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Nov. 30, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:04
NAPOLEON REVIEW!
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Thank you everyone for your nap, which is not good and expected.
Well, boy, I didn't even have a nap today.
I pulled an all-dayer.
Oh, I tell you, it's wretched.
It's wretched. So, yes.
Well, do you care about what happened?
Oiling up chest and abs.
Well, I can't oil up my chest and abs.
Technically, I couldn't do that because that would move the price of oil so much that it may, in fact, create the world economy.
And I wouldn't want you guys to have to pay double to fill up your tank just because I'm oiling my traps.
I need a team, AstroTurf, and a lot of those kind of airplanes that water bomb fire.
I need that to oil up my traps and my abs.
So yes, sorry. Sorry for being late.
But don't worry, I'll disappoint you by leaving early.
No, I won't do that. We'll be there.
No, so what happened was completely retarded my day.
So I went to the dentist today, and I take pretty good care of my teeth, obviously.
I floss and all of that, and I get regular checkups.
I take pretty good hair from my teeth, but I'm at the age now.
These are all just wonderful things for you guys to look forward to as you go forward in life.
But I'm at the age now where the feelings that I had from when I was younger, is anyone older here?
Do you know what happens to your feelings when you get old?
Older. Older? Oldish.
Do you know how that rolls?
Yeah. Yeah, so just, you know, for something to look forward to, enjoyment, enjoyment plus.
I haven't had a cavity in probably a quarter century.
And, yeah, teeth impairment.
So what happened today was I went in and, you know, got my x-rays and all that kind of cool stuff.
And I went in and what happened at the dentist was...
I got my exam and they said, yeah, everything looks good, you know, just a little wear and tear.
And I said, well, that's because of the giant torrent of venomous philosophy that spews force from my glands.
And they did the cleaning and everything was fine.
And then the dentist came in and said, oh, one of your old fillings is cracked.
Really? So fillings are kind of like hair?
Is that what I'm hearing? So yeah, one of my fillings had cracked, so I had to get the injections and I had to get the filling.
Now, fillings are pretty good these days, man.
I mean, they were in and out in 10 minutes.
I think we've all been there.
And so I got all that sorted out.
And then I came home and I went to...
Oh, sorry.
Oh, I went to, um...
Oh, what day is it?
Oh, what did I go and see?
What did I go and see today?
Oh, what did I intermittently see today?
you I went in...
The DMV? No?
That fills me with rage, so that's a different matter.
What did I go and see that was one of the least stimulating experiences of my entire life?
And I include in that staring at the clock in math class.
That is correct. I went to go and see...
See, it's called Napoleon, and of course it's named after the old night flight to Venus bony part, but Napoleon is actually named after two other things.
Do you know what the two other things that Napoleon is made from?
What is Napoleon named after?
It's named after obviously the guy, but do you know what he was named after or two other things?
Hmm. Yeah, you're close.
Ben Stein reading the phone book.
No, it is...
Obviously, there's taking a nap, which was really tempting.
Like, can you imagine?
Hit me with a Y if you'd like a rage-filled review of Napoleon.
Would you like a rage-filled review of Napoleon?
I don't want to bore you, but I think I can do it in less than a 2 hours and 45 minute running time of the movie.
Plus, now you get half an hour of previews which literally steal your brain cells with a giant plastic Hollywood straw.
Yes. All right.
So, Napoleon, obviously, is named after falling asleep during the movie, which is really...
I did actually close my eyes, because it's like, I can't take any more...
Like, I literally can't take any more...
What can I not take more of?
What can I not take more of?
Take more...
pauses.
The kingdom of the planet of the apes.
the planet of the apes.
How can you have a kingdom of a planet?
A kingdom is smaller than a planet.
Oh, it's like the basketball of the ping pong ball.
It's like, no, no, that's not how it works.
So I can't take the pauses.
What is it with modern movies and pauses?
Like when I was in theater school, you took a pause, they shot you in the leg.
It's like, oh, now you're screaming.
At least you're filling up that pause.
No, it was like, it was considered an unholy sin.
And, you know, when you watch movies from the 1940s, like you watch any of the, maybe the Philadelphia story or something, they're like, the dialogue is pitter-patter, pitter-patter, and there are no pauses.
And the first 10 minutes, I just, I turn to my wife and I'm like, I don't think I could make it.
I don't think I can make it.
And I've sat through Greek Orthodox original Latin church services.
I don't think I can make it.
And holy crap.
This movie. This movie.
Spoilers! This movie.
First of all, they cheat by starting off with the execution of Marie Antoinette, who doesn't ever show up and is not part of the film or part of anything, so there's a totally cheat with the execution of Marie Antoinette, with no context, no history.
So, is this most to make you love the French people, hate the French people?
Is there a good guy? Is there a bad guy?
Is there a moral arc? Is there any kind of ethics of the story?
Are there any lessons to be learned?
No! No!
So Napoleon is named for the nap you take and also for the non-aggression principle, which you want to violate if you get the director, the producer, and especially the writer in a room.
Because I feel that the movie was a violation of the non-aggression principle because I was trying to nap, but they kept blowing cannons in my ear.
At least let me nap and pass the time that way.
But you're pausing and murmuring and being...
You know, dead-eyed is not an actor.
You know, Joaquin Phoenix, I know your brother died.
I know you've had a pretty tough life.
I know you can't eat for every movie.
But being dead-eyed is not an acting choice.
The mummy was better.
And not just his mother. There literally was a dead mummy that he stared meaningfully at for about 30 minutes.
A dead mummy. Oh, because, you know, the passage of the conquerors and time kills everyone and everyone's up in the same place in the grave.
Deep, meaningful.
Whoa, man!
I guess it was deep if you were stoned when you wrote the damn thing.
But there's these infinite pauses.
And I was trying to catnap.
There were infinite pauses followed by giant cannons.
Which is kind of like when I was in the choir in boarding school, we used to have a real droner.
You ever have one of those when you're a kid in church?
A real droner?
