
Anyway, we should move on.
I just picture a class full of like teen girls, and one of them's like turning.
Oh no!
It happened.
We need to bleep out this entire flower bed.
I'm triggered by the use of the word gush.
Like, gush.
I'm sorry, listeners.
Well, we hope you've enjoyed the Bambomby podcast.
This will be the last one that we do.
And we just appreciate your support.
I'm sure there's some homeschoolers out there who didn't know about all this stuff, too.
Some guy, but there's somebody listening right now.
They just learned something.
There's like homeschool parents that are in there 40 past.
They're muting right now.
Diving for the dial.
All right, you read the next story, Michael.
Why'd he call you Michael?
Kyle?
Motorcyclist who identifies as bicyclist sets cycling world record.
That would give him an advantage.
So this is like one of our whenever we do these ones, because I feel like, I mean, clearly we've done this exact joke twice before.
Only twice.
We did the bear wrestler.
The bear wrestler and the six-year-old, the man who identifies as a six-year-old wins the t-ball game.
T-ball guy.
I'm always amazed how well they do.
Every time we could just do this same joke six times a day, every week, all year.
Like this one, we've done it.
We've done this exact joke.
And this thing went crazy.
Joe Rogan retweeted this thing.
And it went insane.
It's the biggest hit.
It might be the biggest hit we've ever had in terms of shares.
I think your Senate monkeys has more views total.
Oh, yeah.
But still the king.
But yeah, I feel a little dirty doing an identifies joke because it's overplayed.
I mean, it is overdone.
And this is probably the number one submission we get from readers: is like, you should do a worship leader who identifies as a church organ.
Yeah.
That's funny.
Hey, let me write that down real quick.
It's not bad.
Yeah, like what's another one?
Twinkie identifies as carrot so that people eat it to be healthy.
Yeah, see, 10,000 shares right there.
Yeah.
Donkey identifies as Hugo.
You do something.
Okay.
Let's tag team it.
Progressive Christian identifies as actual Christian.
Just off the top of my head.
Satan identifies as Jesus.
Whoa.
What would happen?
That's crazy.
Trump identifies as Mike Pence.
Barack Obama.
Barack Obama.
He's now the first black president.
Man.
These are classic.
Yeah, we're killing it right now.
We should do more in the sports realm, though.
Baseball identifies as badminton racket.
That's like the two sporting items I know what they are.
How are those the two sporting things that you mean?
I had a fascination with badminton.
I don't know.
This is weird.
I like the birdie.
White man identifies as black man to play in NBA.
That would do good.
I think so.
Anyway, I think they get the idea.
Yeah.
But so yeah, the only reason I did this one is because of that woman who kept setting the cycling world records by biological male identifies as woman and she's crushing all these women.
And she's like super, I feel bad for, I feel bad for people that struggle with gender dysphoria.
Yeah.
And obviously, you know, it's a challenging question for a lot of people, especially like in high school sports when kids are figuring things out.
And I get it.
I get that it's kind of a complicated issue, but this woman's like super outspoken activist.
And she's like, should I say she?
I mean, I never know what pronouns you're supposed to be.
But she's, I don't know.
I guess the identifies.
That's the pronoun they want.
I guess it's up to you.
Whatever.
But she's always doing these like, you know, she's doing these speeches about how people are discriminating against her.
She has no advantage.
But it's like, come on.
If you were racing against, if you were racing against men, you would not be a world champion, you know, for sure.
So I think people felt a lot of when that story was going around, people felt a lot of like, you know, I don't know.
Yeah, and that's over.
I think it's like this situation that like forcing everybody to not say this obvious absurdity that's in the air.
It's like the elephant in the room.
Just saying it, even though it's a very simple joke, we all know it's coming.
It just like it just like relieves that tension almost, like that pressure.
Like, ah, yeah, let's just laugh for a minute at how absurd this is.
Like, yes, we, we feel bad for this person's, you know, where they're at and what they're struggling with, but we, just for a moment, can we just not point out how absurd this is?
Yeah, I like, I like that it kind of gives voice.
Everybody's like, this is what I've been trying to say.
This is, you know, this is what I was trying to say this whole time.
You know, and it makes the point in like five or six words or whatever.
Actually, more than that, but yeah, you get the idea.
Yeah.
So we got a cool episode today.
This is this week.
We have a very special guest.
Kyle's doing his taxes on his phone at the moment.
He got a weird message.
Yeah, I'm going to.
Let's start over on that.
We had a crazy episode this week.
I'm very excited.
What did we do this week, Kyle?
Last week, we drove out and drove out to LA and got to talk with Scott Derrickson, who's a Hollywood director.
Yeah, for those of you who don't know, Scott Derrickson started out in horror.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose is kind of like his first big movie, I think.
Sure.
And then it went up from there.
He did like Sinister and did he do Sinister?
And he did Deliver Us from Evil.
But then Doctor Strange was his big breakthrough with Marvel.
Well, I guess his biggest hit movie was The Daily Earth Stood Still.
Yeah.
That was a rough one for him.
Yeah.
I've never seen that.
I'm a huge fan of that kind of sci-fi, so I need to watch it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't even know why I didn't do well.
I don't know if people just weren't in the mood to see an alien movie at the time or what happened.
It definitely wasn't Keanu Reeves acting.
He was in it, right?
Yeah.
Oh, that.
Okay, yeah.
It took me a while to get that joke.
Thanks.
That's always a good sign of a good joke.
No, I'm a big fan of Scott Derrickson.
I've seen most of his movies, and we got to go interview him.
Yeah, and he's a Christian.
He's a Christian guy in Hollywood.
And we ever follow him on Twitter.
He's like this left-wing Christian that's constantly swearing.
Like I said, progressive Christian identifies as an actual Christian.
All right.
So without further ado, our first, first large chunk of the Scott Derrickson interview.
