In episode twenty-five of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle welcome back Brian Godawa to talk about epic films where individuals are willing to live and die for transcendent values set in all-encompassing civilization-shaking settings, and a lot of people get stabbed. They also talk about the secular-sacred divide in films and the genre of "Christian" movies. Brian Godawa is an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter (To End All Wars), a movie and culture blogger specializing in God, Movies, and Worldviews (www.Godawa.com), author of a textbook, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment as well as an Amazon best-selling author of Biblical fiction (Chronicles of the Nephilim/Chronicles of the Apocalypse). Follow Brian on Twitter. This episode is sponsored by the Christian Standard Bible, specifically their CSB Study Bible. This English translation strives to be faithful to the original languages without sacrificing clarity. To inspire you to grow in your understanding and love for God's Word, the CSB Study Bible contains an award-winning array of study resources, including over 16,000 study notes, tools, and word studies. Now available in eight different cover options, including two new covers. Whether you are preparing for future Bible studies or daily readings, this study Bible is the ideal resource for lifelong discipleship. Learn more at CSBible.com or visit LifeWay.com to order your copy of the CSB Study Bible today. Show Outline Thanksgiving Introduction - Kyle, Ethan, and producer Dan give thanks for our jobs, you, the Babylon Bee audience, and great food in this Thanksgiving special episode. Of course, they also run down 7 Ways You Can OWN Your Liberal Relatives This Thanksgiving This Year. Then they welcome Brian Godawa to discuss whether an epic movie must include lots of people being killed by swords and dive into the idea of transcendence in which there are some things that are higher to live for than just yourself. Movies/Series Discussed - Braveheart Troy Gladiator The Patriot Star Wars The Lord Of The Rings Game Of Thrones Exodus: Gods And Kings Noah Ben Hur Rob Roy Mad Max: Fury Road 30 Days Of Night I Am Legend Topic Of The Week: Kyle, Ethan, and Brian discuss the Secular/Sacred Divide In Film. Is this a false dichotomy? Does art need to be explicitly Christian to be profitable or valuable for Christians? Hate Mail - Jabba The Hutt makes an appearance and accusations of racism stream in. Subscriber-Exclusive Content: Resident Movie Expert Brian Godawa reveals his top movies of all time including some pro-life films. Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
This is the day of gorging, gluttony, and congratulating about things.
Oh, that was the three G's.
That was better than what I said.
What were you saying?
I said being complaining about things.
Grievances.
That would have been.
Grievances.
That'd be good.
And fighting your relatives.
Yeah.
We had tips.
We should have got those ready.
The tips for to own the lib, your lib relatives.
Yeah, let's do it.
Got it.
Yeah.
So what we're doing right now, we're doing a special Thanksgiving episode, which really we're being lazy because we had this episode sitting on the shelf and we're going to release it today.
It's an epic movie one with Brian Gadawa.
So we're going to talk about epic movies.
We wanted to talk to you guys first to just let you know how thankful we are for you and for this job and just to say hi and happy Thanksgiving.
So Kyle's looking up a couple tips for you guys.
Have you actually seen these real articles that are going around with like how to talk to your relatives about Trump?
Or how to, yeah, or how is it how to like actually try to change their mind or how to scold them or shame them or what is the shame usually?
Probably a wide range.
Probably, yeah.
It's a popular thing this time of year.
It's like how to or it's like how to live your best life or whatever.
Like over the Thanksgiving, like how to, how to self-care, right?
Like you have to get away into a room and just take some deep breaths before you go back out there with Uncle Roy or whatever.
It seems weird to me that people need that.
I know.
I don't get that at all.
I've never experienced the super political Thanksgiving.
I have political family members, but I don't.
We don't get into it.
I don't know.
But I do.
I had a friend.
I friend I sat down and talked with one time who he'd come back from Christmas like shell-shocked and he's a liberal and his family's far right, like all red hat wearing.
And it was a huge issue for them.
Like he was like, wow, I can't relate to that, but I'm really sorry.
So maybe it's needed.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Maybe he reads those.
It is funny in our culture of complaining and stuff.
Like a day of gratitude is like super countercultural.
It's become very controversial.
I am thankful for things.
You are a Nazi.
Thankfulness is just your privilege showing.
Yeah.
I think that's the idea, right?
And I saw one person say that on Twitter.
They were like, if you don't, if you can just separate out your politics and say, I don't care about politics.
I'm not going to discuss politics on Thanksgiving.
That means that you're privileged.
Yeah.
Because politics then don't affect you.
It's like, yeah, politics affect me greatly.
But I was just not going to let it ruin a day about that's about turkey, you know?
Yeah.
Are we not just human beings?
Can't we all just get along?
That's what I want to know.
What do you think, Dan?
We have Dan here.
Hey, how's it going?
Does anybody know who Dan is?
I think Thanksgiving is the greatest.
It's my favorite holiday out of all year.
Well, it's eating.
And we all, if you've seen us, we're like a gradient of men who like to eat, like from Kyle to Dan to me.
We're like before, middle, after.
Before, medium, and then before Thanksgiving.
Or we're like three afters.
Like there's like the super trim guy and then like if you go a little bit, you're Kyle, a little bit more, Dan, really bad to me.
Kyle is keto.
Yeah, Kyle's keto.
Kyle's really feeling up.
Are you doing keto Thanksgiving?
How slimmed are you?
It's pretty easy to do keto in Thanksgiving because you just eat turkey.
Just eat a pile of turkeys.
Just eat a lot of meat.
The great thing about keto is you just you eat bacon and eggs and meat and stuff.
But it is hard to avoid like mashed potatoes.
You start getting this like craving, right?
Like you see chips or like bread or something.
My wife, waffle.
My wife walked into the bedroom and I was sitting there watching The Simpsons, which I'm thankful for because I've never seen it before.
And I'm sitting here experiencing the whole thing for the first time.
Wow.
And I'm like eating a waffle.
And she's like, I thought you were doing keto.
And I looked at it and I'm like, oh, yeah.
Oh, this isn't a meat waffle?
Oh, waffles aren't keto.
I totally forgot.
I just completely forgot.
I'm like, oh, yeah.
Completely forgot.
I just forgot.
I didn't have a single regret or remorse.
I was just like, oh, yeah, I didn't know.
My wife really hates those diets, like the all-meat ones.
Really?
Yeah, I tried doing that once and she was not down.
I think they work for a while, but it's hard to sustain for a long time.
It's true.
I lost about 30 pounds on it.
Yeah.
You probably bottom out and then you can't get it.
I've also found that you're, it's like, I don't know if this is true for everybody, but like my body will, I'll lose weight really well on the first time I do it.
And then the second time, it's like each time you do it, your body's like, oh, we get it.
We get what you're doing here.
We're not going to lose weight this time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then I have to do it the real way again.
Yeah.
By just not eating.
My mom makes really good bread rolls.
And so that's hard on Thanksgiving if I get the bread rolls.
And are you going off keto for Thanksgiving?
I don't know.
Cheesy potatoes.
We do like the cheesy potato dish.
I can't do that.
We actually just decided we're not going to do those this year.
Really?
Yeah.
Because we don't need a big pile of cheesy potatoes laying around and they're like leftovers forever.
I like your fried rice.
Oh, thank you.
I'm craving the fried rice.
I thought about it like the other day.
I had fried rice at sushi.
This is before I went back on keto.
I had fried rice and sushi and I was like, this isn't as good as Ethan's fried rice.
This is purely invented, too.
I didn't look up a recipe or anything.
So just to gloat a little more.
Did we tell the listeners about our random drop-in at your house?
No.
Okay.
Is this interesting?
Well, it was kind of funny because we'd showed up to pick up something we'd forgotten at Ethan's house.
And he's like, come on in.
Join me.
And he's got this giant pot of fried rice all ready.
All these bowls.
Like, here you go, everybody.
Have a bowl.
He's like, would you guys like some berries?
And he opened up this piece of berry.
He was so excited to have guests.
It's like visiting Mr. Bear in the forest.
Would you like some berries?
He was fattening up.
Which we did.
We went to my man cave, which is full of bears.
Bear paraphernalia.
We started the right way of saying that we thought we were going to exit and it was going to be, you know, like 100 years in the future.
Like, what happened?
How do we get stuck in this?
We thought it was a time when.
We're going to go to old-timey music, smoking cigars.
Are we allowed to admit we smoke cigars in this podcast?
Sure.
Okay.
Yeah.
Anyways, yeah, it's nice.
So it's Thanksgiving.
Well, you want to do our list here?
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay.
So here are the seven best ways to own the libs this Thanksgiving.
Your lib relatives, right?
Yeah, your lib relatives sitting down to the turkey.
Number one, dress the turkey in a MAGA hat.
I always thought it was a funny phrase, dress.
Dress the turkey.
Yeah, it's always weird.
What does that mean?
Doesn't it mean like the turkey does look like a headless, obese person at some angles?
It's really horrifying looking when you look at it.
We're really ruining the appetites of me, listeners.
Once it's cooked, it looks good.
When it's like out of the bag, it looks you feel like you shouldn't look at it like it should be behind a curtain.
So where do you put the hat?
Just right?
I never thought about it.
I guess I didn't realize that they didn't have a head.
All right, next.
Number two, cosplay as President Trump.
I love this image of like opening the door.
Hey, everybody.
Thinking you're going to be the hit of the party.
Okay.
Number three, invite Ben Shapiro to speak.
Everybody, please.
Before we eat, I just want to invite someone in.
Please welcome our guest speaker for the evening.
What are we charged to come speak at your house for Thanksgiving?
I don't know.
At the place that Dan and I used to work, the president of the company had a birthday party and he invited an old 70s rock band.
And it was a little depressing.
Oh, yeah.
It's like sad that you had come to a work.
It was Living Color or In Living Color.
Yeah.
Is it Living Color?
In Living Color.
I think they had that hit.
It's not the comedy show.
They had one hit, like Cult of Personality, I think.
Creed does that now.
They're like in their 60s, like, yep, playing this birthday party.
That's sad.
I'm sure they paid him a lot, but it's weird.
It's like, do you charge the same for the birthday party that you do for like an arena show?
Yeah, I remember Kellen Erskine had that joke about buying birthday party.
He want to go to a Maroon 5 concert, but buy every seat.
If he got rich, he said he'd buy every single seat so that he could just sit in the one chair and mock them the whole time.
This bit about getting Adam to crowdsurf.
Would it really work?