Well, the mummy scene wasn't totally ridiculous because it's like...
But he could have had a...
I'm always comparing.
It's unfair, I know, but it's still my standard.
I'm always comparing if Shakespeare had written Napoleon.
Can you imagine the speech that Napoleon would have had to that dead mummy who was the conqueror of his time and he's the conqueror of his time, Napoleon speaking to the dead mummy, how everything passes and everything that you conquer is finally conquered by death and now you're just a rotten guy in a box and like it would have been a great speech.
So but no he's just got a stare at it and he tips it over Oh my gosh
Nice.
So yes, you want to take a nap, and it is a violation of the non-aggression principle because it's like sleep deprivation followed by startle reflexes, and it would have been a great speech to give to the mummy.
My God, what a moment of mortality for him.
So they set this thing up where Napoleon's staring at an ancient mummy.
By the way, he never shot up.
He never shot up.
The pyramids. It's just Ridley Scott is a dopamine-seeking slut of cinematography.
That's all he is. It's like, I don't care about the story.
I could give two shits about the characters.
I don't care about the history.
But what I do care is, can I get slow-motion shots of bloody men and horses falling into ice from below?
That's what I want. Can I get a shot of Napoleon blowing up the pyramids?
He's just an absolute man-whore for cinematography.
It's just horrendous.
Oh yes, the lines. Oh my gosh, James, that's right.
So Napoleon was a very well-educated man.
He was a very literary man. He was a man florid with a turn of phrase because his valet stole his letters to Josephine, so we actually have on historical record his passionate, beautiful language.
So this was a man who could polish a syllable or two and assemble a jumble of iambics so that it ordered much like the French regiment in a fairly straight line.
And this guy, what is...
What is some of the two lines that I remember in between all the...
Well, you know.
The two lines that I remember.
One is that France was a land power and, of course, England was a naval power at the time.
So, Napoleon is...
Really angry at someone who's in charge of a naval power.
I think it's England. I kind of was fading in and out of consciousness at this point.
I was like halfway between Napoleon and my ancestors who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, by the way.
But anyway, so his line, his passionate denunciation of a sea power is,
oh you think you're so great because you got boats.
Oh my god. Oh, hey Alan, how you doing?
Yes. Oh, you just think you're so great because you've got boats.
Aren't full of woke crap?
No. Woke crap would have been better.
It would have been more stimulating. The other is, he's complaining that his wife is infertile.
We'll get to Josephine in a second.
So he claims that his wife is infertile and he's angry at her and she says, oh yeah?
Well, you're fat. And he's like, yeah, so I like my food.
So what? This lamb was brought to me by destiny.
This lamb chop was brought to me by destiny.
How the fuck does that get past anyone?
What? Unbelievable.
Mouth-breathing, swallowed way too many urinal cakes right before the writing.
Complete chestless, neckless, soilless idiots would look at that and say, yeah, the lamb chop came to him by destiny.
That's a great line.
I mean, I thought I was going to go see some sweet dance moves and some weird electrical time-traveling groin apparatus, but no.
We have seen Napoleon Dynamite.
I actually hadn't seen it. I started watching it many years ago.
I got too depressed about it.
It's just everybody was such a loser and it was all so depressing.
But we did end up watching it for various social reasons more recently.
And it had its moments.
They are writing for the masses?
No. They're not writing for the masses, Dave.
Shakespeare wrote for the masses.
I mean, do you know that the majority of Shakespeare's income came from laborers?
No, this was like you just fed shred in a bunch of Napoleon's letters and an amateur historical textbook and then said to AI, throw me some dialogue, make half of it pauses.
Joaquin Phoenix, absolutely not the right guy for this role.
Is there not a Frenchman with some passion that they could possibly find?
Joaquin Phoenix is absolutely not the guy.
His laugh sounds way too much like the Joker, and he's just really fucking depressing to look at.
Like, he's just, you know, he's got that Bob Geldof-in-the-wall method acting, like the whole movie you look like you're just about to throw up.
And it's like watching a dime store wooden Indian have sex with an indifferently cleavaged trench woman because the sex scenes are just like ridiculous, right?
Yeah, the casting, he's got, okay, he's got zero charisma.
And that's fine if you're going to play an antihero like Joker.
But Joaquin Phoenix, yeah, he has like zero charisma.
He has no charisma. His eyes, they're just fucking drill holes to nothing.
Drill holes to nothing. Like just a blackened deck, it went brr, brr, and just went into the interstellar void.
Phoenix grew up in a pedo-sex comp.
Oh, is that right? I didn't know.
I didn't know. But, yeah, it was just appalling.
Just terrible. Totally.
So, Napoleon has to be joie de vivre.
He's got to be exciting. He's a passionate world striding massive Goliath of history, and he's just like
The movie completely violated show don't tell Yeah. Yeah.
Who would you cast for the role?
Maybe a young Gerard Depedieu when he was in his Elin stage, when he was doing his Cyrano de Bergerac stage.
Hell, I could have done an infinitely better job than that.
I mean, I know that's like, well, I could have...
But, you know, I mean... So let me sort of give you an example.
Let me give you an example and then I'll tell you what's wrong with the modern movies and I'll tell you why if you're interested in modern storytelling.
So here's an example of where a great Crispin Fields...
Hank Sank, Henry V's speech was required.
So Napoleon is banished.
He's coming back. He's marching on Paris.
And the soldiers that he used to be in charge of stop him with guns, right?
And I'm sitting there going, okay, like, come on.
Like, now is the time for him to win over, win over his former soldiers with a great speech about all the great things they're going to do together, right?
Like, that is, that is some just incredible stuff.
What an opportunity. What does he do?
He opens his coat.
He thumps his medals and he says, Don't you remember me?
Sorry, I'm delivering the line with some human emotion, so let me just Zuckerberg android that down a little bit.
It's like, Do you not remember me?
We had fights together and...
Many we... One, we don't want to do this again.
We should do this.
We should do this again.
We should...
Dare I say it's...