Presenting an exclusive Babylon B interview.
And here we are.
We are in an undisclosed location with the director, extraordinaire Scott Derrickson.
He's sitting right in front of us.
Undisclosed.
Undisclosed location.
My top secret lair underground.
It's crazy in here.
It's like, have you ever seen those crazy scenes in Doctor Strange?
It's like he made that into a house.
There's little baby hands all over his little hands crawling all over us right now.
We're actually functioning in reverse time right now.
This recording is being played in reverse, even though it sounds forward to you.
Tell us more about Doctor Strange, Ethan.
That's a comic.
Can I do the interview?
So when did you first read Marvel Comics?
I was always an indie comics guy.
Wait, this isn't.
I'm not supposed to be getting interviewed here.
We did want to know, though, because you started out making these independent horror films, which are real cinema, but now you're doing Marvel, which is not real cinema.
That's what I've been told.
I just stopped loving cinema.
I was like, I hate cinema.
I'm going to go work for Marvel.
Yeah, I just finished.
I was finishing working on Deliver Us from Evil, and I had been approached by Marvel in the past.
I think Kevin Feige liked me as a filmmaker, thought I was a good director.
So I had been this little siren backup.
Yeah.
We're in Burbank.
There's our secret undisclosed location.
It probably isn't drowning you out.
So it's getting closer.
This is just to add to the urgency of the import of what I'm about to say.
We are in the land of fires right now.
We're in California.
Yeah, so I was working on Deliver Us from Evil and I'd been approached before for possible work on other Marvel movies that just weren't right for me.
But when they said they were doing Doctor Strange, I thought, well, that one's definitely, definitely right for me.
And I worked very hard to get the job and got it.
Nice.
Yeah.
What's that like?
What's that job application process like?
I had eight meetings to get the job.
Like you're just pitching your take, basically.
First one, you go in and sign a non-disclosure agreement and read like a document of what they like about the comics.
That got me very excited because what they liked about the Doctor Strange comics was very much aligned with what I liked about it.
And then my next meeting was just kind of like my take on it, you know, what I thought a Doctor Strange movie should be.
And they seemed to really respond to that.
And after that, I just thought, I'm going to get this movie.
I'm going to do whatever I have to do.
And the final meeting was a visual presentation, which I spent $45,000 on.
Oh, Jesus.
I just decided I'm getting this movie.
I'm going to just outspend everyone.
But it was great because when they gave me the job, the first thing they said is, hey, we need to buy that presentation back from you because we need all that material.
Really great.
So you did like the cosplay of Doctor Strange.
This is what I see the character.
I went in and moved them through time.
And they were like, he's the guy.
All things considered, it's pretty cheap.
Yeah.
No, it was, you know, but if I hadn't got the job, it would have been a, yeah.
But I was going to leave it all in the field.
That's what that was my, I was that devoted to getting the job.
And not because it was a big Marvel movie.
I just really felt like I was the right director for it.
Yeah.
So you had to work hard.
I mean, I always got the impression that people in Hollywood just got really lucky.
Yeah.
Didn't have to go there.
Yeah.
From the outside, you think I'm a little disappointed.
I get a phone call like, hey, you've won the lottery.
Yeah.
You made it.
Yeah.
For there was, I think there were dozens of directors in the running.
Really?
So probably all of us worked hard.
It was like America's got like America's Got Talent.
Yeah.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I always hoped it was more like winning the lotto, but it's really disappointing, actually.
No, no, they actually try to find the right people for the right job in Hollywood.
It's weird.
Can we go back and tell it again, but tell it the way that people want to hear it?
Sure.
Yeah.
I just knocked on Marvel Door and said, can I do Doctor Strange?
And they said, yeah, come on in.
Oh, yeah.
The Emily Rhodes guy.
Get him in here.
I heard that's good.
Let's shoot.
As you can see, we're super professional.
He's scrolling through his phone with questions.
Ideas.
Yeah.
Why do you hate America?
You have that on there.
You have that?
That's an actual question.
Oh, my gosh.
We'll fire the intern who wrote that on.
Yeah, we have an intern that writes these.
Why do you hate it?
It's just another way of asking, why are you a progressive Christian?
Yeah.
I'm a progressive Christian because I don't believe in Christian nationalism.
Okay.
Sad.
You and Kyle actually agree.
Not good.
And I also think that progressive thinking is more aligned with the teachings of Christ than conservative political thinking.
Those are my short answers.
And I don't hate America.
I love America.
But to quote Bob Dylan, I love America, but America is going to be judged.
I think that's true.
Man, Bob Dylan.
It is being judged.
Go ahead and go ahead and trash talk Bob Dylan.
I dare you.
I quoted Bob Dylan on my Twitter yesterday.
Did you?
Good for you.
I saw him in concert a week and a half ago.
Yeah.
In Irvine.
It's like maybe 12th time I've seen him live.
He was fantastic.
Do you like his voice or do you just like his songwriting?
Oh, his voice is one of the greatest voices ever.
You know, Sam Cook, who is probably would get my vote for the best, most beautiful voice in American music, at least American popular music history.
Sam Cook, when he heard Bob Dylan sing, told one of his protégé to listen to the record.
I'm sure it was probably the Free Will and Bob Dylan and said, listen to this album because it changes singing forever from now on.
It doesn't matter if your voice is beautiful.
It matters if your voice is honest.
And that's why I love Bob Dylan's voice.
Yeah, you know, people always say the covers are better than the originals with Bob Dylan.
I don't agree.
Yeah.
I mean, there's some songs that are.
I think even he said that whenever he sings All Along the Watchtower, he feels like he's covering Jerry Hendricks.
The Hendrix version.
Yeah.
I sure skated that question.
Yeah.
We'll dig into that deeper later.
Well, you redeemed yourself after the Progressive Christian thing.