I wonder.
It'd be amazing.
You know, they do those shows where they spend a bunch of money just to do a prank.
That's one they got to do.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Yeah.
I always like the punchline of that joke where he says that he wants Adam to crowdsurf.
Oh, yeah.
He wants to make it Maroon 4.
Oh, yeah.
It's a good one.
It's kind of a dad joke, and then it kind of fizzles out the bit a little bit.
He delivers it better.
He delivers it a lot better, yeah.
Funny.
Say a touching, heartfelt prayer for the meal, and then carve the turkey with an AR-15.
Nice.
Number five.
Loudly sing God Bless America as you welcome everybody into your home.
That's not a bad one.
No, that's actually a good idea.
Yeah.
Loudly sing it into their ears.
God bless them.
How does that song start?
I don't know how that song started.
I don't know.
It's like over.
I can't think right now.
It's like over the prairies and through the rivers.
Thresh holds through the alleys.
On the bedposts.
I don't know.
That sounded old time.
No, maybe it starts.
God bless America.
Nobody talks about bedposts then.
The land that I love.
Okay.
Number six.
I can't even think how it starts at all.
Whenever one of your relatives expresses any emotion, jump in their face and shout, facts don't care about your feelings.
Good.
Boy, do I feel full.
Hey, facts don't care about your feelings, Snowflake.
I was looking at Twitter.
I don't know why, but people were posting things about changing their Wi-Fi.
Oh, yeah.
So you're just come over.
And they have to enter the password.
They're going to log into Impeach 45 or MAGA.
Yeah.
That's one way to own it.
Really owning your family members.
Cracked me up.
Well, the guy that got all the retweets on that had copied it from a bunch of other people that were doing that joke, but he just told the joke and everybody retweeted his for some reason.
His just happened to Cash John.
But it was always funny to me.
It's like, no, you're not doing that.
Like you're saying this on Twitter to be funny.
Yeah.
And then it's like, how many, whenever we have people in my house, I can count like one or two times that someone's asked for the wifi password.
Yeah.
And usually it's like their kid has a tablet thing and they want their kid to be able to watch videos.
And it's like, what's I'm really imagining like the record scratch, like, it's what?
Yeah.
It's going to really cause.
I can't type that with my finger.
I can't do it.
Impeach 45.
And everyone's like, okay, cool.
Thanks.
Thanks for the password.
Appreciate it.
That is weird.
That's really weird.
My best Thanksgiving story kind of ties into my book that I'm selling right now.
But you know how people like we all let's all do a prayer of thanks before the meal, right?
Yeah.
So I already like, so I was like seven, I think six or seven, and I had been reading books about possums.
I had this fascination with possums.
I don't know why.
And I'd never seen a real one.
On the way out to this Thanksgiving visit, we saw a roadkill dead possum in the street.
So I was thrilled.
I was like over the moon.
So when we did our prayer, excited at this dead.
Yeah.
When we did this prayer, like, you know, grandpa's like, thank you for the troops and for the peace on earth or whatever.
And then, you know, thank you to the gnome ants.
Like, thank you to the Lord Jesus Christ for saving us from our sins.
And it finally gets to me.
I'm like, thank you that I saw a dead possum in the road today.
So if you want to get my book, Brave Ellie Possum, it's still available.
Thank you.
Is that the origin of the book?
Is that how you do it?
No, I mean, the origin of the book is that I loved possums, and there's, I was like, there's never been a big possum story, and also that I was a horrified child.
I had like horrible nightmares and stuff.
So this is about being a horrified child and overcoming it.
Sorry, I'm not trying to shift it into a sale thing here.
This is my best, that's my best Thanksgiving story.
That is a pretty good Thanksgiving story.
All right, one more on our list here.
Oh, I thought we were.
Number seven, hand out gift bags with a free assault rifle, a Bible, and a Trumpy Bear.
Did you?
You guys remember Trumpy Bear?
Yeah, it's like a bear.
Is that like a Trump's little hairdo on it?
Yeah, little hairdo.
Some astute businessman figured out they could actually sell these things.
Yeah.
I remember I met a guy who made like a Trump children's book.
It wasn't Eric Metaxas, it was before him.
Donald Drains the Swamp or Donald where all the cakes, I don't think he had made anything.
Like he's making little indie comics or something, but he was like, there's no pro-Trump children's book out there.
Like, they will not make it.
So he made it indie.
He made like an indie go-go thing and just like bonkers.
He just sold a ton.
That's crazy.
Because he just found this market that there's obviously a lot of parents that have kids that like are pro-Trump.
And the publishing industry won't even touch it.
Like, no, we're not going to encourage that.
I just don't know.
Why do you need a pro politician?
It's weird to me, but like, it's smart to me.
Yeah.
Well, they do it the other way, too.
Like, you go, there's like all these.
It creeps me out when you get people that get their kids all involved in politics.
Well, they have all those like woke books, like woke babies.
And yeah, feminist baby and stuff.
And it's like, your first feminist book.
Yeah.
Just read your kids' fairy tales.
Gross, bro.
Yeah, fairy tales.
And Brave Ollie Possum.
Yeah.
Now available at BearStore.com.
We're thankful for you sitting in on our extended sales pitch for Brave Ollipos today.
But we are.
We are thankful for our listeners.
Very thankful.
We've said this many times.
We had no idea what this podcast was going to be like.
I'm always amazed when I see new reviews show up and people are like, people listen to us regularly.
They say our names.
You know what I like too?
Is that the flowerbed has become like a staple of bee language?
Yeah.
People are saying, yeah, this flowerbedding, blah, blah, blah.
If you look at the reviews, like the last five have the flowerbed reference.
Yeah, it amazes me.
I saw one guy that was singing, he mowed like his massive property, all these acres.
And he's like, and I listened to every single episode of the Babylon.
I'm like, I couldn't listen to myself that long.
But your voice is in all these strangers' ears.
We're living for hours and hours.
We're living rent-free.
Yeah.
I wonder if, because sometimes when I listen to a podcast a lot, then when I try to read a book later, that voice is like reading the book.
You guys have that happen?
Like the voice that you hear on the pages.
Wait, if you listen to an audio book, then you go to the hard copy.
Then you go, no, then you go to read just any book.
Oh, and that's what you hear.
You know, when you read a book, you kind of have a voice in your head as you read.
Because that other voice has been in your head for like all day.
Like when I read, listen to the Norm McDonald audiobook, he reads it.
And then I went to read, or I went to read just like, I think like the Bible or something.
I couldn't get his body.
It's like the Bible read by Norm McDonald.
I haven't begotten son.
I don't know if I've had that happen.
I know like if I see the movie, then I can't picture anybody else and I hear that voice of the actor, but I don't know.
Yeah, so I'm curious if that's happened to somebody like our voice is stuck in their head and they're trying, they're trying to read like Pride and Prejudice and your voice.
And it's like, Pride and Prejudice.
Is that what they say?
Pride and Prejudice?
They just say it a bunch.
Hey.
Hey, I'm Pride.
Oh, I'm Prejudice.
Nice to meet you.
Hey, Mr. Darcy.
I'm Pride.
I've never read it.
Yeah.
So, all right.
Well, thankfulness, gratitude, enjoy your families.
So this episode, Brian Godalo, we're going to talk about epic movies.
We're going to talk about, I think we talk about secular versus sacred in film.
You know, the idea of like trying to parse out what a Christian movie is or not a Christian movie.
Is that kind of what we got into?
It's been a while since we recorded this.
We recorded this a while ago.
So it's off the shelf and you guys enjoy.
It's a good conversation.
Enjoy.
Good stuff.
And we'll see you in December.
We'll see you turkeys later.
Gobble gobble.
Happy Thanksgiving.
In a world where fake news rules over all, 1B arises.
Wielding the stinger of satire.
Driving it into the unsmelpable heart of evil.
While eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich.
This summer.
Satan is about to get old.
Big time.
Starring Kurt Cameron as Joel Osteen.
Living large, hanging out with the beautiful people, making lots of money.
Kevin Sorbo as Bernie Sanders.
They should pay their fair share taxes.
John MacArthur as himself.
Wicked People and Carl Mann and Ethan Nicole.
I'm Kyle Mann.
I'm Ethan Nicole.
With a special guest appearance by Brian Ganela.
Transcendence.
The blockbuster event of the new millennium.
The Babylon Bee Movie podcast episode.
Yeah, it's just a podcast episode about movies.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Podcast.
I'm Kyle Mann.
I'm Ethan Nicole.
And that strange breathing you hear in the background is our friend.
The master of movies.
Brian Godawa.
You can't say your own name.
Yeah, well.
Oh, sorry.
Good.
He's going to try to do more like the Cinnabon of Cinema.
I couldn't think of a good one.
That's a pretty nice.
End of this gun.
It's like Hulk Hogan coming out and saying, like, Hulk!
Hogan!
He just destroyed me.
Well, if you haven't figured it out by now, this is our second ever movie episode.
Movie episode.
Babylon Bee.
We should call it at the movies.
Babylon Bee goes to the movies.
You know how you did the bee sitting at the news desk?
You take that same...
Do you still have that bee 3D graphic?
Have it?
Have it sitting in the movies with the talking on a cell phone.
Yeah, texting.
Texting.
You strike me as a guy who texts in the movie theater.
Me?
Yeah.
Oh, because I'm on my phone along.
You're always on your phone.
I do not text in the movie theater and it drives me crazy.
Yeah, you're sitting there twitching.
By the way, get off the phone, will you?
We're on a podcast.
I'm not.
These are the notes.
Okay.
But no, it drives me crazy when other people do it is what I was saying.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah.
Real Christians don't use their phones in the movie theater.
This is true.
There are some lines that need to be drawn.
All right, so this is another movie episode, so we're going to do pure movies.
We're going to talk with Brian.
We're going to get in, we're going to unmask the worldviews of these movies.
Yeah, classic movies.
Expose them.
The liberal legitimacy.
I was wondering how many words you and I could say at the same time.
Expose.
Expose.
Liberal lies.
Yes.
Yes.
We're down the same wavelength here.
And the Christ pictures.
Oh, yes.
A pure movies episode.
You might call this a pure flicks.
Pure episode.
Pure flicks.
Pure B. Pure P. Talking about purely flicks.
Pure.
Purely flicks.
Okay, so this episode, we're going to talk about epic movies.
And by that, we mean movies where a lot of people get killed by swords, right?
Yeah.
Mostly?