No, no, I was going to say, dare I say, that's a little déjà vu.
A little French joke in there.
Déjà vu for...
Hey, here's another pause. No, so he's got the speech.
Now, the problem is, of course, that this is the same army that he led into Russia.
Because, you know, invading Russia in late summer.
Genius. Military genius.
So, he takes half a million troops into Russia and like 40,000 come staggering out.
Half of them missing limbs and eyes, right?
Because they froze to death and all this sort of shit, right?
So, he's literally talking to the troops that he killed over 90% of their friends and cousins and brothers and whoever, right?
So, he's literally talking to the troops.
He's slaughtered Over 90% of them for no reason, no purpose, because the Russians did the scorched earth, let winter take care of them stuff, right?
So, why wouldn't they shoot him?
He dragged them to the ass end of Moscow, killed over 90% of them for no purpose, and a horrible death, like freezing, starving, marching, murderous wolves eating their throats out, half-frozen jugulars, a horrible, monstrous, terrible death.
I mean, of course, they'd shoot him.
Wouldn't you shoot some guy who dragged you and your family half, or you and your brothers half up to Russia's ass and back, and then everyone died slowly, fallen down, and you'd shoot that guy?
And he's like, no, but he shows him the medals and says, but we have fought before, and maybe again?
I could see my way clear to doing this.
Again, maybe we could invade the Arctic or Satan's armpit or hell itself.
We should invade hell itself, but we're going to go in and park us with hand warmers.
So, as a Finn, I love the winter.
Yes, but you wouldn't love it if you were one of Napoleon's soldiers and the Russians were poisoning every well and killing every piece of livestock so that you couldn't have anything to eat.
Yeah, he said, I miss my home.
And they mobbed him cheering.
It was completely insane. Like he slaughtered over 90% of this army and the remaining few people who didn't die later from illness or starvation or privation or weakness and the residual frostbite or something like that.
So... He literally killed over half of the army, and then he's like, but let's do it again, and the army's like, yay!
It's completely insane.
Now you could say, ah, well, but no, this was the younger, so he'd been in Elba for a while, so this is a new army.
It's like, okay, so if it's a new army, what loyalty would they have?
They never served under the guy.
And if you're going to be someone, can you imagine?
Imagine how much charisma you would have to have To kill 93% of your army and then have people cheer you for coming back.
Like, just imagine.
Imagine how much charisma you'd have to have for that.
Then imagine the opposite of that.
Oh, God. Josephine.
Yeah. Oh, Jojo.
Single mother fantasy because, you see, she's a single mother.
Got a couple of kids. Josephine married an aristocrat who she ended up separating from because he spent all of his days living in combinations of flophouses and whorehouses.
So he was a real piece of shit.
He ended up being guillotined.
She ended up Being imprisoned, but then she was released five days after her husband or ex-husband was guillotined because Robespierre tried to shoot himself.
Well, we've gone on to all of this in the French Revolution, which you should definitely get at freedomain.locals.com.
Sign up for a subscription. You get nine and a half hours on the French Revolution with an actual point.
I get two hours and 40 minutes with no point, but I got nine hours and a half with all the points in the known universe.
So... She makes some allusion to she had to have sex with a guard in prison just to stay alive.
Anyway, so she's got these kids, so they get married.
So he marries a single mom, a widow, I guess, although they were separated.
He marries basically a divorced single mom.
And what happens to her children, just out of curiosity?
He was only in exile from 1814 to 1815.
Oh, that's right. Sorry, in Elba.
He was eight years on St.
St. Helena but I think he was only a year or two on. Right.
So what happens to her?
He marries a single mom.
Now, can he have any trouble with the kids?
Can he have any difficulty being the stepdad?
No. No, because you can't ever point out to anyone that there are any problems dating single mothers, right?
Absolutely, because the government wants you to take on that burden so they don't have to pay as much in taxes, right?
In welfare. So, What happens to her single...
Her kids?
What happens to her kids? I mean, he first meets her kid, her son, not even her.
Poof! Gone! Yeah, like Ross Geller's kid in Friends.
Just poof! Gone! So yeah, she's a single mother with no...
It's a little sinister. Like, where did they go?
Did he pull a male lion and just chew their jugulars out?
I don't know what happened. Where did they go?
They're just gone. No complications.
Also, this is kind of weird too.
So first of all, The story arc is decades, right?
And Joaquin Phoenix does not age at all.
So he's supposed to be in his...
When Napoleon did the Whiff of Grape Shop stuff, he's supposed to be in his 20s.
That's a pretty rough-looking 20s.
Pretty bad-looking 20s.
And anyway, so then he ages, and they think they thin his hair out a bit and give him that sort of Napoleon floppy bang thing.
But yeah, you forgot to even have kids.
There's no mention of them, nothing.
Her daughter reappeared at the end of the film.
That was about it. Yeah.
But we never met the daughter before.
I didn't know who the kids were at the end of the film.
I didn't know who the kids were, because I don't...
Maybe they mentioned it, maybe they didn't.
But at this point, I was long past caring.
So... So it's weird enough that he doesn't age and he starts as the worst looking nuclear radiation face melt guy.
The worst looking 25 year old in the history of the universe.
And then he just doesn't age.
They don't even try making him look younger.
They don't give him any grey when he gets older.
But what's even weirder is this is the woman who played the sister in The Crown or something like that.
She's a good actress. Give him nothing to work with.
She's in the film for like, I don't know, 20 years?
They mention 15 years at one point.
Now, a woman who is getting married, I think she was 33 or so when she got married to Napoleon, right?
So, you know, plus 15, you know, we got 48 years.
She died at 52 or 53.
They don't even bother aging her at all.
It's just wild.
She's got this cute expressionless Botox zombie face in her late 40s that she had when she first met him in her early 30s.
Oh my gosh. It was the woman by her bedside, her daughter.
So she disappears from the film as a child.
No, we never see her daughter.
I think we only see her son.
I don't remember. But she disappears from the film, reappears as an adult.