We were about to cut off the interview.
As long as you pledge allegiance to Loving America.
I do love America.
America's been very good to me.
How can I not love it?
I think America represents a lot of the best and the worst in the world.
I have definitely complex feelings about it, but it's my country.
I love it.
And it's kind of like the implications of freedom, right?
Like the more freedom you have, the more freedom you have to go the two opposite directions.
For sure.
So I guess Air America is kind of a symbol of that.
But ask me, you can ask me anything.
I have no fear of any questions.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Go, Kyle.
Go.
Well, I didn't want to get, I was curious.
You may have already talked about this on something else, but everyone's in this kerfuffle about Scorsese and Coppola talking about Marvel movies not being real cinema.
And what are your thoughts on that whole argument?
I mean, you know, I think I speak not just for myself, but probably most of, if not all of the Marvel directors, you're talking about probably the two most influential directors on all of us.
You know, Kurosawa, the Japanese director, is my favorite director.
But as far as American filmmakers go, without a doubt, my favorite American movie, and I think the best-made American movie is Taxi Driver, my second favorite American movie.
And the movie I have seen the most times is Apocalypse Now.
So, you know, it was hurtful to hear that in a way, but at the same time, they certainly have earned the right, especially Scorsese being such a student of cinema and such a grand teacher of cinema.
You know, he has a four-hour documentary on Italian neorealism that's extraordinary.
His love for what cinema is, he has the right to say whatever he wants on the subject, even if he's wrong, which he is.
But I respect where he's coming from.
I think he's wrong in the sense of, first of all, he said he hadn't, you know, the question that was asked of him is, you know, have you seen these?
He said, I've tried.
I haven't seen them, but I've tried.
So there's 23 MCU movies.
I'm guessing he watched one, maybe one and a half.
So I think it's very difficult to look at a film like Black Panther and say that's not cinema or the comedic ambitions of and I think sort of breakthrough sensibility of Guardians of the Galaxy, the political power of Winter Soldier and the cinematic quality of that.
Scorsese has always been very disparaging about American action films anyway.
So, you know, I don't think he considers those cinematic.
But I think that they are, here's my overall feeling about it.
Like Keith Richards, you know, one of the greatest guitar players in rock music history, a couple years ago in Rolling Stone said that rap music is for people who are tone deaf.
He said, they just play a beat and have someone shout over it and everybody's happy.
I mean, you know, that's ridiculous.
I don't think he's listened to Kendrick Lamar's records.
The way I have rap is all my kids listen to.
And, you know, I've gone to a lot of concerts with them.
I think that what has to be respected is that when you're talking about old artists, artistic masters, Coppola is a master.
Scorsese is a master.
Keith Richards is a master.
They're all these old masters of what they do.
I think that they sort of earn the right to be disparaging about when they're old men, these old masters, have a right to be disparaging about the younger generation that comes in late in their life and starts to redefine what their medium is and to find it not only something they don't understand,
but something they actively don't like and something they think is an act of assault on the medium that they have spent their life probing and defining at a level that is deeper than anyone else.
So I didn't, it was, it made me sad because I admire them so much, but I wasn't offended by it.
And I also think that anybody who's open-minded about it has to take into consideration what they're really saying, because I think what's behind the comments is a criticism for how more thoughtful, deeper, artistic cinema that comes out of the European tradition, that comes out of the 70s Hollywood tradition is being pushed into television and losing its theatrical life.
I think that's really the issue that they're having.
And they're right about that.
They're right to be concerned about that.
I'm concerned about that as a student of cinema and someone who teaches.
I teach a class on Kurosawa.
I teach a class on the history of European cinema.
I wish there was better stuff out there.
When I see Tarantino's movies, whether you like them or not, it's very pure cinema.
And I always feel relieved, like, oh, here I am in a multiplex watching something very cinematically ambitious.
So I have no disrespect for what they've said and can certainly appreciate where they're coming from.
Yeah, I mean, they obviously didn't watch the scene where Chris Pratt challenged the blue alien to a dance battle.
Had they seen that, not only would they not have said what they said, but they would have spent the rest of their lives just promoting that scene.
They just would have written long essays about it, done documentaries about it.
Taught classes.
Yeah, taught classes on it.
Exactly.
We assume that they're just mad that they didn't get signed for like Squirrel Girl or another of the X-Men Origins.
Yeah, they're jealous of.
There's a Marvel Comics character called Credit Card Man.
Yes, there is.
And I think that Scorsese is just bitter that they wouldn't greenlight his credit card man movie.
I liked the X-Men character, Puck.
Do you remember Puck?
His little short guy that just rolled around and hit you anyway.
Yeah.
Francis Coppola presents Puck.
X-Men Origins.
I have been reading the William Goldman book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, and he talks in there about, like, he makes this distinction I never heard.
And this is like back in the 80s that he wrote this book.
But he calls certain kinds of movies comic book movies.
And he's not even, this is before this whole thing.
He's just saying movies that are more about the action and kind of like, he says, the good guys always win, the bad guys always lose.
He calls them comic book movies, and he says he makes a distinction.
When he says the word cinema, he means something different than these, and he's not insulting them.
He's just making a distinction.
And so I thought maybe that was what Scorsese was referring to when he was talking about that.
Like it wasn't as much of an insult as like a distinction to him.
Like he's saying taste-wise.
Yes, I think that's what he meant.
But again, I think that he hasn't seen these movies.
Yeah.
You know, and I do think, I think if there's anything, if there's anything that I take real issue with in the comments that were made by these two masters of cinema, it's that you can't, you just can't, nobody has the right to disparage movies that they haven't seen.
That's true.
I don't think anyone has that right.
And I am very protective of that idea.
I don't trash talk movies that I haven't seen.
I don't think anybody should.
Scorsese was really victimized by that with The Last Temptation of Christ.