Yeah.
Is that the definition?
Epic doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to be anything.
Name an epic movie without lots of people getting killed by swords.
I mean, like Star Wars is an epic.
But they got killed by lightsabers.
Amadeus.
Yeah, okay.
So they're lightsabersababababababababic?
Are they swords?
No, it's an epic.
Okay, lightsabers are not swords.
Yes, they are.
They are swords that glow.
A vibroblade is more analogous to a sword than a lightsaber.
Okay.
You might be right.
You might be right.
Maybe epic requires it.
Usually it has to be a historical piece about important things and history with a lot of war.
But it's got to have, no, it's got to love and war, actually.
It's got to be love and war.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's always fighting for somebody.
Ideally.
So Smokey and the Bandit, epic or not?
Ah, non-epic.
Non-epic.
No, dude, that was epic.
Let's fire another one.
Incino Man.
Epic or not?
Dude, epic.
Bio Dome.
These days, in this day and age, everything's epic.
Hey, what's the worst movie you've ever seen, Brian?
Oh, that's a big question.
It was BioDome for me.
You know, my problem is that when I don't like a movie, I forget about it.
I literally, like, my mind just like blocks it out.
So I honestly, off the top of my head, I can't think of like the worst movie I've ever seen.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
That's the one that pops in the best, yeah.
Ethan, worst movie you've ever seen.
I don't know.
I mean, I remember the one that I walked through from the theater going, this is so stupid.
Was that Paul movie?
You talked about that last time.
I talked about that last time.
An indeterminate.
I'm planning to answer this question.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we're going to talk about epic movies.
Okay, let's talk about epic movies.
But first, we have a sponsor this week.
This episode is sponsored by the Christian Standard Bible, specifically their CSB study Bible.
This English translation strives to be faithful to the original languages without sacrificing clarity.
To inspire you to grow in your understanding and love for God's word, the CSB Study Bible contains an award-winning array of study resources, including over 16,000 study notes, tools, and word studies.
Now available in eight different cover options, including two new covers.
Whether you are preparing for future Bible studies or daily readings, this study Bible is the ideal resource for lifelong discipleship.
Learn more at csbible.com or visit lifeway.com to order your copy of the CSB study Bible today.
Every week, there are epic movies.
These are some of them.
Okay, first of all, let's talk about the epic.
So what is the nature of epic?
We were already talking about, you know, a lot of times they do tend to certainly be historical or period pieces, but they're usually about big, the big issues, big issues that that touch not just on the individual but um, also touch whole societies and maybe even the world at times.
You know what I mean so, so they're often going to be stories that occur in uh, they often do occur in, major transition periods of society.
So what you know, like the French Revolution or the American Revolution, like patriot right um, or or, it doesn't have to be war, but a lot of times it it's connected to war, because war seems to be that, that uh uh, the means by which a lot of the world changes right.
So, and and it often also includes uh, a romance story you know, love and war is often a common element of it.
But in terms of the genre of epic, I think what makes an epic an epic is that they are usually about transcendence, and we we talked about this once before on the Babylon BEE podcast a long time ago, so let me refresh your memory.
So transcendence is this notion that there is something higher in this life something, maybe a higher cause uh, something to live for, or it could simply be God, or it could simply be higher values like, for instance, freedom.
You know like, as Americans, we think freedom is the one of the highest values of all.
Not all countries believe that, by the way but uh, you know, things like freedom, or freedom of speech or um, you know love, love can be a big issue as well, of course but uh but, these issues like freedom and such, these are the things that drive um, or as well as um, the individual versus the state.
So epics tend to wrestle with issues that are are um, deeper philosophical, but yet, in a way, all of society moves with them, right?
So if you've got a movie like trying to think one that we're not already going to talk about, like Braveheart, that's the one that always comes to mind well, go ahead, because that's one of the classic ones of all time that people know.
Oh yeah, that's an epic Brave Heart.
Yeah, the Epic Brave Heart.
You know, it's got Everything, War, Love.
That was the Mel Gibson one about the American Revolution right yeah yeah no, that was a patriot.
I watched that on july.
Okay, it was the Vietnam War One.
That's right.
Right yeah, we were soldiers once.
Yeah, that was good too.
I like that one, um no.
So Braveheart, you know yeah, but look at it, Braveheart has all those components where it's a time of change in history when, when the king of England uh, was trying to actually annex and take over Scotland and it was it was a time period where Scotland won its, won its freedom, you know, and so that is a and we all know freedom right, but that theme of freedom uh, is one of the big themes that epics deal with.
Why?
Because transcendent, it's about transcendence, it's about life is more than just what we're experiencing, what we have here uh, getting making a lot of money, being rich whatever, all these things of the earth and stuff.
It's about the values, Values that give us meaning and purpose in life, that also end up affecting, giving us civilization.
So it's civilizational values that are often at stake in epics.
And so, yes, of course, obviously freedom, you know, but the, you know, the bigger issue or the big issues of Braveheart, you know, such as, you know, oh, I guess the, I guess you see it in the characters.
William Wallace versus Robert the Bruce.
Those are the two characters.
Robert the Bruce is telling the story, but the hero is William Wallace, right?
And, but if you look at those two characters, they embody the two transcendent values fighting for what civilization is going to be founded on.
Are we going to have freedom through Robert the Bruce's way, which is the nobles would compromise with tyranny, with tyrants, right?
Tyrant wants to take away, well, let's compromise.
Let's keep the peace.
Let's appease, right?
That's one approach towards evil, towards tyrants.
The other approach was William Wallace, which was non-compromise, fight to the death, because otherwise you'll be a slave.
So really, what you'll find in a lot of epics, you can boil, not all of them, but a lot of them often boil down to this issue of slavery versus freedom in metaphorical or literal ways.
But that's, I think, so that transcendence is what epics are fighting for.
Are epics often tragedies?
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, as Braveheart is.
I'm just thinking through this list of epics that we're talking about.
I see most of them, you see the hero that ends up either dying or...
Oftentimes, yeah.
You know, he loses everything because he sacrifices for this transcendent principle.
Exactly.
Because the transcendence is living for something higher than yourself.
Because if you're only living for yourself, a civilization collapses from within.
And, you know, it's miserable, lonely, despairing life.
But when you learn to live for other people or have a higher cause, that's that transcendence I'm talking about.
Absolutely.
And that's why you will often see people dying, sacrificing themselves for, and like they'll start out selfish and they'll end up sacrificing themselves for the higher cause.
Absolutely.
Now, there's an interesting thing I want to point out that I've always referred to, and that is the movie Troy.
So, Troy was one of those wannabe epics that I argue is a failed epic because it is a… Was it an epic fail?
It's an epic fail.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
As the kids say these days.
You know how popular that is.
Anyway, so, you know, I mean, so you've got Brad Pitt as Achilles, right?
And you've got Eric Banna as a Hector, right?
And, you know, the whole Troy story there, which is just basically a battle.
It's just a battle for a city over the beautiful woman.
But, you know, this gave me an idea for a movie called Troy Story.
Troy Story.
It's cool.
Troy Story 4.
I don't know if either of us saw this movie.
I never saw it.
Oh, you're just going to crack jokes.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Okay, I'll talk about it.
I'll keep talking about the movie.
Don't, because I was curious.
I feel like I'm watching it in my mind right now.
But it has all the shallow elements of the epic.
You know, Achilles is this great warrior.
Brad Pitt's awesome.
He's a good actor and great fight scenes and some really cool stuff.
You know, battle, war.
It's about the fall of Troy, which is a historical event, massive, all this kind of stuff, right?
It has all the elements of it, and it's about the gods and not.
But the problem, the reason why it fails is because the people who made it were humanists who don't believe in God or gods, right?
And so they turned the story into the conflict, the sort of spiritual philosophical conflict was the gods versus no gods.
So you've got the heroes like Achilles and Hector.
They were humanists who didn't believe in gods and everyone else did.
And so the theme here was, you know, that there are no gods.
There are no gods.
And so they basically, they were anti-transcendent in the movie, which is supposed to be about transcendence.
And look, I know that those are pagan gods, but they still represent transcendence.
And so the movie actually undermined itself and it was unsatisfying.
Again, this is one of those cases where it's like, I'm not saying because I disagree with the philosophy.
It was humanistic.
And the whole message, that point in the story where the person says, this is the message verse virtually, you know, which is pretty much like, you know, your glory is not in becoming a God or whatever.
It's being remembered.
And it's because there is nothing beyond this life.
Therefore, your memory of what you've done is your eternity kind of thing.
I can't remember the, I can't think of the word.
Rather than like, you're going to die and go and be, you know, live forever or something like that.
You live forever in your myth, that kind of thing, right?
So that's the point.
And so they're mocking the gods throughout the whole thing.
They're deconstructing gods.
I get that.
Fine.
But in so doing, they had no transcendence other than the humanistic notion that, well, hopefully people will remember you, but that's like empty.
So I'm watching this movie and I'm like, this is empty and unsatisfying.
Not just because I disagree with it.
Yeah, it's like a salad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Without meat.
Yeah.
Just a pale salad.
In contrast to that, you got the movie Gladiator.
I was about to mention in the beginning when he says, I think it's the beginning, where he says the what we do in life echoes in eternity.
Yeah.
And it says a stark contrast to what you're talking about with Troy.
By the way, I give Troy two stars out of five after hearing your description.
Yeah.
You know, like I said, they had some cool fight scenes and all that.
But I liked those.
But here's the thing.
So Gladiator is a completely pagan movie.
In fact, the writer, David Franzoni, I remember reading this, you know, I put it in my book, Hollywood Worldviews, where I talk about this stuff.
It's available on Amazon.com.
But Franzoni said he deliberately, because this is at a time when they hadn't done sword and sandal epics for a long time, from the 60s, Spartacus.
Yeah, they fell out of favor there for a while.
Exactly.
So like, well, we're going to bring this back.
But of course, he's a humanist and he's like, and I want to, you know, but I want to do the opposite.
I want to do something different.
He literally said, you know, they were all Christian stories, you know.
And he's like, I want to do a pagan story.
And so that's what the tale is, which is, you know, the man who was a slave who became a warrior who defied an emperor or whatever, you know, that whole thing of gladiator.
And it's a fantastic, it's one of my favorite movies, but it's completely pagan, but they have the pagan afterlife.
They have the, you know, he echoes through eternity.
And even at the end, when he dies, they show him going through the wheat field to meet his wife in the afterlife, right?