I thought that it was a maid.
Why wouldn't I think that it was a maid?
Joachim is 50. I don't know.
Are you asking me or telling me?
So, yeah, she doesn't age.
Like, why? Why? Why on earth wouldn't they age her at all?
At all? Are you saying that single mothers don't age?
So, and of course, in real life, when they got married, she lowered her age from 33 to 29 on the marriage certificate, and she increased his age by 18 months because there was too much of an age gap.
So they don't even, like, it's really bizarre.
I mean, is she kept in formaldehyde every time she's not?
Being roughly banged from behind by Joaquin Phoenix.
It's just terrible.
I mean, think of the obsessive amount of detail they put into the horse, the bridles, the costumes, the buttons.
They put this obsessive amount of focus on inconsequential stuff, and they can't even have a woman age at all from her early 30s to her early 50s.
Nothing. Not a bit. Not a wrinkle.
Not a gray hair. Nothing.
Yeah, Kubrick was trying to make a Napoleon movie forever and a day.
I mean, it was completely bizarre to me that this was going on.
Of course, we have no idea who to root for.
There's no good guys, no bad guys.
I... You know, Napoleon was responsible.
Okay, Napoleon was responsible, you could say directly or indirectly, you could say other people would have done it.
But, you know, in terms of the people who died in his battles...
How many people was Napoleon responsible for killing?
How many people was Napoleon responsible for causing the death of?
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, right, Jared. When you know the actual history and seeing all the shortcuts they took and artistic licenses they used...
Wouldn't it be cool if he fired cannons at the pyramids?
He didn't actually do that.
Yeah, fuck you. Were you actually there?
That's, I think, what Ridley Scott actually said to somebody who said, because Napoleon was actually an educated and refined man.
He actually brought a bunch of anthropologists in to document everything that was going on in Egypt and all of that.
Estimates go from two and a half million to seven million.
Yeah, the movie says three million.
You know, three million, four million, who knows, right?
So half a holocaust. And why?
Why? And I think Ridley Scott's direction to him is just, I don't know, shut up, pause a lot, look brooding, and just do what you fucking need to do so I can get shots of bloody horses and men from below falling into ice.
I need the top of the pyramids blown off, a couple of cool sunsets would be great.
I just need, give me my cinegraphic, I used to know this word.
I really... I even believe I knew it earlier in the show.
Give me my cinematography, man.
Just give me my lensgasm.
I need my lensgasm and you can just brood the shit out of whatever you need to do before then.
That's it, man. Everybody, the movie is covering their ears.
But you know what's pretty wild?
What's pretty wild about this movie...
Can you imagine, okay, the body count of Napoleon was a couple of million, three, four million, five million.
But can you imagine the death toll of the movie Napoleon if, and you know, you need to brace yourself for this because this is really, really terrifying, right?
Can you imagine the death count of this movie if Alec Baldwin had been the director?
I'm going to estimate, just based upon, I mean, I've got a graduate degree in history, of course, and I'm fairly good with numbers.
I'm going to estimate that if Alec Baldwin had been in charge of this movie, the death count from the extras would probably be higher than the actual death count of the soldiers under Napoleon.
That's my guess. That's my guess.
I'm surprised they didn't have Napoleon succeed in Russia because Russia may end bad.
Oh, so good, Steph.
They'd be like helicoptering out all of the bodies.
Because he'd have to have a lot of diversity in his weapons managers, including all the people who die aboard him in the theater.
You're above 20 million.
Actually, it's kind of funny because I looked to the guy past my wife.
He actually looked quite a lot like the Egyptian mummy and his popcorn had all turned black.
So... Yeah, it's...
Coffee is for shooters! Sorry.
That's a mishmash.
It's a subtle reference right there.
So, oh gosh, what else?
What else about the movie? Oh yeah, so Napoleon is...
So he basically murders three million people and then what?
We're supposed to be sad when his wife dies?
Oh no! My wife lived to about twice the age of all the soldiers I murdered.
Oh yes, and also I remember when I fired cannon into protesters, because the protesters wanted to restore the monarchy, and I just ended up being emperor and king too, so you know, that's no good.
So yes, I fired a bunch of cannons into innocent protesters, murdered massive amounts of people, half the age.
My wife gets to double her age, double the age of the soldiers I killed, and I'm supposed to be really sad.
Oh no, he's really sad.
He's sad. He's sad.
Oh my gosh.
I mean the woman he dumped because she couldn't produce an heir, right?
I mean, Napoleon was very relieved to find he wasn't firing blanks.
Alec Baldwin was not relieved to find out he wasn't firing blanks.
Just, you know, kind of a cinematographic...
cinematic...
That joke crossover. So, the movie is this, and this is what happens with modern movies, especially historical fiction.
It's poignant vignette after poignant vignette, which leads and adds up to absolutely nothing.
Right? It's poignant vignette.
Oh, this woman who could not have a child.
He brings her the little baby that she could not provide for him.
And she stares at it.
We could give her a speech, but, you know, the AI was down that day, so we give her the poignant stare at the baby that she could not produce for the emperor.
And she stares with sorrow and meaning and pausing him.
Snores in French. Ah, these vignettes.
Ah, and then he is at the pantomime, the survivor's pantomime for people who survive the terror, the reign of— Sorry, I'm swallowing too much French here.
The reign of terror, and they are mocking— See, the people who survive the reign of terror, they are mocking Marie Antoinette, mocking her with her spiky hair and her not-present neckness.
So I'm supposed to care about these people who mock this?
I thought for a moment Josephine was going to throw the baby in the lake.
It would have been great if the baby had been thrown in the lake and been held aloft by a sword and then he'd taken over as King of England.
So... Oh my gosh.
Yeah, it's just these excerpts.
And it's like, oh, it's so poignant.
He is wandering the battlefield, stepping over the dead, oh, the butcher's bill.
And it's like, okay, so yeah, people die in war, and I guess what, he's very tense.
Oh, look, he's going in and smacking other people with his sword and musketeer.