And I think that to say that Marvel movies or to think that Marvel movies don't plunge psychological depths or human depths or emotional depths is to not know what they are.
I don't think the theaters that where I saw twice Endgame that were just filled with people or it was Infinity War and Endgame that were filled with people weeping.
Don't tell me that people are not having psychological and emotional experiences.
Weeping in a good way.
Yeah, they're just, you know, yeah, this is so terrible.
Not weeping and get us out of here and ripping their eyes out.
Oh my gosh, let me out.
Don't spoil it for Ethan.
He hasn't seen it.
Sad.
I don't know what's wrong with me.
I'm the one guy here that draws comics, but I've.
And by the way, and even William Goldman, it's just like, that says to me that that's a guy who didn't read comics.
You know, I think there's so much profound humanity in even the pop comics that I grew up reading.
But of course, in the world of comics, as you know, there's this wider range of psychology, philosophy, theology, and emotion as you're going to find in almost any medium.
I'm guessing William Goldman never read Watchman.
He never read Axcott, for sure.
And he definitely didn't read Axecot.
I wrote Princess Bride.
I mean, that's a great.
Is that a comic book movie or is that cinema?
Yeah, that's what he, the point he made in it is that I, he's like, keep in mind, I wrote Princess Bride.
Like, I'm not saying that these are bad.
And just that it's a distinction between a kind of movie.
Yeah, I don't, I don't mind a distinction.
I don't mind the distinction between, you know, identifying cinema as being something that is primarily where a film's primary ambition is art as opposed to entertainment.
I think that some Marvel movies are very artistically ambitious.
Some of them are less ambitious.
It's a spectrum.
It's a continuum.
And, you know, certainly my love for Kurosawa, for example, comes from the fact that I think more than any other director in the history of cinema was really striving to create high art and high entertainment at the same time across his entire body of work.
And I think that Scorsese and Coppola, you know, what they're taking issue with, they can apply the same thing to the Star Wars movies, you know, from their pal George Lucas.
And it was really during their heyday in the 70s.
Coppola went on to have many heydays.
I mean, sorry, Scorsese went on to have many heydays.
He's put out great, great films for every decade of his career.
But Coppola's, you know, heyday was in the 70s.
And I think that they, you know, they are in some ways talking about what happened in the mid-70s with Jaws and Star Wars and the beginning of event movie filmmaking where film, where movies became a different thing.
And Scorsese reducing them to theme parks, again, I think is reductive.
But I do agree with his thinking here that starting with Jaws and Star Wars in the 70s, cinema changed tremendously.
And Marvel movies are part of that thread of that Star Wars Jaws thread where movies are not something that you go to to interact with as a work of art.
You go there to be taken into an experience that you are out of control of.
It manipulates you.
It drags you, takes you by the scruff of the neck and drags you through it.
And I don't think that that makes it not artistic, but it does make it a different artistic experience and something that prioritizes entertainment over art as opposed to the kind of films that they make.
Even Apocalypse Now, which is so highly entertaining.
And that's why he put, you know, Wagner and the Rolling Stones in it and Jimi Hendrix and all this great music and had this giant spectacle because he wanted people to be entertained by it.
But I still think that with that film, his primary ambition was to make a great work of art, and he did.
But that's why that film is the film I've seen the most times, because it is, to me, the complete apex of the merging of art and entertainment.
And those are the films I tend to like the most.
And, you know, certainly the kind of thing I aim for in what I do, I try to make something that is ambitiously artistic and ambitiously entertaining at the same time.
And whether I succeed at that, I'll leave to the audience.
But yeah, that pretty much sums up my thoughts.
Well, I mean, let's talk about that in the context of Doctor Strange because that's obviously something you tried to do in Doctor Strange.
You tried to explore things of the purely rational versus the spiritual and faith and belief in a movie where wizards are punching each other.
I mean, that's what you're talking about, right?
Is this layers of entertainment and art?
Yeah, precisely.
I mean, again, those are the movies that I appreciate the most.
And I think that, you know, I think Scorsese does the same thing with Goodfellas, you know, and some of the films that he's made that I've enjoyed the most in his own way.
But yeah, I don't think that some people separate movies and films that way, that movies are more populous and entertaining and film is a word you can apply to more artistic.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that division on a broad scale.
But any kind of broad generalizations about Marvel movies are probably going to be incorrect on some level when examining at least some of this particular films.
Sure.
Yeah.
They're not all the same.
Yeah.
So I would love to just, from your perspective, from your perspective, as a Christian in Hollywood working on Doctor Strange, I know you talked some about this introducing spirituality into the Marvel universe.
Just expound on that.
Well, I think that when it came to Doctor Strange, that's what was already present in the comics.
You know, the comics already had such a powerful emphasis on spirituality and visual psychedelia.
And those were the things that I always loved about those comics.
And I just, that spoke to me.
And I was very happy when I first read that initial document from Marvel that they were interested in that aspect of the comics and made it very easy for me to go really down that rabbit hole.
And they were very supportive of that.
And it was also an attempt, and I feel this way about my work in general.
You know, I don't go out there to propagate any point of view of my own.
I go out there to try to first entertain.
I want everybody who pays, you know, to go see a movie, no matter what their religious or political positions are.
I want to make something that's going to make everybody feel like they got their money's worth.
People who work hard in this world and to take 50 bucks is what it costs now to go out on a date.
Oh, yeah.
Take your family out to the movie.
Or take your family or you're talking like $75.
Four kids.
Yeah.
And I really respect that fact.
That's very meaningful to me.
I want to put something in front of them, but they're going to be excited when it's over.
They're going to be glad that they did that.
That money was well spent.
And I think that's always my first priority.
And I think that the second priority is to also give them something emotional and meaningful and something that can possibly speak to them as a human being, but not in a didactic way.