And he worships, he has these little figurines of family that Romans worshipped.
So it's completely pagan, but there's still a, I disagree with it, but there's a satisfaction in the sense of you have this sense of there's transcendence beyond this world.
After you die, there's more to this world.
Therefore, this is what makes a good epic an epic is if that because there is something more high to live for and to give your life for, that's what gives life the greater meaning now.
And that's what elevates this life.
Otherwise, we're just molecules emotion.
So screw us all.
I might as well just kill you.
It doesn't matter.
He just pointed finger guns at me.
Nosai did choose to shoot you rather than concerning.
You should have that psychoanalyst.
It wasn't rational.
It wasn't rational, but I will confess.
And I cannot condemn you because there's no moral basis on which to do that.
However, Freud would say we tend to hurt those we love the most.
I don't know.
I think it's just laziness.
He's closer.
Yeah, that could be.
Yeah.
Yeah, it would be hard to throw hold the gun like this than holding it straight out in front at you.
Of course, people don't see us, so they don't know what we're talking about.
Sorry.
I think this is a lot of, this is probably getting off topic, but a lot of what the criticism was about the, did you see Star Wars The Last Jedi?
Yeah.
Was that they had all of these values established.
Luke fights for, you know, at his own great personal risk and personal cost.
He fights for the rebellion because he believes in it.
And then, you know, he comes back and he's just this old bitter old man who's like, eh, I don't really care about that forced stuff anymore.
Even though they should do a sequel to Braveheart, like Braveheart 2, The Last, where he didn't actually die.
William got so his head gets so back on and he's his old bitter man and he's like, oh, don't fight for freedom.
It doesn't, you don't need any of that.
Or Robert the Bruce wins that battle at the end, but goes, nah, I'm just going to go back home.
Yeah.
Or something.
Because it subverts expectations.
So it's exciting.
But so that's my argument about why.
And by the way, that's why, honestly, personally, my favorite genre is epics.
When I first started out in Hollywood, I wrote all these historical epics, which, of course, they tell you not to do because they're too expensive.
They're period pieces.
And Hollywood doesn't do those unless you're all well connected.
But I just had to do it because I loved them.
And sure enough, none of them got made.
But they launched me on my novel writing career.
So that's helpful.
They told me not to do it, but I did it anyway.
Exactly.
And what they said would happen.
And I want to tell you, you know, out there, do what they tell you because it really makes a difference.
Absolutely.
But I love epics, and I love they're my favorite movies of all time.
Braveheart happens to be actually my personal favorite movie, as well as another great war movie called Twin Dole Wars.
You're a little biased.
There's some nepotism or something.
But The Patriot, I really loved.
We just saw that again.
I love that.
I think it's the closing shot of Braveheart with the sword.
That's just, you know, they got it on the perfect spot on the screen and it's kind of wiggling in the grass there.
Transcendent.
It's transcendent.
And Gladiator, you know, again, it's like, in fact, those are Braveheart and Gladiator.
I have, I'll get a buddy once every year or two and we'll just do a like a Saturday afternoon and just watch Gladiator and Braveheart back to back because they're just the most awesome, you know, male epic movies ever.
But they embody great storytelling as it should be.
And everything's in line.
In fact, as a screenwriter, I often used Braveheart as my sort of paradigm model when I'm thinking about, wait, does this work?
Oh, well, what did they do in Braveheart?
Oh, yeah.
You know, that kind of thing.
I always use Die Hard.
Oh, yeah.
Die Hard's great.
Die Heart's great.
It still stands out.
Yeah, so would these movies because I don't know, have we made one recently?
I use recent epic.
My structure is Kroll.
I use Kroll.
Kroll.
Is that an epic?
It kind of.
Would the Conan the Barbarian movie be epics or are those?
You could call them fantasy.
Sure, yeah.
Sure.
The weird thing is in the books, Conan had no guiding morals.
Like his whole thing was just to steal treasure and get women.
Yeah.
And I think Robert E. Howard's point in the Conan stories was like, civilization is the same thing as being a barbarian.
And that was like his, he was always a comparison between barbarianism and society.
And so in the movie, they made it more of like a fighting for his family type thing or whatever.
Yeah.
And by the way, that's another common theme in epics is, you know, again, these bigger themes, these civilizational themes, precisely what makes civilization, you know, barbarism versus civilization.
And so they'll pit those two against each other, you know, or the descent of a civilization into barbarism and how is that stopped.
That's another.
Is barbarism like the belief in cutting your hair?
Or is that?
No, no, it's you believe in dolls.
Barbara.
That's Barbieism.
Oh, anybody named Barbara?
Barbara Streisand, Barbara.
Barbara Bush.
Actually, that broadens it a lot.
Those two Barbaras.
Barbara.
Who's the one that's?
That's Barbaraism, not Barbarism.
Come on.
The one in Batman, the Barbara game, remember last name?
I don't know.
There's just Batman and Batman.
Nobody cares about the other characters.
No, it's...
Anyway.
Gordon.
So we have Gladiator and Braveheart.
That was a while ago.
Yeah, but has there been a good epic made recently?
Or is there something wrong with that story that our woke culture doesn't really Gordon?
Barbara Gordon.
Thank you.
Nobody cares.
That's Batgirl.
I think that's an excellent question, Ethan.
I really do, because I think it is relevant.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any that.
The closest thing I can think of is like Game of Thrones or something.
Oh, sure.
Absolutely.
No, absolutely.
Yeah, Game of Thrones.
So epics are occurring on television.
Right.
Absolutely.
But is there a difference between Game of Thrones and Game of Hearts?
Let's get into that.
There is a big difference.
So on one hand, I think that there's probably, there's always going to be some epics because again, Hollywood's not monolithic.
So they're not all the same.
But I do think we do see less of them.
They did a King Arthur one just recently.
Yeah, that's true.
When they do do them, there are oftentimes they've got this cynical edge like Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones is almost an anti-epic.
Now, in truth, if you follow the whole arc, it isn't.
It's an epic because the arc of the characters, they almost, most of them become good by the end, you know?
So they do have, but it sure took them a long time to get there.
And there's a lot of cynicism and nihilism on the way.
In fact, when I first started watching Game of Thrones, it was so nihilistic and dark that I just stopped, you know?
But then I thought about it and I thought, you know what, there's going to be an arc because I don't know.
I just trusted that there might be.
And fortunately, there was.
But I do think that epics do tend to have more of a cynical edge now or like a self, self, not mocking, but sort of a self-aware edge, which our cynical, ironic culture of today prides itself on sort of like, you know, oh, well, you know, we know that this is just a formula type of thing.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So you'll have like the King Arthur one where they've got like, you know, it's, it's a little goofy at times and stuff, and they're having fun.
I look at something like Lord of the Rings and Tolkien.
And I know where there was good and there was evil and the message of the movie, or at least the message of the book.
I don't know how well Peter Jackson captured it, but the message of the book is that evil is temporary and good is eternal.
And that's the only thing that's really eternal, you know, in the Lord of the Rings universe.
In Game of Thrones, it's like the cycle that society will always collapse and it's just a matter of trying to maintain stability for a matter of time before there's no like real eternal good that they're fighting for.
It's just let's try to keep civilization from collapsing.
Yeah.
Because I mean, ultimately, in that view, it really is the sort of Nietzschean power Mike makes right.
There is a religion in there.
And you'll notice that the religion they made it monotheistic.
So he's clearly anti-Christian, anti-Bible.
Game of Thrones?
Game of Thrones, I'm sorry, yeah.
Game of Thrones.
And that religion is, of course, just as dark and just as cynically motivated for power as anybody else, right?
And that's his view.
That's the, what's his name's view of religion?
George Armin.
Yeah, Martin.
Yeah.
So, you know, that doesn't surprise me.
But nevertheless, I do think that that is another one of those elements where I say I think it works against the transcendence.
But if you see by the end of the season, you can't, you're not going to satisfy people if you end in despair and cynicism.
Why?
Because in our heart of hearts, we believe there is something greater.
So cynicism doesn't work as a worldview, living it out.
I think people who use cynicism and nihilism and cynicism and nihilism is the belief that there is no meaning and purpose in life and we're all deluded ourselves.
There's only power.
And of course, in a way, that's what the left actually believes because that's why they have a philosophy of power.
They're always talking about power.
If you look at the postmoderns, which a lot of that came out of, whether it's Foucault or Derrida, it's all about power because they believe that I would agree with them actually.
If there is no God, then all there is is power.
And so there is no right and wrong.
It's just how to manipulate society's views of right and wrong in order for you to get the power, which is why something you mentioned before about they just turn the hierarchy upside down.
So whoever they think was in power before, they don't want justice.
They just want to swap them.
So if patriarchy had men in power, now we want women to have power.
We want them to be in power and to oppress men.
That's okay.
They don't have a sense of right and wrong because it's only power.
That's where I start to get just unsatisfied.
But I still, I would argue, though, there's something about the nature of money and Hollywood storytelling that in some ways I believe that's a pressure for the good.
Like true nihilists can't get their movies made because people know they're not going to make money.
It's like you read the story or you see this is what you want to tell.
It's like, no one's going to like this.
They get made by usually art house, you know, independent filmmakers or something like that.
But by and large, even Game of Thrones, I think, you know, at the end of the day, there is a transcendence there, whether they agree to it or not.
Yeah, that's a series that, man, I mean, it was beloved by so many people.
And then what's that?
I didn't see the last season, but I had heard nothing but bad things.
And no one seemed very happy with that at all.
Yeah, I would say the last episode is the worst episode of the best series in history.
Worst episode of the worst season, last season of the best, but I still think that.
It was just mad libs.
Yeah.
At the end.
Like there was just blanks in the script and it said, this guy gets to the Iron Throne.
And then this guy started to quickly tie everything up or something.
Yeah, basically they only did six episodes instead of the usual 10.
Yeah, it did wrap up a little too easy.
People changed a little too quickly.
Not entirely, I think.
Like I don't agree with everybody.
Some of the criticisms, like Daenerys, Daenerys Targaryen, you know, she was the dragon queen, like the whole thing.
But, you know, if you watch her character, so the whole thing, like at the very end, is she going to be bad or good?
And she just turns and burns everybody up.
And people are like, that came out of nowhere.
It's like, no, it didn't.
If you watch the series, it's the growth of a tyrant.
And that's the thing.
Yeah, that's the whole point.
The tyrant is abused and they start out, they want freedom.