He's a cool guy, eh? I mean, it adds up to absolutely nothing.
Guy lived. Guy did wars.
Motive unknown. No glimpse of things in their life.
Oh, and also, okay, bizarre.
It's odd how an English accent sounds smart and a French accent sounds arrogant.
So, what else was I going to say about this?
Yeah, he gains no pleasure from becoming emperor.
He also, I mean, they mentioned that he had affairs, and he did.
He had, in fact, when he was in Egypt, he had a mistress that they called Napoleon's Cleopatra, and it was all just all kind of stuff, right?
So... These vignettes that lead to nothing.
They're completely disconnected.
It's like, you know, you have beads in a row, and you know what's supposed to happen in stories, right?
After this, therefore, because of this.
So something happens, therefore something else happens, not just this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and nothing ties any of it together.
There's no theme, no plot, no character development, no arc, no moral, no nothing, right?
So there's just this...
So it's supposed to happen after this, and because of this, Not just, and then.
And then, if it's not because, right?
And every scene is supposed to do two things, advance the plot and reveal character.
At the end of the movie, I knew nothing more about Napoleon than at the beginning.
I didn't understand why any of it happened.
Of course, again, you can listen to my take on the French Revolution, which I think is the only accurate take on the French Revolution, at freedomain.locals.com, to know how I handle this kind of stuff.
But, yeah, it was just...
Empty. And I don't know why everyone...
I mean, I understand why the British had British accents.
I don't understand why everyone else...
I mean, it's always tough when you make a movie about Napoleon.
Do you have it in French? Of course you don't, really.
But do you have them speak French accents?
Well, of course not. But Europe without accents is incomprehensible.
Why do they do that, Steph?
Audiences are too dumb to absorb a plot.
No. Yeah, it's like a three-year-old telling you a story of his dream, and then, and then, and then, right?
Yeah, no, the audience is not too dumb to absorb a plot.
Oh, that's interesting. People who are severely traumatized can't experience life how you're describing this film.
Yeah, just a series of things with no connection, no...
Yeah, the Joker had more character development from sad to crazy.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, actually I am a trained actor.
Just remember that, right? I'm a trained actor.
And those of you who've ever played Among Us with me know how extended my death scenes can be.
I often will bring down servers or at least turn them white-hot, visible from space.
I actually, because, and don't try this at home, honestly.
This is, like in all seriousness, you need some training for this.
It's like sword swallowing or working with fire in a suit.
If you want to recreate, say, the cover for Wish You Were Here, don't try this at home.
I'm able, again, as a trained and professional actor, I'm able to recreate Napoleon's death scene, right?
His very moving...
This is the one place where the speeches did actually kick in, and I forgot to mention earlier, the speeches did kick in, and I remember it verbatim, because I was so relieved that there was actually some cool language.
So this is Napoleon's death scene.
Be ready. This is going to be quite intense.
Okay. And scene.
Now, again, you wouldn't want to do that at home.
You need the training. You need the expert sword-fighting ability.
You need to be able to control your breathing.
But for those of you who are just listening to audio, he just fell to one side.
Much like the mummy in his...
Okay, right. So, yeah.
Yeah, story is supposed to have some sort of point and meaning.
Yeah, it was just appalling.
I mean, Hamlet gets these beautiful death scenes.
Horatio and Flights of Angels sing you to your rest.
It's incredibly poignant and deep.
Literally, Guy just falls over like slow-motion bowling pin.
And he's even seated.
So I'm actually recreating the whole seating part as well.
He fell. But you see, the important thing to remember is that he was a tyrant and he fell.
Which way? Which way did he fall?
He fell. If you've seen the movie, you know.
He fell to the left.
Now, of course, the left and right comes from the French Revolution or the French Parliament.
So, yeah, he fell to the left.
So that's important.
That's important. Sounds like a play written by actors in their first semester of courses.
Yeah, yeah. Poignant vignettes.
Oh, yeah. So there's the other thing I wanted to mention.
So, you know, as a psychotic mass murderer of the ages, Napoleon was an abusive husband, right?
He is an abusive husband.
And he says to his bride...
Well, first of all, in reality, he left two days after his wedding to go fight in Egypt.
But he said to his bride...
You are nothing!
Sorry, that's too much emotion.
I apologize.
That's desperate Steph trying to get something in the character.
I mean, blink! At least blink!
A couple of times in the movie, I'm begging you.
So he said to Josephine, Napoleon says, Without me, you're nothing.
I am everything, you are nothing.
Without me, you're nothing.
Again, that's still way too much emotion.
Without me, you are nothing.
I am everything, you are...
No, still that's too much emotion.
Without me, you are...
No, no, that's too much hypnosis.
So anyway, he says, you know, without me, you're nothing.
I'm everything. You're nothing. Blah, blah, blah.
Now, what happens though, with no transition, is that then this, so he says this to her, but then you see, they're sitting on a couch, and she says to him, without me, you're nothing.
I'm everything. You're nothing.
Repeat it. Repeat it after me.
I am everything. And this is a man of motion.
I'm everything. You're nothing. Repeat after me.
And he's like, I am everything.
You are nothing. So this whole abusive dynamic completely reverses.
Completely reverses with no cause.
Now, I mean, I understand that the abusive person can also play the victim and that there can be these reversals, but you've got to earn that stuff.
One of the most famous reversals in 20th century...
Plays is, of course, Marlon Brando, or he was the original Stanley Kowalski, also played by Alec Baldwin.
And Stanley Kowalski is abusive in A Streetcar Named Desire to his wife and Stella.
And then he gets drunk and he comes back and he's screaming under her window, Stella, Stella!
And he goes in and he's, I'm so sorry.
So you can get these, but you've got to earn it.
You can't just...
It literally was like this.
This was like playground stuff.
Literally playground stuff. I would get a refund.
You're more fun than the movie. I'm not kidding, Mel.
I'd be more fun if I just paused and picked my nose for two and a half hours.