I don't ever approach creativity from the position of I've got an understanding of things or I've got information.
I've got a way of looking at the world that the rest of the world needs or could use.
For me, it's much more of I'm going to go into this process and think of myself as the audience and what would I want to experience.
And when it comes to the deeper issues of themes and emotional storylines and character work, I try to challenge myself to discover something that's revelatory to me in the process.
And I think when you achieve that, then that tends to be the thing that speaks to an audience because you end up discovering things that are very universal.
Yeah, I think Doctor Strange would have been more powerful if there was like an altar call at the end where Doctor Strange asked everybody to come forward.
Oh, we didn't put that on the deleted scenes.
Yeah.
That's the guy cut.
Anti-Christian Hollywood cut that scene.
I was told that the altar call would be on the DVD.
Wasn't it?
It's coming out in the big 23.
The True Blue Red set.
It's going to be a mushroom trip altar call.
Yeah, that's right.
How many drugs do you have?
The acid and red wine communion service?
Isn't that in the TV?
Yeah, every time we watch that scene where he gets flicked into the astral plane or whatever, we're just like, you know, how many drugs were used in the writing and recording of this scene?
Well, all that stuff is, you know, from the comics.
And that was all done in the mid and late 60s.
Oh, so there were drugs.
Oh, I think that you try to remove drug use from any great art from 1963 to 1973.
And you're going to get rid of all the great art in American music and film, probably.
So who are all the Christ figures in the Marvel universe?
Marshmallow.
Oh, well, okay.
Let's see.
The raccoon, the tree.
Yeah.
Groot.
Groot.
Yeah.
He does sacrifice.
Yeah.
Did you see that movie?
He's literally the tree.
Yeah.
That was a little on the nose.
Captain America, obviously.
Yeah.
Because he's America.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Thank you for your insightful comments.
Kind of good help as the Marvel expert here.
I appreciate this.
So, did you guys actually cast a demon out of Emily Rose in that movie?
Because it looked pretty real.
Emily Rose, that's my favorite six of them.
Yeah.
Did you guys count?
There were six demons?
They say all the names.
She says all the names.
Oh, that's right.
The Elzebub.
No, it's not one of them.
Caesar, Nero.
I don't think it's Caesar.
Trump.
I am he who dwelt with Nero.
I am he who dwelt with.
Yeah, I thought saying Trump was a little on the nose.
I felt like that was a little much.
Well, you know, we all overreach once in a while.
Yeah.
I referenced that in my because I did a comic a long time ago about a demon-possessed pig, and the pig just uses Emily Rose quotes.
Like, I am who dwelt with Nero.
Yeah, Jesus was not much of an animal rights activist in that story, actually.
We were talking about that.
Hey, there's afraid demons.
Go into those pigs and they all run into the water and drown.
I'm like, well, okay.
Sorry, pigs.
Thanks for your sacrifice.
That's one of my favorite, just bizarre scenes from the Bible.
That and the bears attacking the 42 youths.
Yeah.
That leads me to a question: if you could make any movie that's a story from the Bible, budget, whatever you want, do you have anything?
Oh, gosh.
The craziest revelation.
I can't.
The only one I would do is The War in Heaven.
You know, I've always thought there should be a great story about the war in heaven.
Well, Paradise Lost, basically.
I would like to do a movie about the fall of Lucifer and the war in heaven.
I think that's one of the great myths in human history.
And the mythic power of it is has never been given a good cinematic treatment.
Yeah.
Yeah, that'd be cool.
I think the bears mauling the youths.
Yeah, I was really hoping either that or David killing all the Philistines and cutting off all their foreskins so that he get the chick he wanted.
That'd be a good short film.
Would that be real cinema?
Would the sequel be Pile of Five Skins or Abbott number six skins?
Yeah.
The whole trilogy.
Yeah, the trilogy.
But yeah, on that, I'm always fascinated by talking about demons in this day and age.
It's a scoffed at idea.
And so you did Emily Rose.
Yeah.
I thought it was really, you did an excellent job of making the movie really just, you know, you end on the question.
It just kicks up a conversation like, what do we make of this whole idea?
Yeah, and that was the point of that movie.
You know, when I read about the real case of Annalise Michelle, it just was very confounding.
There's really no, there's no way of looking at what happened in reality in that story that can make anybody comfortable.
You know, and what are some examples?
Because I haven't read.
I mean, I think if you try to analyze it religiously or spiritually, you know, the fact that she was conscientious of what she was doing and believed that it had a higher purpose and thought the world was going to know who she was and what she did, which ended up being true because of the movie that I made.
Fulfilling prophecy.
And, you know, that's very strange and in itself confounding if you are a religious person.
I think medically, you know the uh, if you're looking at it strict, strictly as a medical condition that she had um, there's also things in it that are that are very perplexing.
You know how how uh, her particular ailments didn't really line up with with the categories of of medical diagnosis um, which became part of the, in the real case, part of the defense's argument, um.
But I think that the.
I think that when it comes to the subject, the um, the thing that that I believe, you know, I don't, I don't really think much about demons or the devil.
I don't think I should.
I don't think it's necessary or healthy to do that for a lot of reasons.
But I think that when it comes to possession and exorcism, it's not like the mythology of vampires or werewolves or zombies.
Possession and exorcism is a fact.
Like it happens.
And not just sporadically or sparely, it is a part of every culture in human history.
It's an anthropological reality.
It's part of who we are as a species.
And that makes it worth taking seriously.
The fact that every culture that's ever existed has this phenomenon where people go into these trance states and become self-destructive and do all these terrible things, make these terrible sounds, and that they all have a ritual that is like a spiritual shock therapy that snaps it like a spell.
That's really amazing and terrifying and human.
And I think that part of my taking the subject as seriously as I do comes from that place.