They want because they were abused, they experienced their people suffered, whatever.
And so then they want to bring righteousness and peace and end suffering and kill the bad guy.
But then as they get power and they get angry and they start becoming revengeful and then they justify their power and then they just go mad and they kill people.
That's exactly what happened.
And I thought like, no, that was actually pretty good.
Well, people got mad because like people were naming their kids Daenerys and stuff.
Plus, again, getting tattoos.
You know what?
She was like the social justice warrior.
She's a social justice warrior and she was the feminist.
Yeah.
People were mad like, oh, women always get emotional and angry.
And women turn into tyrants.
Yeah, not all women, but some do.
Yeah, that's what I like.
So do some men.
Speaking of which, my latest book that's going to be out by the time this is brought, by the time you release this, my new book will be out called Jezebel.
And I'm dealing with a very much a similar kind of concept where Jezebel is the famous.
I didn't know you wrote erotica.
Oh, Jezebel's.
It's Bible fan fiction.
For all you.
You guys a Mormon.
Oh, here we go.
You guys are interrupting me more than I'm interrupting.
Sorry.
So, yeah, Jezebel's the bad queen in the Bible who was the most ruthless, wicked queen in the history of Israel.
She brought Baal worship into Israel in a dramatic way.
She was wicked.
But I don't write her like a cardboard Darth Vader or something like that.
Well, actually, Darth Ray was pretty deep.
But you know what I'm saying?
I don't write a snightly whiplash where she's just evil.
I just want to do evil.
In fact, I tried to understand her as a villain where, you know, what would make a, what would no villain sees themselves as a villain.
They see themselves as a hero.
And so therefore, all bad people justify the evil they're doing as good within their own little view.
They see themselves as a victim of something taken down.
Absolutely.
Or like, you know, I'm cleansing the race.
You know, well, that's, you're not, they really believe that if they kill these people, they're going to cleanse and purify.
Now, it's evil.
It's definitely evil.
But my point is there is a rationality, even with evil, that justifies themselves as being good.
And that's what a good villain is going to be.
And that's why I think Daenerys was a fantastic, the growth of a villain.
And that's what I try to do with my Jezebel.
I make her realistic and say, well, how can we be sympathetic towards her in the way she starts out?
But then what makes her become the monster that she is?
So in your version, does Jezebel get dragons?
No.
Sad.
Not good.
But there is Leviathan, the sea dragon, does show up.
He's in the spiritual realm, though, so it's not literal.
So you're like one of those wishy-washy guys that reads the Bible and says, oh, this is all not literal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of metaphor, a lot of poetry.
Not good.
Yeah.
Christian fantasy writers milk that Leviathan, man.
Oh, I know.
I'm just kidding.
I would.
How do you milk a Leviathan?
Leviathan utters massive.
Leviathan is my major character that goes throughout all my series in terms of like a background monster, like Godzilla monster that kind of comes in and out.
Sea dragon of chaos.
I like him.
I would.
It's great.
Great word for a monster, Leviathan.
It is, isn't it?
It is a good word.
What would be, okay, this is a little, it's on topic, but it's more, what's the, what would be the great Bible story epic movie that has not been made yet?
Is there one that what do you guys think?
You write them.
Okay, I got it.
Noah starring Russell Crowe.
It's a great idea.
Mel Gibson.
It's discouraging.
And now he's blown it now for the next 25 years.
You can't do a Noah movie for 25 years.
Or a Bible movie, really.
Yeah, really.
Because Exodus screwed that up, too.
Wasn't there one?
Yeah, Gods.
Exodus, Gods, and Kings.
So you had a movie made by atheists.
It sounds like Ridley Scott.
But yeah.
Written and directed by atheists, Noah and Exodus, right?
Because, oh, well, it doesn't matter what.
You don't have to be a Christian.
Well, okay, technically, no.
But gee, you know, when you got atheists making movies about God for the people who believe in that, you think they're going to make it in a way that people want to like it and see it and pay money?
No.
It's like, okay, if you don't want to make money, fine, but, you know, whatever.
But yeah, that's why.
Okay, so Bible epic.
I do know that, you know, David is the, you know, the class, it's a cliche, but I mean, there's got to be every single studio in town and network has, I'm sure, a series on King David and such.
I even pitched one, try to get one sold because, you know, he's the perfect flawed hero, right?
You know, he is the hero we can look up to, but he's also very flawed in a way that we can relate to, right?
So he would be one, although, again, in some ways, cliché.
The one that hasn't been done that I actually wrote a novel series on, and I'm not just pitching me, I'm not, is that is the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
So right when the church began to grow, you know, everyone knows about the book of Acts, right?
Then after the book of Acts, it kind of just stops, right?
And that's it.
Well, the events that happened after the book of Acts led up to the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel by the Roman armies in AD 70.
This was a true big epic.
In fact, it was so huge that Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote detailed history of it.
And the reason why I say that is because it's got everything in the epic.
It's all big.
And it's about the change of history because because of that destruction, Judaism changed forever.
It became rabbinic Judaism.
They no longer had a temple.
They changed the religion.
It became to what it is now rather than the Old Testament.
And Christianity changed because Christianity was just trying to get growing, but it was like a sect of Judaism, and they were persecuted by the Jews.
But then when Jerusalem was wiped out and the Jewish people were dispersed, Christians grew and they finally were freed from Jerusalem where they went out into all the earth to start spreading the gospel, like Jesus said.
And that's when Christianity exploded.
So that's a dramatic time period of change with a lot of ultimate values in it.
Now, it's not technically in the Bible, but.
We should get Ridley Scott to make a movie on that with Russell Crow.
Maybe some atheist.
We'd get Richard Dawkins to write the screenplay.
Well, the novel series you want to base it on is called Chronicles of the Apocalypse.
The first novel is Tyrant, Rise of the Beast by Brian Gedal.
And it's about Nero, Nero Caesar, and his persecution.
You know, the whole thing of throwing Christians to lions.
That all came from Nero.
And so I do try to tell that story in an exciting way.
But back to epics.
Will there be an exciting sword fight at the end?
Yeah, I have one or two.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, cool.
And actually, I did write a screenplay for it.
I didn't set you up for that.
I haven't been able to sell it, though.
Oh, Rob Roy.
Well, maybe there's a bunch of Hollywood producers who listen to the Babylon B podcast.
I'm sure we have a huge audience there.
Make my movie.
Ben-Hur, Rob Roy.
Those are classic epics.
Ben-Hur.
I'm just looking at my list.
What about Ben-Him?
Why is it going to be Ben-Hur?
Yeah, it's so sexist.
Ben-Zur?
Ben-Jur is actually the correct pronunciation.
Benjur.
Get you the French one.
Ben-Benzur.
C-H-I-R.
Is it Zur?
No, no.
I always see it written like X-E or X-I, X-I-R, and I don't really know.
Oh, there's 40 of them.
Yeah.
40 pronouns.
My personal pronoun is, which I would prefer that you refer to me this way as His Royal Majesty.
I saw someone that did, said their pronouns were like, it was like a mix.
Oh, yeah.
They slash her.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, is it either one or when you use the objective form, you have to say she and, you know, or her.
It's just a booby trap.
Yeah, they're just trying to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just staying away from you.
I will never talk to you anyway.
Yeah.
Just walk away, baby.
Just walk away.
Back to epics.
They're fighting called booby traps.
They're fighting for transcendents.
You're a sexist.
You're a sexist.
I'm just going to keep telling jokes over here on you guys.
Talk about any other epics?
Yeah, epics.
Mad Max Fury Row.
Does that count as an epic?
I like a Morton.
I think it would be.
Immorten Joe, dropping the water on everybody.
Morton.
I don't know.
Immortal.
I feel like they wanted everything to be really quirky.
So they just changed letters.
How can we make the word immortal quirky?
How about an N?
On the whiteboard, he just turns it into an N and everyone gets.
Brilliant.
Mad Max was a feminist epic.
That was his point.
They needed the man to see.
They made everything happen, all right?
Yeah, yeah.
But it's interesting, though, because if you watch it, by the way, I wrote a great blog post on Mad Max.
Go to gadawa.com.
Click on where did you find this guy, Ethan?
We have shown him.
Click on my blog and search for Mad Max.
I'm proud of that one.
I really am.
I honestly am.
And I point out how the feminist elements of it.
And one of the main elements of it, you know, the original Mad Max is about a guy and his dog.
It's a boy and his dog story in post-apocalyptic.
Right.
But in the new one, you really have to say, no, it's really about a woman and her man who's a dog.
Because he's treated as a dog to start with.
But it's really all about whatever her name is, Fury.
Furiosa.
Yeah, Furiosa.
It's her story, and he's almost secondary in it.
And that's the first step.
But you're right.
I think at the end, at the end.
You sound like you have some male fragility issues.
Now he's all this about the woman.
I don't need women on the screen.
All the classic male stereotypes of the mook men who are, you know, all these, you know, cavemen.
And then the lead of the whole patriarchy is this big, fat, painted white.
Oh, because he's going to see it.
He does look kind of like Trump.
I never knew about that.
And he sucks off of the teats of women.
You know, it's like.
You're going to make me hate this movie.
It was good.
No, honestly, actually, I think it was really like we talked about this before where if you do it creatively, I'm OK, actually.
Yeah.
If it's.
It's like, hey, I don't agree with them, but that's a good one.
That's interesting.
That's clever.
That's creative.
And I thought Mad Max was pretty creative.
There is a bit of a paradox in that in that whole movie, they're like searching for the promised land, right?
They're searching for paradise.
And then they find out that paradise is a lie.
Yeah.
And so then there's like, okay, we're going to turn around, we're going to take over, we're going to make it paradise.
And then, you know, then the character sacrifices himself so that they can make it to paradise.
Yeah.
And I think, like you said, I think that undermines it.
Exactly.
And which is kind of interesting.
And again, why I think that it's not easily reducible, although it got pretty laughable at times for me, in all honesty.
But it was a cool action movie, too.
Well, there were a lot of cars and they blew up.
Yeah.
I liked when the cars went boom.
Yeah.
And when the motorcycles ran into each other.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of the other imagery.
Oh, and of course, you know, the globe has dried up because of pollution, because madness.
That's the thing now.
All post-apocalyptic movies now, they used to be like in the Cold War, it was nuclear war.
Now it's always plastic straws.
Yeah, it's like we killed us, you know, and it's just like, okay.
But it just goes to show that stories reflect the age in which they're told.