Hang on. Oh, sorry.
That's an OnlyFans show.
So it literally was like two kids in a schoolyard.
This was the level of dialogue.
You're nothing without me.
Oh, yeah? Well, you're nothing without me.
Sorry. Damn it. I keep doing that.
It's too much emotion. I must pretend that I've got Novocaine all over my face and it's been replaced by a frozen stone mask of an Egyptian mummy, let's just say, right?
Face covered with mummy.
Some people would say that's my eatable complex.
So, it would be like, you're nothing.
Without me, you're nothing.
Oh yeah? You're nothing.
Without me, you're nothing.
Wait. No, we're nothing without unicorns, blue herons.
Without blue heron nothingness, we are Rockefellers.
Extra Rockefellers with a little fondue cheese sauce on the side.
Without extra Rockefeller cheese sauce, you and I are nihilism combined with a black hole with a strange Tourette's side of Rockettes dancing.
I mean, literally, just boom, right?
Just boom. Just boom.
Oofy, oofy, oofy. Yes, so I would not recommend...
And you know what's heartbreaking to me?
Like, literally heartbreaking to me?
Is that...
Yeah, I know you are, but what am I? Right?
I am... I am...
Oh, I am rubbing you a glue.
Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks back on you.
And Napoleon, in real life, said, Well, I love Josephine.
I just don't respect her. Um...
I'm supposed to care about these two ridiculous, pathetic, murderous, broken...
I mean, the couple in Natural Born Killers are more...
Do you know if Woody Harrelson's dad was like a hitman?
Killed a federal judge? Anyway, so...
The pair, the Bonnie and Clyde psychos in Natural Born Killers were more sympathetic than this character.
In real life, was Napoleon a great public speaker?
I absolutely guarantee you that in real life, Napoleon was an incredible public speaker.
You can't get...
I mean, he was the most charismatic, most famous, because he was not appointed to this position.
He literally earned it by burrowing up through the ranks.
He would have had enough charisma to melt the camera.
The real Napoleon would have been so staggering, he would have been completely hypnotic.
Have you ever seen those people? Like, I remember many years ago, I was staying in a house for the summer.
I was putting on a play.
It was after my first year of theatre school.
I was staying in a house that was populated by a bunch of other people.
And there was a party and I went to the party and it was fun.
And there was this guy who had this eagle tattoo and he was just some guy.
He was in charge of some student painters.
He was like the local head of the student painter group or whatever, right?
And there was something about this guy.
He was so interesting and relaxed and he was so alert and he was so receptive to what people were saying.
I know it sounds kind of gay, but I half could not take my eyes off the guy.
I just found him really...
Have you ever seen people like that?
Like you just... They're in the room and they just are kind of hypnotic.
They're just... Your eyes are drawn to them.
He would be that on Infinity, right?
On Buzz Lightyear to Infinity and beyond.
Did any part of it cover that Napoleon had epileptic seizures?
My God! I bet you that was in the original script, but because Joaquin Phoenix is congenitally unable to alter his expression, unless you want him to do Joker insanity, he may have had seizures.
But you wouldn't be able to tell because old dead-eyed frozen face is just utterly unable to summon any kind of human expression.
Bemused resignation. Sadness.
Anger. Sorrow.
Pettiness. Epilepsy.
Tourette's. Four weeks dead.
Before birth. Anyway, just nothing.
Just nothing. Also, what was Napoleon?
What was one of the biggest effects?
Ooh, there's a little quiz for you here.
What is one of the biggest effects that Napoleon had on Europe, other than millions of people dead?
What was one of the biggest effects that Napoleon had on Europe?
Wait, the seizures may explain his dead face.
Yes. Oh no, I could go into battle and get killed.
And then my facial expression...
Oh no, that wouldn't change at all.
Maybe he died right at the beginning of the movie and everything else was the dream of the dolphin.
All right. Napoleon was most known for his Napoleonic Code.
Also shows up in Streetcar Named Desire.
What we have down here, Blanche, is what they call the Napoleonic Code.
So, yeah, the Napoleonic Code.
Now, that's guilty until proven innocent.
There's some really negative stuff in it.
But he was known for organizing, or at least reorganizing, the laws of the countries around.
And it had a big effect.
So, of course, to reorganize the laws, he would have to have a true, deep fascination with legal matters, with constitutions, with laws, with bills of rights.
They never showed the guy fucking reading a book.
They never showed him practicing for war.
They never showed him rehearsing, reading any military matters, consulting anyone.
Never showed him reading a book. He just storms around like some zombie-faced Nazgul.
He stood up to the Rothschild banking cartel.
I don't really know much about that, but I guess they had to wait for everyone to get on the Titanic for the next round of that, but...
Yeah, he didn't learn anything.
He had no background, no history, no childhood.
His mother showed up very briefly but had no particular effect on anything.
What made him such a soulless psychopath?
Maybe Joaquin got some bad Botox.
No, because then he wouldn't have looked so horrible and haggard.
The man looks like, you know, two moon miles of bad cratered dust road.
And, you know, look, I'm way older.
I'm almost a decade older than the guy, but it's just like, dude, it's called sunblock.
Might not be the end of the world to look into it.
Anything about his parents? Nope.
No mention of the father. There were no parents, no children.
It's just a bunch of middle-aged guys wandering around, not doing accents and murmuring and pausing.
Anything about his height?
No. The short height was just British propaganda.
Reading a book implies an NPC can become an emperor.
Yeah. That's shocking.
You don't know about the Rothschild stuff.
Did I say, I don't know about the Rothschilds, or I didn't know about Napoleon defying them?
Ecoutez, mes amis!
Ecoutez, mon ami, my friend, listen.
So, yes.
Yeah, his mother showed up for a scene or two, but...
They, um...
Like, they can't explain...
See, here's the thing. You don't go to artists for an understanding of human nature.
I mean, this is all the way back to Socrates, right?
Remember, Socrates, when he was told he was the wisest person, didn't believe it.
He was told by an oracle of Delphi, which cannot lie.