I think there's other reasons to take it seriously, you know, as a, as a, as a Christian, but, um, I think that, uh, I think that's the place where everybody ought to at least, uh, look at it as more than, you know, anybody who's a, who's a skeptic or, you know, a strict materialist.
At the very least has to take seriously the fact that these trance state, uh, um, these, these trance states of increase.
intense suffering that people go into, and these these religious rituals that shock them out of it, are as old as human history and and are cross-cultural.
It's just really interesting, you know, and it's fascinating and it's just again.
It's part of who we are as a, as a, as a species.
Yeah, I think I mean, when you have to, you have to if you can divorce yourself from the kind of cartoony ideas of what people think of demons and Satan and try to just think of just just the idea that there's evil in the sense that we you know the kind of horrible things people do and the horrible thoughts we have, even about ourselves.
And you know, when you look at alcoholics and how, if you read the text of like an Alcoholics Anonymous book, you know it's like it's almost describing a demonic possession.
They can only overcome it by going to higher power.
And I try to reframe myself and think in that way, it's like it does seem that there's an oppression, an oppressive force, something outside of just natural.
Anyway, for me that's like kind of the road that I go down when I think about yeah, and I think I think you know there's danger in that, in making that comparison, that that you know that all alcoholism is demonic.
You know I certainly wouldn't want to to ascribe to that idea at all, or to or to consider people who struggle with, with alcoholism, as being in the grips of evil, but I do think that it is.
That addiction is certainly the the greatest equivalent, whether you make it a direct connection or not.
It's the greatest equivalent that we have in the West to Possession that you'll see in third world countries, you know, the self-destructiveness, the inability to control one's own body behavior, and the release from that torturous prison through faith and belief and surrender to a higher power.
I think that, again, these are things that are just human.
Yeah.
And the way people go after themselves and also the way people go after others.
We see that on the internet.
Like it just gets insane, these insane dogpiles of hatred coming out.
And that's when, you know, as mostly a horror guy, you've talked about how evil works well as a religious genre of film.
And so I'm curious, you know, just your point of view on that.
And yeah, just what makes you love horror?
I mean, I love horror because it's the genre of non-denial.
You know, it's something that is a necessary artistic genre that allows, whether it's in literature or painting or cinema, it's something that allows the audience to confront the unspoken and unspeakable fears and terrors and horribleness in the world.
And that has tremendous value.
It's a place that you go to to face the worst things in yourself, in an individual, outside in other people, and in nature.
And I think that that has tremendous value.
You got anything?
Like I'm stepping on you.
I'm just going to leave.
You guys can keep talking.
You should make some Christian movies like Left Behind sequels.
I would watch a Scott Derrickson Left Behind reboot.
I can't think of a worse than it.
Think about it.
Just think about it.
Okay.
How big of a check would they have to write to get a Nick Cage?
Yeah, I was offered the first Left Behind movie, if I remember.
The one with Kirk Cameron or the I think the one that became the Kirk Cameron one.
But yeah, no, I think those movies are bad for everyone.
Shocking.
Yeah.
And I don't believe in our.
Are you renouncing your faith right now?
No, I just don't think I would think.
I think the concept of the rapture is a bad theological concept that does a lot of damage.
But that's another, we can talk about that if you want to.
All of our dispensationalist listeners.
Sorry, everybody.
Sorry.
Sorry, dispute.
It's a teaching that didn't exist in the history of the church.
It's a strictly American-made doctrine.
And what I don't like about it, I mean, it's, you know, I don't think any prophecy apocalyptic literature in the Bible is ever really understandable until after it's happened anyway.
That's always been the case.
But I think that what I don't like about it is about that particular doctrine is I don't like the idea of what is an American religious idea that has deep roots in Mormonism, actually, and that propagates an idea that turns on its head Jesus' teaching that my prayer for you is not that you be taken out of the world, but that you be delivered from the evil one.
And I think that the mindset of we're all part of the select group on a launching pad waiting to be taken out of the world is just a fundamentally bad idea to be rooting yourself in.
As opposed to the idea that we are here to be salt and light in the world and to help transform the world into a place that is more in line with what God is doing.
his redemption of this world.
And I think they're two very significantly impactful ways of thinking, and one of them is fundamentally wrong.
So you could do like an amillennial left behind.
What would that be?
Just a few minutes of people living and then it's just the end of the movie.
And everybody's happy.
Just put the whole budget into the exploding world or whatever.
Yeah.
Or just a post-millennial.
Everybody's happy.
Everybody's happy.
It's great cinema.
That would definitely be cinema.
I also, yeah, anyway, let's move off this topic.
My goodness.
Does anyone care?
Well, we basically structure this podcast so we can get our guests to say controversial things.
Yeah, we need a title.
Ask me something truly controversial then.
Let's go.
And then we just say, like, Scott Derrickson crushes all these directors saying that Marvel's not a cinema.
So we talked about that.
With facts and logic.
Did Marvel make you renounce your faith in Christ in a back room somewhere?
Yeah, Disney, I guess.
Well, Disney, yeah.
I guess it's Disney.
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
Actually, there's Marvel snipers outside the windows.
And if I started to speak of it, I'd get double tapped.
My head would explode and check my body.
My body would slump on the table.
So best not to speak about that.
Can you tell us?
What are all the things you cannot tell us about Doctor Strange 2?
I cannot tell you anything.
It's called Doctor Strange and the Ministry of Snipers are on you still madness, and that's it.
Is your house bugged right now?
What's that?
Your house bugged right now?
Probably.
Yeah.
Maybe we could just guess and you can like pull your ear if we guess right.
Like, is Mike Pence the villain?
Yeah, he's pulling his ear.
Oh, no, I'm not.
I didn't pull my ear.
What are you talking about?
He had to take his headphones off to do it, though, so that wasn't a very good signal.
I just had an itch.
Oh, yeah.
Good times with Scott Derrickson.