And actually, all these genres are always changing at the service of the culture.
So, you know, there's some ways in which that's just going to be inevitable.
But just, of course, the ways that they change or whether or not they're satisfying, of course.
So Mad Max is the sequel to Fern Gully.
Yeah.
Where they cut down all the trees and Fern Gully 2.
Fern Gully 2.
Fury Road.
So what are all the Christ figures?
We need to draw the Christian parallels, the Christ figures in Mad Max.
Okay, so here's the thing.
When Tom Hardy's strapped to that car, it's just like Jesus.
Yeah, he's got his hands out.
Yeah.
How Jesus strapped himself to the fender for you.
Right.
Just give his blood to save her.
Speeding across the post-apocalyptic landscape of life to give mankind a blood transducer.
Yes.
It's exactly like what Jesus did.
Mad Max was doing it completely against his will, just like Jesus.
God made him.
Wow.
Forced him, right?
That might be the first blasphemy that we've had on the Battle Lobby podcast.
Heresy, at least heresy.
Minimum is heresy.
Heresy rate.
But you bring up a good point that actually is real.
There's jokes about it.
Or let's put it this way, there are pathetic versions of it, and there's good versions.
And that's the Christ story.
And I do think in Western culture, the Christ story is a very common thing.
Sometimes it's used, sometimes it's stereotypical, cliched, sometimes it's overwrought, sometimes it's not there.
People want to see it there.
But I do think the reason why is because, again, it's embedded in our consciousness.
And if Christ, if the sacrifice that Christ made to save humanity, that's the ultimate sacrifice in our cultural storyline, it makes sense that even humanistic or secular stories are going to draw from that.
And I'm not against that.
I think it supports us when you use Christ imagery.
Like I mentioned before, I've mentioned 30 Days of Night, which is a vampire movie.
And of course, that's all about blood.
And by the way, another.
I like when he says, I like when the vampire says no God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He looks like no God.
Very, very creepy.
Yeah.
But the whole point of that was that was a Christ story because the guy who could save them ended up being a hybrid.
He got bit and he got bit so that he could, I can't remember the full details, but by becoming one, he ended up sacrificing himself to save the humans.
And it was clear Christ story imagery and of course the blood.
And then you got the Will Smith one, which is some Iron Legend where they're kind of zombies, vampires, whatever.
It's all about the blood.
His blood saves humankind.
That actually is kind of cool stuff.
And I think that works on many different levels.
But of course, when they start to go overboard, like Christians will often go and try to see Christ's story and everything in order to justify it.
So I remember.
I saw Mad Max Ferry wrote as a picture of a family trying to get to church on time.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
My dad used to have all these shortcuts to get to church.
And it was like, we beat the train.
If we go under this tunnel and then we drive.
He had like some parking lot.
Jackknife the giant.
He had like a parking lot he'd go through.
We're going behind the Stater Brothers grocery store, you know, down the alley.
Gonna have to break a few eggs.
You know, and it's like we'd get there two minutes later than we would have.
But he felt good that he was doing it.
Mad Max.
Well, that might be a good transition into our topic.
Yeah, we got to do our main topic because we kind of wanted to chat about movies for a bit.
And then we're going to go to our topic of the week, which is the secular and divide.
Like, do we what movies should we watch?
Should we not watch bad movies?
Is there a Christian movie or not a Christian movie?
So hold on a sec.
I'm going to push a button.
And now, the Babylon Bees topic of the week.
So let's do our topic of the week.
Let's get into secular versus sacred movies.
Is there that false diet?
I've heard you call it the false dichotomy, Brian.
I would say let's broaden it too, not just necessarily just movies, although that may be your area of expertise, but just art in general.
What is Christian and what's not?
Yeah, I write about that in my book.
I write about that in my books, The Imagination of God.
We don't even know this guy.
He was just out front with this cardboard sign.
We'll go on podcast.
In exchange for pitching.
This has been a ministry of mine for actually for decades.
I kind of learned it from Francis Schaefer, who's an unknown nowadays.
And it's this notion that I think Christian subculture has created a ghetto.
I call it the Christian ghetto, where we tend to separate ourselves from the world.
Some of that's real, obviously necessary, but in terms of like our art or In terms of our art, let's just stay focused on that, storytelling, whatever, that Christians have sometimes gotten to the point where they feel like something has to be explicitly Christian and have a sort of marks or formulas that make it Christian rather than something that's secular.
And the notion of secular is the part of life that doesn't have religion connected to it.
But that dichotomy is itself unbiblical, literally, in the sense that the Bible gives us commands.
Yes, there are some spiritual activities like reading your Bible, fellowshipping, going to church, whatever, you know, and in the Old Testament, you know, doing the liturgies in Leviticus and all that kind of stuff.
There was that notion of the sacred versus the profane, which was the everyday life because God was building a sacred space.
But of course, with the coming of the new covenant, so the separation is more real in an Old Testament environment.
But with the coming of Christ, what Jesus Christ does is he unifies those worlds.
And so you've got commands in the New Testament, whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whether you're doing plumbing, cooking a dinner, doing the dishes, or sharing Christ with someone.
And this notion that there are religious things in life, and those are more important because they're spiritual.
They're the transcendent.
And not seeing the transcendent in the everyday is itself a very unbiblical thing because God is in everything.
And this is Calvinistic, by the way, just so you know.
It's reformed.
God is in everything.
And so it's actually the ability to see God in the dishes that you're washing after dinner.
What does that mean?
And that's not something.
Would you say that that was driven in part by like the Protestant Reformation?
Yeah, that's what I'm referring to.
Absolutely.
And, you know, of course, there's a...
Right, because they were tearing down icons and such.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's a downside to that as well.
But I'm just saying, so it was guys like Luther that helped us to understand that this notion of, you know, because Catholicism had a monastic notion of to be really spiritual, you separate yourself like a monk, etc., right?
And the Protestant Reformation was, no, every believer is a priest.
The notion of a priesthood is a separating thing, but the new covenant makes us all priests.
Not only that, but the new covenant makes us the temple of God.
There's not some separate temple we go somewhere.
We are the temple of God.
So it's this sort of, wow, a democratization or I guess of spirituality.
Well, anyway, so, you know, I think evangelicalism has went down this path of definitely, you know, more towards the separation again.
And so you've got Christian music, Christian this, Christian that.
And Christian news satire.
Yeah, like Babylon B.
Oh, wait.
What do we have?
What was this?
Oh, shoot.
Oh, shoot.
Now, by the way, I write novels for a Christian audience.
And I know that that's my dominant audience.
So I'm not against it intrinsically.
What I'm against is the ghetto that's created when you separate yourself to such an extent that you don't interact with that other side or you don't think that other things can glorify God just out of beauty.
Like, for instance, if there's a great movie, like I've always made this argument, Jerry Maguire, you know, it's a profane comedy and stuff, but it really exalts marriage in a very good way.
And to me, that's glorifying to God.
Whether they're glorifying God or not, it does.
And the Christian should be able to recognize that, therefore not have to have things sectioned off and this is Christian, this is not.
So, however, however, qualified, I acknowledge that there is a genre of Christian movies.
There's a lot of bad about it, but there's also an audience of people who want to see a certain kind of story.
That's not what I care for, but there are also a lot of people who love horror and some people don't like horror, right?
So some people, a lot of guys don't like romantic comedies or whatever, you know, whatever, romance or dramas, right?
So I've come to say, okay, look, I think there's a place for Christian movies, if that's what you want to call it, and Christian music, whatever.
It's not for me, but I also think that there is a danger in that you are making it somehow less relevant to all of humanity when your faith is actually supposed to be relevant to all of humanity, right?
So that's why I do appreciate guys who, you know, like Mel Gibson, you know, the movie director, you know, he has a faith that is very vibrant and alive in these stories he tells and in these movies, yet they're not Christian movies.
And I would argue, well, so I've done that myself, you know, but I've also done Christian stuff.
I had to make, I have to make a living, have to make a paycheck.
And if someone, you know, asked me, I've written a couple of Christian movies.
I didn't care for them that much, but it's not my, you know, not what I really want to do.
But does that make any sense?
I'm trying to find the balance.
I'm trying to find the balance, but I've got lots of criticism for Christian movies, of course.
You know, the bad acting, basically, it's bad acting, bad directing, bad writing, bad production.
But they're getting better.
And then here's the other side of that, though.
Also being in Hollywood and being around Hollywood Christians who've become infected by Hollywood, it's sort of vogue and fashionable for Hollywood Christians to mock Christian movies and Christian, whatever.
But it's really just they're cynical and they can't appreciate any good.
And so I will say, you know, I will say there's a lot to criticize in Christian movies, but I will say that they've been getting better over the last decade.
I have seen a quality improvement.
Still got a ways to go, but also we, you know, we've only been around a few years, right?
So they've got a ways to go, but they are getting better.
And I want to acknowledge that.
Like there's been some movies that I've really enjoyed.
Like I Can Only Imagine.
I love that.
It was, you know, it was a great little movie.
I don't watch a lot of Christian movies, but the few that I have, there's been some really good ones.
I guess sometimes the difference to me between watching something like a Mel Gibson film and a Christian film, it's like watching a really good movie about a war versus watching like a recruitment film that's trying to get you to sign up for the military.
Because you watch a Christian movie and it's like, okay, they're trying to get me.
They're trying to preach to me.
They're trying to come to Jesus.
They're trying to get me to become a Christian or an Arminian or whatever.
Now, I don't think that movies about a particular subculture are inherently wrong.
Because there's a lot of black movies about black culture, right?
There's movies about gay culture.
So I actually would like to occasionally see a movie about something in culture.
Yeah.
Christian gay culture.
Sorry, I didn't know where you were going.
No, so what I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with having a movie about church culture and stuff like that.
But yeah, why does it always have to be that?
Why do so many Christian movies always have to end in a church and they've got to say the prayer, the special Jesus prayer, and you got to be led by a pastor and you got to be kneeling in a church.
It's like really country singer make a special appearance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Famous Christian.
Or the newsboys.
Yeah.
It works.
It works.
Yeah.
So, you know, that, so I, I, there's some ways in which I hate the formulas, and that's why I don't tend to want to write those.
But it's so funny because I write novels of Bible stories that Christians write, right?
You know, aren't you writing Christian literature?
You know, and it's like, well, no, actually, I'm not.
I'm not setting out to please the formula that Christians like.
In fact, my stories are full of sex and violence.