So he went to the artists and questioned the artists because the artists seemed to have a deep understanding of human nature, but the artists couldn't tell you anything about why they did what they did, why they wrote what they did.
And so Socrates said, well, I have no choice but to really believe that artistic excellence is like a kind of dream or hypnotic state or epileptic state or something where your hand writes upon its own and you have no idea what it's doing.
I mean, Ridley Scott has, you know, the same understanding of human nature as I have to the inner bowels of a Rolls-Royce engine.
What do I need to do to get cool cinematography scenes?
What were the other... You guys saw this, Jared and James went to see it again.
What were the other... There were a couple of scenes that I was thinking of in my head.
Of course, the big vivid one is the horses falling into the water with the blood and all of that.
And there were other scenes where I'm like, oh, yep, here's his lensgasm.
I'm going to build back.
Here's the cool things I want to show.
I want to build back from that. Of course, now you don't even know where the real actors and the CGI kind of blend in.
Because, you know, you've got these giant fight scenes and there's like armies in the background.
They just go on and on. I don't know if...
I assume a lot of that was CGI. Or he may be one of these purists who won't do it at all.
Yeah, I mean, it was all...
And for the people who saw it today, if you remember this, so he's charging and his horse gets hit with a cannonball.
And you know, it's funny. I mean, this is how dehumanized people are.
In the theater, people were like, ooh, you know, oh no, the horse got hit.
Oh no, the horse got hit.
And yet when you see half a million human beings disassembled by cannon fire, everyone's like, yeah.
But anyway, so he pulls the cannonball out of the horse, reaches in and pulls the cannonball out of his horse, and he tosses it to some guy.
Does he say for mother, or what did he say?
I didn't quite catch it, but...
The British soldiers forming into squares was too perfect.
Well, that's... Right. The cannonball exploded the horse's chest.
It was so gruesome. Yeah, no, I get that.
But it's like...
It's like the John Wick movies.
You can watch 8 million people with Black and Decker drills through their eyeballs, but my God, one dog gets harmed and everybody loses their shit.
It's completely bizarre to me.
Anyway, do you remember?
He says for mother, right? Right.
Oh, he gave his ball to his mother.
Anyway, so, and what does that mean?
Nobody knows what that means. It's just, it's all deepities.
It's pseudo-deep, right?
That's all it is. It's just pseudo-deep.
Yeah, you heard for mother too?
Yeah. So, oh yeah, so the one last thing that I said I wanted to mention was, and I made this argument, oh gosh, remember eight or nine years ago when I was on Joe Rogan and he ambushed me and he was talking about like, well, how could you have national defense without any kind of Government!
Sorry, I should be more toe-like when I do that.
But anyway, and I was like, no, I mean, of course, the way that you would deal with it, and I write about this in my novel, The Future, which you should read if you haven't.
It's a great book. You can listen to it, too.
I have more animation than all of Joaquim's You know what?
I would watch a video of him getting, like, non-Novocaine tooth drilling just to see if he changed his expression or not.
Oh, here's the other thing, just before I get to that last thing.
The other thing that happens, and this is such a boring cliche.
I don't know how people can do this repetitive stuff.
I was going to say over and over again, but that would be kind of repetitive.
So, you know how it works is that, and there were a couple of scenes like this.
So, there's a scene in Egypt where, Napoleon's friend says, your wife has taken a lover.
And he starts laughing.
Oh my gosh, that's so deep.
You know, isn't that really interesting how sometimes you have the opposite reaction?
Like it's totally opposite?
Isn't that cool? Isn't that really interesting?
And then when Napoleon tells Josephine he's going to divorce her because she can't produce an heir, she starts laughing and it's like, wow, that's so deep, you know, like how people have like the opposite reaction.
That's really, that's not just going for the obvious stuff.
It's like, okay, so you've just made things the opposite and called it deep.
And it's just like, oh my God, that's just terrible beyond words.
That's terrible, terrible beyond words.
Oh shoot, what was I talking about?
I knew if I left that last bit I was going to not find my way back to it.
Oh no, now I feel like I'm in Russia in the winter.
What was I talking about right before this?
Oh, it was a good one too.
I was doing a mother, a cannonball, a vignette, an ending.
He doesn't have any facial expressions.
Something, something, something. Defensiveness rewarded.
Oh, it's when people do the opposite.
Mother Cannonball. That's not a very good song by Supertramp.
Oh yes, Joe Rogan, thanks. Oh, brilliant!
I'd donate to you if you could. So, yeah, of course they do this upbeat murder during murder scenes, or they play the classical music during the war scenes, or this is always the mafia.
They're in church, and all of this choral music, and then the people are getting gunned down.
Oh my gosh, it's so deep and ironic that people are getting gunned down to choral music.
And it's so ironic that it's slow motion stuff in a battle scene and there's like classical music.
And it's so ironic that people are getting murdered as this little French budgie is trilling along that French trilly singing Edith Piaf on helium.
It just drives me kind of crazy.
So, yeah, I'm on the Joe Rogan thing and he's like, how are you going to have national defense?
And I said, well, bioweapons, right?
You would get bioweapons and you would tailor the bioweapons to somebody's particular DNA, the leader of the person who was going to invade you, some country, Elbonia is going to invade you.
You just develop the bioweapon for that leader's DNA. And, you know, of course, everybody was like, what are you talking about?
Now, of course, we know that you can tailor weapons to people's specific DNA. So, yes, development of bioweapons and all of that kind of stuff as well.
But in this movie, Wellington at Trafalgar, it was the Duke of Wellington, I think, so Napoleon is within sight of the British troops and the sniper is sitting there saying, hey man, bro, I got a bead on Nappyhead, man.
I got a bead on the guy.
I can take him out right now. Wouldn't that kind of end the whole battle?
Because it's Napoleon's strategy that keeps everything.
It's Napoleon's charisma that keeps the whole together, right?
And he says, oh no, I've got better things to do on this battlefield than take shots at each other, right?