Startling revelations there about Doctor Strange 2.
Crazy revelations.
Wow.
I suspected that Marvel had ninjas, but I didn't know they had snipers because that'd be more expensive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I guess they have a lot of money.
It did make the interview awkward with the laser dots dancing around.
All over him.
Yeah.
Like you think two or three is a given.
And he's just got sweat pouring down his face and just shivering.
It was kind of terrifying.
And he's like, hey, ask me anything.
I'm comfortable.
Ask me anything.
But he's just shaking.
Yeah.
So we have more.
I actually thought that the interview got even more interesting after this point.
Like we actually got a little more into his progressive Christianity.
Yeah.
I think what else we talked about in that later portion, but it got, as a lot of these conversations do, they get deeper as they go along.
So we got more comfortable with them.
Well, especially someone big name like Scott Derrickson.
I'm a fan, you know.
I'm like nervous at first.
Yeah.
And then like my oh, he's going to kill me or something if I get it.
And he kept trying to get us to ask him more controversial questions.
So we kind of tried to pry more as we went on.
So the juicier stuff is in the subscriber portion.
Sorry, freeloaders.
Yeah.
Our first question is always like, so do you like movies?
Yeah.
Yeah, just kind of go from there.
Well, that was the other thing.
Like, I wanted to get into the like the stuff I really wanted to get into was the like progressive versus conservative Christianity and all that stuff.
But I felt like I didn't know how many of our audience members know much about Scott.
So I did want to get questions in there, just kind of introduced him to everybody.
Yeah, it was super interesting to me.
And I don't know what segment this is in, but we were talking about the progressive Christianity and his take on like why Christians vote conservative versus why they vote progressive.
I thought he had some really, really good insights.
Yeah, it's always interesting when you actually talk about this stuff, how much less you have not in common.
That's a hard weird way to put that, but you feel so divided when you see just their most extreme things they say online.
You actually talk about stuff.
We aren't that far apart on a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
There's a lot of stuff we really kind of agree on, but we decide to fall in these certain categories.
And we have a picture of progressive Christianity and progressives of being like outraged all the time.
You know, he's kind of like not like that.
He's like, well, you know, I think there's some good and bad.
And I'm like, oh, okay, well.
And I think Scott, because I've known him somewhat for a little while, he, I mean, and just being in Christianity, like actively in Christianity, you're going to run up against conservative people a lot.
And you're hopefully going to find out they're not all awful demonic gobbling up children in the night kind of people.
Yeah.
Anyway, so more coming later, but for now, let's do some.
We're going to do some hate mail.
Hate mail.
I really miss Adam Ford.
Okay, so we have a few hate mails today.
And then we have one.
Got a good mail?
A happy mail?
It's like a question.
Should we do a question?
Yeah.
If it's quick.
So we'll do a few hate mails and then we'll do a question.
Okay.
We need to get the flowerbed.
Get the flowerbed ready?
Yeah.
Okay, hold on.
Or whatever words you have.
Keep talking.
I mean, can you keep, oh, I'm ready.
I'm ready.
Okay.
So this is a message from our Instagram, an Instagram follower.
He says, there's a difference between being satire and being an absolute flowerbed.
I think you're the latter.
Have a nice day.
That's it.
He thinks we're flower bed.
Yeah.
Yeah, a flowerbed.
Yes.
Okay.
It's a pretty bad word.
I would say of all the bad words, it's probably up there.
It's probably the worst of the bad words.
What's it rhyme with?
Except like using the Lord's name in vain.
What's it rhyme with?
All right.
Here's another one from your one.
I curse you with the power and authority of God.
Whoa.
I feel like we need some more intense music to go with this.
I don't know.
I'm not ready for that, though.
Okay, we need to get more flowerbed ready for this one.
Okay, firebed's ready.
Your page is a flowerbed.
If you want to have a page, learn to respect people who think differently.
You son of a.
Flowerbed.
That one really took me for a wild ride.
Like, he's like, your page is terrible.
There's a bad word to describe your page.
If you want to have a page on Instagram, like he's setting the rules.
If you want to have a page, learn how to respect people who think differently than you.
You son of a.
I was focusing so hard on pushing flower, but at the right time, I didn't listen very well the first time you read through.
So I'm glad you re-explained it.
Well, it's like, I really, you know, just the intensity at the end.
Like, he's trying to say, we all need to learn how to get along.
And then you just can't resist.
You.
Flowerbed.
Yeah.
All right.
So here's a thoughtful question.
All right.
Poppest question.
This guy's asking about the article where we said that the hug from Botham Jean's Botham Jean's brother to the police officer.
Police officer.
Right.
That killed him.
Our joke was that it would ruin years of.
You wrote the joke.
What's the joke?
It was like the media warning that.
Oh, the outrage narrative.
Yeah, the outrage narrative could be years of work on that outrage narrative could be ruined.
I can't remember the exact.
And so this guy says, well, that was hilarious, but my dad said that that was a beautiful thing that that man did and that should be honored.
I feel like the article you shared used a beautiful moment as a sarcastic mockery to attack your political opponents.
I don't really agree with him, but I would love to hear you guys discuss when sarcasm is and isn't appropriate and loving.
I'm sure you have to wrestle with that sort of thing at times.
Psalm 1 says we should not sit in the seat of mockers.
And I've been convicted at times for being overly biting in my humor.
Interested to hear your internal process in this area.
Thanks.
Josh Hansen.
So why did you make that terrible joke, Ethan?
No, I'm just true.
I mean, I don't know.
I feel like in a situation like that, you either have the people that are praising what he did, and then you have the people that are like, you know, coming on like the guy that we talked about when that happened.
It's like, he's back on the plantation or whatever.
You know, it's like, this is, what do you say?
Slave mentality or something.
Some slave mentality.