So I would recommend if you like that kind of thing, if you like Game of Thrones, but you want a Christian version of it?
No.
Get my books in.
It's got more sex than Game of Thrones.
But it's married set.
Wow.
So it's okay.
Everyone, cover your children's ears.
Sorry, everybody.
Retroactively.
We can't control Brian.
My books are rated PG, just so you know.
Like I said, we found this guy.
Yeah.
Cardboard sign.
We didn't know.
Well, I think, yeah, because sorry for working the books in there, but it's all to me.
It's all storytelling.
Storytelling.
It's everything, you know?
So, yeah, because I wonder, like, when did the secular entertainment versus Christian entertainment divide really start?
Was that like that's a good question?
Because it seems like it 1972.
Okay.
I'm just kidding.
I don't know.
I just made that up.
Because we just interviewed Kevin Max a couple weeks ago from DC Talk, and we were kind of talking about this.
Like, it felt like, but that's also my lifetime, so I don't know what happened really in Christian Entertainment before that.
It seemed like DC Talk was the beginning of a very divided Christian, like this is Christian, that music is secular.
Yeah.
A really deep divided music.
There was some of that in the 70s and 80s.
There was Striper and Keith Green.
I mean, that was a very contemporary movie.
I wonder how much it's even capitalism driven.
It's just like chips.
There's a market for it.
There's a market.
Yeah.
And even just you're taking a chance if you really care about the content that you take in, which we clearly don't because we watch Game of Thrones and all this garbage.
But if you just Googled it to get the names.
Or if you want to watch a movie with your family, you don't like that crapshoot of like, I don't know what I'm going to get here.
Yeah, that's true.
And so it's nice to have that label.
Absolutely.
We're Christian and we get what you're trying to do here.
So this movie won't trick you or mess your kids up.
Like we just got just to know that safe.
No cussing, no sex, no violence.
No.
No off the bat.
We're not going to do that.
Well, you know, my argument for movies and television stuff, I would say that, you know, Hollywood as a generic term tends to follow the culture, you know, because so as culture, you know, you look back in the 50s or like before the Hays Code, you know, the Hays Code comes in and that adds a strict moral element to stories, but they find creative ways to deal with sex and violence that actually makes them better.
I would argue it actually makes it.
Is that related to the rating system?
I don't know about that.
The rating system, yeah, the Hays Code.
Like the camera out the window with the moon and the fade outs and all that kind of stuff.
Before that, they were pretty raw.
They had raunchy movies and stuff, right?
Where can we find these for research purposes?
Yes, for research purposes.
But as society changed, okay, but at the same time, you know, they, you know, they made Ten Commandments and they made movies about Christians all the time.
Not a problem because that was who society was.
And, you know, but then as society became more secular and more profane and become more hostile towards Christianity, like around the 70s, you see those more sort of the Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, those kind of dark, cynical movies, but also very creative storytelling, I won't deny.
But my point is, is society is becoming more hostile towards Christian to American society.
And so I think that that pushes the separation.
And Christians get pushed out.
And what else can you do?
I mean, even in Christian music, you know, I mean, Keith Green, Larry Norman, those guys were great, but they weren't accepted.
And so, but they wanted to make me, they weren't accepted in the secular realm and they wanted to make music.
So they went ahead and did Christian stuff, you know.
But same thing with movies.
You know, I think what happens is Christians don't, over time, less and less movies deal with faith in an entertaining way because we like to see stuff that we relate to, right?
So what happens is there's a dearth of a positive view of Christianity in movies and television.
And so people get frustrated and they just go, well, we're going to make our own, you know?
But then unfortunately, they go the other extreme and they just do these extreme, you know, instead of doing a good, balanced work of art with a Christian view.
It's like, no, it's got to be all about Christianity.
Here's another problem too.
This is why I think Christian art often does fail.
Modern, not during the Protestant Reformation, they had a better understanding of the arts, you know, like Luther and those guys.
And that is that, so modern day Christians are very logo-centric, meaning they're very focused on the message.
They're very sermonic, right?
They feel that the gospel is something that has to be clear so that people can pray the prayer and get saved.
And because of that, they don't tend to understand art as well.
The power of art is actually in the subtlety or the subtleness.
They're looking for the magic words.
And if they're not there, it's, oh, this isn't Christian.
Yeah.
Or they're looking for a sermon.
So they see art as an opportunity to, oh, make a sermon more creative.
It's a tool.
They don't see art as an end in itself.
It's a means to an end.
And in that act, you can see it completely devalues the art.
So they're valuing the message over the art.
What's the word?
Message versus medium, right?
End and means.
And I think they should be both equal.
But so Christians have valued the message so much.
So therefore, intrinsically, if you value the message more than anything else, you're going to more likely compromise on the medium or the quality because the message is more important.
And that's exactly what happens.
And that's exactly what has happened.
And they also, because they don't believe in the power of storytelling to affect, to change a life, they need it to be more explicit.
So my point being that the power of storytelling is incarnation.
You see the story, you watch the movie, you identify with the protagonist, you go through the journey, you're doing it emotionally and psychologically because the art draws you in.
You don't have to tell them what to do.
You show them through the actions.
But Christians feel they need to say it.
Therefore, you get examples.
And when I say Christians, I mean evangelicals because Catholics don't have this problem.
They're better storytellers in general, really, in general.
So this is where you got, you know, when the Passion of Christ came out, Mel Gibson, good Catholic, makes a Catholic, you know, influenced movie.
Very, and I mean that in a neutral way, you know, and there's some good about it.
I loved it.
I thought putting the Pope there with his Pope hat, that was a little heavy-handed.
The powder was a bit too much.
Pow, pow, Pope John Paul.
But he went, he took that movie to evangelicals to get their input.
And I'll never forget hearing about one of the cases where, and this happened several times where the Protestants and the pastors would say, like, that's really good, but maybe if you put John 3.16 at the end, and it just shows you this is how, in other words, they believe that the gospel wasn't there.
It's like, you believe you have to say John 3.16, you just saw this movie that incarnated the gospel in the physical suffering and images, which what Catholics do well.
And Protestants don't understand that.
And evangelicals don't get that.
So everything has to be preached.
Everything has to be explicit.
Everything has to be obvious because they don't trust subtlety.
They don't trust images.
See what I'm saying?
But I think that probably comes from a good place.
Absolutely.
A good place gone bad.
Yeah.
So like putting weight on the message and putting a weight on making the gospel clear and articulate.
It felt like it's gotten lost.
I mean, that's a very good value to have.
I understand.
I understand.
But then you take that and apply it to everything in your life, including a movie.
And yeah, I think that's where I'm applying this to art in specific artists.
I just got, I got the feeling like you don't love the gospel and you don't love Jesus.
Yeah, I know.
So I just want to make that clear.
Well, you got in the secular sacred divide because I had this as an artist.
You know, I was always an artist.
I was born that way.
I drew all the time constantly.
I couldn't not.
I don't know how that song goes, but it's a Lady Gaga.
Yeah, it's Lady Gaga.
I'm a nanny bone, I swear.
Something like that.
Wow.
My serial killer quotes Lady Gaga, by the way.
Really?
Yeah.
Is that when he killed someone's mother?
I think he's referring to a story that he wrote.
You didn't tell any of it.
I don't think in the context of the world.
Oh, my serial killer.
He just said, my serial killer.
Brian has a serial killer who does his bidding.
See, you guys are so awesome that I'm just fridge full of brains.
I forgot I'm on a podcast.
I'm slowly edging towards the door right now.
I'm trying to get out.
I have a story about a serial killer who quotes Lady Gaga that way.
So go ahead.
All right.
Sorry.
Perfect.
So yeah, I came to Christ in late high school and I did, you know, it was kind of the height of, you know, the big Christian bands where Audio Auto Adrenaline DC talk.
There was pressure to burn your secular music.
And so I started to feel like my ability to draw, I had wasted my life being an artist.
Because I thought that drawing comics and drawing art, anything, telling stories, I felt like if I wasn't telling actual gospel straight out of the Bible stories, it was a waste, just a complete waste.
And I spent about two years where I hardly drew anything.
I thought I wanted to become a pastor or something.
I was just kind of going by the books.
And this was a journey I had to go on asking myself, what would the world look like if, you know, why did God make art?
Like, why did he make it so that we do this?
Why do we tell stories?
What, you know, all these things.
I even started asking myself, like, you know, when God created the world before the fall of man, what was he thinking it was going to be like?
Yeah.
You know, like, because a lot of the stuff the church engages in is all damage control from that event, right?
Pastors and Bible studies and all that stuff.
It's all because of that event, right?
But like, we wouldn't have, what would church and just life in general look like if the fall hadn't happened?
Like, we'd probably still make art.
We'd still do a lot of this stuff.
Everybody would be a rocket scientist.
We'd be in space by now.
We'd all be pastors yelling at each other.
We would have really landed on the moon by now.
Yeah.
Weren't for those darn artists.
Well, if we would have gotten off the flat earth, I mean.
Yeah.
It's hard to break through that dome, that canopy almost.
It's like a two-foot-thick plexiglass.
But back to the Secular Sacred, I had a very similar experience myself as an artist, and I went through that struggle as well.
And, you know, to be honest, I think I still, you know, I have to relearn the lessons over time, you know, because, you know, life changes and all that kind of stuff.
And I have to keep relearning lessons that, you know, yeah, washing, because for me as an artist, I'm like, the only thing, the only time that's valuable to me is time spent creating.
And so therefore, washing the dishes is a waste of time to me.
But it's like, well, wait, you're helping your wife.
You're cleaning up, which is anti-entropy, which glorifies God.
You know, I have to sometimes remind myself, it's okay.
It's good.
It's part of life.
And you can glorify God washing dishes.
You know, that's a hard, that's one of the harder ones to understand.
But that's kind of where the rubber meets the road is that, yeah, Christ really applies to everything, even things that aren't outwardly explicitly connected to him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, beautiful art that makes you look at an ordinary thing and remember that it's glorious and it's amazing.
You know, I think you can think of Michelangelo as like the, you know, we know like the Pieta and David and all those decent, they're images of a very mundane thing on its face, you know, but like there's meaning and there's just somehow through that, you know, it's, it's almost its own argument against evolution naturalism.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also, Wayne's world.
I mean, how can how can you believe there's no God?
That's a complete Christ picture after you live in a world of absurdity.
It's just my whole, I can't let people be serious for too long.