And yeah, I think that the joke, as usual, with a lot of these jokes, it's saying what's not being said.
Like it feels like the it goes against what our culture is encouraging right now.
It feels like our culture is encouraging not to hug your enemy, not to forgive.
We're supposed to be mad.
We're supposed to be uprising.
And so to me, I didn't see it as mocking the situation.
I saw it as mocking the narrative.
And I guess that's a question.
Like, is there stuff that is okay to mock?
But if we're calling for people to be outraged and to embrace victimization and to be angry, I really do feel like at least mock that, if not worse.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a fine line between like we see a heavy political, a heavy situation in the news, a heavy political situation, and we go, hey, we can use this to own the libs.
I think that is probably a bad motivation.
Yeah.
But I think when you actually had this, like a large chunk of people, at least on Twitter, saying, you know, this guy should not have forgiven.
This is, you know, and I think it, I think it goes beyond just this current event, right?
Because this is something that, this is something where there's a whole culture of people that are outraged and they think forgiveness is not a virtue.
You know, we should not forgive.
We demand restitution.
We demand that our enemies pay for what they did to us or what we think they did to us.
And I think this was a moment that really crystallized those two sides that were kind of going against each other.
So I think that piece of satire in particular transcended that moment.
And it wasn't trying to go, transcendence.
Transcendence.
And it wasn't trying to go, it wasn't trying to be like a cheap shot.
You know, I could go back and read that article today, and I think it's still powerful.
You know, obviously you have to have some context.
So I think when you read a piece like that, you go, am I doing this just to get a cheap shot?
Or is there something really important, powerful that we're trying to say?
Yeah, and that's one of those ones.
And I feel the heaviness of it when I'm writing.
And like, I do feel like, am I making light of this?
This is a situation where a guy's brother was killed.
This is real life.
These are real people.
They could read this.
I feel all that when I'm submitting that story.
And it is kind of thing where I look to you.
I trust you guys and I look to you for that accountability and that if you're saying, yeah, I see this too.
The other guys, we all kind of pitch these stories amongst each other.
So, because I do think that I have that own, I do have the struggle to mock and to put down.
But I think that we have a good circle of minds here.
We all kind of take it to take it to prayer and take it to examine our motives.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You got to trust your team.
I mean, editing is important.
You get an editor that's like, you know, I really need a good editor-in-chief.
It's true.
We have a great one.
I can't stress how much important having a good creative director is, though.
It's not as important.
I would say it's just under having a good editor-in-chief.
Yeah.
For now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, in regards to mocking and stuff, it's like you see Jesus mocking.
You know, he uses humor a lot.
You see the prophets mocking.
My only problem is when people use that argument is like, so you're saying you're Jesus and the prophets?
So I'm not super comfortable with that argument, but I do see that God uses, God does use humor and mocking, but he doesn't use it all the time, though.
So we need to be careful.
Yeah.
And I guess that's the thing.
Like, are you a mocker?
Like, by, there's a difference between being somebody who mocks certain things and doesn't mock other things and being somebody who's like, that's what you do.
You're taking the position of mocker.
Like, you don't contribute anything.
You just mock.
Yeah, that's true.
It's easy for satire to slip into that.
That's one thing I notice when you look at other satire that's not from written from lesser satire that's not written from a Christian perspective or a perspective that believes in God.
You know, it's from a nihilistic perspective and it can come off as cynical.
Like there's no point to any of this and everything's terrible.
We make fun of everything.
And it's like, well, then what the heck is the point?
It's not that powerful to me.
A lot of people you can follow on Twitter if you want to get your share of non-stop mocking.
Yeah.
Like Ethan.
Scoffers and mockers.
I try to keep positive on my Twitter.
So anyway, we're right and your dad is wrong, Josh.
And we're going to write a satire article about how terrible he is.
But we're sorry he feels that way.
We're sorry.
Does that count as apologize for how somebody feels?
I'm sorry you feel bad.
I'm sorry if you were offended.
I'm sorry you're such a snowflake.
Yes, I'm really sorry that you're a baby.
We're not actually saying this to your father.
I actually appreciate when people bring that kind of stuff up.
Yeah, it's thoughtful.
Because you're so used to being like, yeah, man, high five, mock the heck out of them.
But I like when there's someone who's like, oh, are we dancing a little close to a lion?
Like, I like knowing there's people out there that are worried about that.
Yeah, well, be careful.
Because it's always the extreme.
It's always, you guys are amazing.
Yeah.
Or like, you guys are the son of a flowerbed.
Flowerbed.
Dang it.
I said it too soon.
You know, and so it's nice to see someone that's like, I really like what you do.
Yeah.
But what do you guys think about this?
Yeah, I appreciate that.
All right.
Well, let's go into our subscriber segment.
Hey, if somebody wants to subscribe and get the rest of this Scott Derrickson interview, and plus all the other, just I got this ask this this week.
If you subscribe, do you get all the subscriber stuff from all the episodes?
Yes, you do.
Yeah, I saw that question.
I was like, I guess we've never clarified.
So there's tons of material you will get access to the moment you subscribe.
You'll get hours and hours of personal stories from Ethan's past.
You get some of the gross stuff.
Stuff we're iffy about putting on the main show we put on to the subscribe.
We've got periods.
We've got urine.
There's a lot of urine.
We've got stories about feces.
vomit you're scaring away a lot of people so if you want to join the babylon be uh exclusive subscriber segment and join us in our luxury audio yacht go to babylonbee.com slash plans and you get full podcasts and full ad-free podcasts which is cool and you also get some other stuff like no ads on the site and you get a little gift sent to you and certain levels you get to pitch headlines which is fun a little headline forum for us so Do that.
And the rest of you guys, if you just drop us a review on iTunes or something, we'd appreciate it.
And we love you.
All right.
And with that, I don't have the outro prepared.
So goodbye.
Bye.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.