I get uncomfortable.
I start thinking about deep eternal things.
I get very, there's an existential thing.
Look, I've got to my list of favorite movies and stuff like that or movies that made me think.
It's like.
We're going to get into that in the subscriber portion.
Oh, okay.
Well, because I was just going to say that just reinforcing what you're saying is that, you know, like, okay, Mr. Holland's Opus was a classic of mine that I love.
And it's basically the story of a guy who wants to be a musician.
I love.
And then with all the penguins?
No.
That was Mr. Popper.
Mr. Popper's Penguins.
Mr. Popper's Penguins.
Yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
I love movies about artists, actually, because I do think that they really get a lot right in many ways.
And this is just a guy who, you know, it's Richard Dreyfus and he wants to be a great musician, right?
But he has to ultimately end up getting a job because he has a family and a child on the way.
So he has to take a job.
So he ends up teaching.
But he wants to eventually get to writing that famous opera or whatever it is.
And then they just show his whole life and how it grows and changes.
And he never gets to write that opus.
And he's an old man.
And at the end of his life, and he kind of realizes that the people, the kids he taught were his opus, you know, and they went on to write music, etc.
And, you know, I mean, that's the kind of thing that it's like, that's a thing of beauty.
And no, it's not made by God, by Christians.
It's not about Christianity.
Christianity isn't even in it.
But it completely affects me as if like the Holy Spirit itself, you know, because that's, that's been, I can identify with that journey.
And I need to keep relearning that, oh yeah, Brian, your art isn't the most important thing in your life.
Your people are.
You know what I mean?
And that's what artists have a big problem with.
Really artists.
Which is why a lot of artists are such, I was going to say the word bastards, but I don't think I can say that on here.
You said Inglorious Bastards last time, God.
Right.
Yeah.
But it's spelled differently.
One of the ongoing things in life is why are so many great artists such bad people?
Yeah.
And, you know, some people justify it, but I don't think it's justified.
So you're trying to say that the real treasure is the friends we made along the way.
Yeah.
It's a very deep message.
People are more important than food.
Well, food?
Wait a minute.
I mean, in a pinch, they are food.
I'm sure that your serial killer friend would say that they're both.
People are great food.
So I was talking to my serial killer.
I'm not a compliment to you guys.
I'm like, I'm just talking.
I forgot we're even on podcast.
I'm referring to things we talked about at lunch.
By the way, I had a Cuban for lunch.
It was really good.
No mayo.
Not a Cuban person.
Not a Cuban person.
Oh, yeah.
I just can't.
Cannibalism.
You guys are pros.
You guys are pros.
We have no idea what we're doing.
Yeah, to sum up.
I mean, I think that I always try to remember, if I'm a Christian, I believe that Christianity is not just my religion.
It's reality.
Yeah.
So God is the guy that made everything.
I mean, that's the thing I love to remind myself when I see insane things in nature.
Like I said, this crazy moth the other day that has these crazy tentacles coming off of it and stuff.
I'm like, man, God.
Those are so crazy weird.
Thought of that.
Yeah.
Those are weird.
Yeah.
I don't know if that was God.
Thanks, God.
God's crazy.
The mosquito.
It's like very Cthulhu-esque.
Those tentacles come over.
Yeah, that's scary.
That was cool looking.
Yeah.
Well, I'm a Calvinist, so God created Cthulhu.
Oh, wow.
Steve.
HP love crap.
But you know, on the other side of that is the secular sacred divide from the reverse, which is, you know, there's, there are people who, you know, Christians who will just, oh, yes, they hate that whole Christian, you know, ghetto stuff.
And therefore, they don't put anything spiritual in, you know, in a source.
And like, on the on the reverse side, I'm not ashamed, and I'm not afraid to add God if it's relevant to the story and if it's fits and if it's whatever.
It's like, plus, God is so much a part of everything that I see in this world that how can I not relate God to everything?
You know what I mean?
Like, it's not forced for me.
It's natural.
And I think that's the goal is you want to get to the point in your life as an artist, as a storyteller.
And, you know, hopefully this is relevant to those who are observing art is where you can where you don't have that secular, that secular sacred dichotomy and you can appreciate both sides of the equation.
You know, yeah, that's where I struggle is.
I think there is a line because there are people that there are Christians who get really famous off their Christian art.
And then all of a sudden you see this notable shift, like they're going, you know, and it feels different to me than just than just someone who's making art that doesn't happen to explicitly mention Jesus.
It feels more like an intentional selling out.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes it's hard to tell which it is.
Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
And listen, as I do my art, and as I am often more explicit than as much as I like, you know, critique Christian art and stuff like that, I'm pretty explicit in my stuff.
I just don't seek to be deliberate.
Like, oh, I want to, this needs to be Christian.
It's just Christ is a part of who I am.
And I work him in like I, you know, into my story.
Not work him in, but I try to make it germane and try to make it germane and relevant to the story.
And if it doesn't, I leave it out, you know?
Yeah, and that really helps with your Amish romance novels.
Yeah.
Those are huge sellers.
I know.
If you look at the top 100 Christian book every month or whatever, it's like all Amish romance and coloring books.
Is it really?
You know, that's actually serious.
It's kind of similar to the biblical fiction category on Amazon, which is I am the dominant bestseller in biblical fiction on Amazon.
Look at the top 10, 20.
They're mostly my books.
However, all the other ones, but my books are like, my books are like epics.
Solid.
They've got swords on the cover, right?
And they're epics.
They're kind of like Game of Thrones meets Lord of the Rings meets the Bible, right?
And saying Lord of the Rings never met the Bible?
Yeah.
No, like Lord of the Rings meets the Bible.
I think Lord of the Rings is Lord of the Rings, meets the Bible.
No, it doesn't because they don't, well, I guess there's a God character.
But my point is, is that all the other books other than mine, they're all like stories written by women.
Women buy the most amount of books.
Okay, so that's fine.
But it's like there's stories, Bible stories of women written for women and on the cover pictures of women.
So it's like Deborah, Sarah, all this kind of stuff.
Dorcas.
Dorcas.
Yeah, Dorcas would be a hard one.
Jezebel.
Dorcas.
Wait, that's yours.
Yeah.
But it is funny because you go look because it's like all these typical female written stories of women in the Bible.
And then Noah, Enoch, primordial, Gilgamesh, immortal.
You know, it's just like, yeah, baby.
I'm kind of proud.
I'm kind of proud of that, you know?
That was a hard, hard, but anyway, yeah.
Well, I want to see the Amish romance that you're going to put out.
Jacob's Desire or Amish Vampires in Space.
That actually was a hit.
Let's add in space to the end.
That was a hit novel.
All right, let's do our hate mail.
Let's do it.
I really miss Adam Ford.
So a while back, we wrote an article about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as we are want to do.
Is that how you say that?
Won't.
As we are won't want to do.
And it was a joke about that she pretended not to understand English in response to a question.
And I think it was because...
This is a reference to something, right?
It was a reference to...
Yeah.
Yeah.
That I don't even get because I don't know these movies.
Is there a movie?
No, she hold on.
No, she's being questioned.
She was asking questions and then he asked her back a question and she's like, I don't understand.
I don't understand English.
Yeah.
It was responding to the criticism and it was a criticism of how she responds to things and doesn't pretends not to understand them or just gaslights.
Yeah, yeah.
So it actually wasn't in reference to a race at all.
And in the article, it's clear she's talking, she's speaking Hatis, you know, from Star Wars.
She's speaking like Java's.
She's just responding with Java the Hut.
And so a few sensitive people said you're making fun of her for being Hispanic, you know, you're making fun of her being Hispanic, which you could get that out of the headline.
I could see that misunderstanding.
But this is my favorite hate mail we got in response to that.
This is not funny.
This is racism.
Please post a retraction.
Take some anti-racist trainings and resume.
And resume.
And resume.
You must apologize.
You must do better.
I like the idea that, you know, usually they just call you garbage.
So this is pretty polite and that they're like, go take your eight hours.
And then resume.
And resume.
It's actually kind of because left wing doesn't usually let you do that anymore.
Yeah, they don't resume.
They want you to apologize, confess, bow, and then you're destroyed.
And then you're canceled.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we were pretty proud that.
So we have taken our anti-racist trainings.
Have we?
Trainings.
I like that S in the end.
So it's not just training.
It's trainings.
Trainings.
It's like multiple.
It's a curriculum made up of many different classes.
Yeah.
There was like eight hours of classes.
And we're not racist anymore because that's all it takes.
That's all it takes.
Yeah.
We resumed.
Of course, you know, what you just said was racist.
You call it trainings, laughing at the lack of plural, because we all know that foreign language, people with foreign language often mix up the plurals and the singulars.
And of course, most people with foreign languages are brown people.
This person's all upset about race stuff, so I'm assuming they got to be white.
Yeah, if they're mad about racism, they're probably white liberals.
So sorry, white guy, we did take our anti-racist trainings.
We're going to do better.
And we're also going to finish up our podcast.
So, Brian, do you have anything that you'd like to sell beyond the 17 things you've tried to sell that already?
And I'll put links in the show notes for all Brian's stuff.
I write about my movies on my blog post, which is everythings at gadawa.com, G-O-D-A-W-A.com.
Find out about my books, novels, movies, and my movie posts.
And you can also sign up for email lists and stuff like that.
But all my books are all my novels, Bible novels, Bible fiction novels, supernatural type stuff.
It's all at amazon.com in paperback, Kindle, or audiobooks.
So you can find out information there as well.
Sweet.
So I think for our subscriber portion, we're going to get into, we're going to talk a little bit more about epic movies, but I think we should also just, let's get Brian to give us some of his recommended, like, these are good movies.
Like, even ones that are labeled Christian, ones that aren't.
Just like, what are some really good movies that we say?
Like, you got to see these.
Yeah.
If you want to know what the very best movies in the history of the planet are, you need to subscribe.
Don't miss this.
My top 20.
The top 20.
BabylonB.com/slash plans.
Throw a bunch of, stick a bunch of quarters in your CD tray.
Or if you still have a CD tray.
Or fold up some dollar bills and shove them in your USB drive.
Yeah.
That's more timely than a USB thing.
Or than a CD thing.
Anyway, yeah.
So, subscribers, stick around.
Everyone else, we'll talk to you next week.
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.
Until next time, this is Dave D'Andrea, the voice of the Babylon Bee, reminding you to go forth and binge-watch every movie Mel Gibson ever made, except for Maverick.