So he doesn't want to shoot Napoleon because otherwise then he's open target and he's going to get shot himself.
So the idea that you take out the leader in order to avoid the masses of people dead.
So now it's like, oh no, I'd much rather have, I don't know, a couple of hundred thousand people killed, really, than shoot Napoleon.
That would be un-sevilized, right?
Very, very, very, very gauché, I think they would say in France.
Very, very, very low rent, low class.
I think it would be like, yep, let's just have a hundred thousand young men slaughtered for no reason because you don't want to shoot the guy in the funny hat.
It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
I mean, he wants the war.
I think the war is the murder last, right?
And I explain this murder.
I'm not going to go into it here because that's a subscriber bonus, but I explain this murder last and where it comes from in the French Revolution stuff.
Why only one tip today?
Am I boring everyone?
Hey, if I am, just let me know.
If I am, if you want to talk about something else, let me know.
But, um...
Bro needs to eat.
So... I have employees!
Uh... And, I mean, I know that his kind of weird sideways hat thing, I know that's like a Napoleon thing, but that doesn't mean he has to have it in every single freaking scene.
In the bathtub, while climbing a tree, while flying through the air, on horseback, while making love, you must never ever remove the sideways hat.
Otherwise, who would know who Napoleon is?
He's the guy who looks like he's traveled back in time from 40 years in the future to pretend to be a 27-year-old.
You just got here.
Welcome! You're tipping tomorrow.
Excellent! Oh, that's funny.
My watch thinks I'm exercising because I'm being so animated.
Animated. Animated.
Oh, anime? Animated?
Is that where anime comes from?
It's just animated? I just noticed that.
Just noticed that.
Like the word extraordinary.
It's extraordinary.
That means it's even more boring.
There's a Tim Hooligan. When did this start?
Arguably, the Napoleonic War started halal, right?
Wearing a felt taco. Yeah.
I mean, also, I never saw him the whole time with his hand in his sleeve, right?
His hand in his buttons, right? To be fair, between the script and Phoenix, you don't get much else to indicate it's Napoleon.
Yeah. Have you seen Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, movie on the Crusades?
I think I actually passed out during that one.
I think Kingdom of Heaven, is that the one where, yes, Orlando Bloom?
Yeah, he just doesn't.
Ridley Scott has no concept of human behavior or human motives.
Like, I mean, you'll get your lensgasm, you'll get your cinematography, for sure.
You'll get your money shots.
Like, literally, they cost a lot of money, I assume.
I don't know what else that refers to.
Okay, so what else has he made?
Oh, he's 86 years old?
Well, this could be his last one, right?
He's made 28 movies.
Oh, he made Gladiator? Yeah.
I've also found that one really dull.
Please, God, tell me he didn't make that one about the sailing ship with Russell Crowe.
Oh, God, that was terrible.
Just, they're so pointless.
All right. Ridley Scott movies.
What has he made? Blade Runner?
He did Blade Runner, right? The Duelists.
Weren't there two of those? Alien.
Now alien is perfect because he understands aliens, he just doesn't understand human beings.
A Blade Runner was interesting, a legend I never saw, someone to watch over me never saw,
Black Rain never saw. Oh he made Thelma and Louise, okay, that was okay but that was really
just built on the charisma of the actress. 1492, oh I watched that just for Marlon Brando.
It was absolutely terrible. White Squall, terrible.
G.I. Jane, really terrible.
Gladiator, boring.
Hannibal, never saw it.
Black Hawk Down, again, just people digging bullets out of each other's femoral arteries and so on.
Not any human motivation.
Matchstick Men, Kingdom of Heaven, never saw it.
All the Invisible Children, never saw it.
A Goodyear, American Gangster, never saw it.
Body of Lies. Robin Hood, I watched about 20 minutes of that and I was like, this is just terrible.
It's just awful. Prometheus?
No. Vatican? No. Counselor?
No. Exodus? Garden Kings?
No. The Martian? Eh.
How many times can we rescue Matt Damon from space?
Apparently forever. Alien Covenant?
Never saw all the money in the world.
Yeah, I really haven't seen that many of his films.
But yeah, I guess he's okay with...
Blade Runner was one of the best movies ever.
I haven't seen it in forever. So...
I do. I mean, of course.
But you know that one of the most famous scenes from The Blade Runner had nothing to do with Ridley Scott, right?
It was Rutger Hauer.
He wrote and made up that whole, I'm going to die like tears in the rain.
Alien is first rate, absolutely, but no human motivation, right?
There's no actual human motivation or character arc, right?
And Alien was one of the first movies to kick off the women can kick ass and take names genre, which then became a What do you think made all those movies awful?
No morals, no depth, no story arc, no human insight, no...
Right? Yeah, he improvised that whole...
And the other thing too, Rutger Hauer is an incredibly underrated actor.
Like, I even sat through Ladyhawk, not just for the cheesy Alan Parsons soundtrack, but for Rutger Hauer.
Like, I would watch Rutger Hauer knit, assuming it's somebody else's entrails.
But Rutger Hauer...
Was it Rutger Hauer or Daryl Hannah?
They play robots who never had a childhood, and they come into a toy room, and they're like, toys!
Like, he's just really enthusiastic because he never had a childhood.
Like, just those little details are fantastic.
Rutger, is he dead? No, he's still alive, isn't he?
Isn't he doing these movies with Sylvester Stallone, like The Expendables and stuff?
Yeah, James Cameron is similar in those terms.
Yeah, yeah. There's no actual understanding.
They're very technically, obviously technically great directors, but...
What's heartbreaking to me, of course, I remember Blade Runner was famous when I was in the Atari community because there was an Atari ad in one of the spaceships or whatever that was going over the city or one of the planes.
But, yeah, they're technically very good.
But, I mean, obviously, right?
But no human understanding or depth or motivation.
And what's painful to me, of course, is that the movie, this movie cost like $200 million.
Oh, Titus with Anthony Hopkins?
Yeah, he's very good, of course, right?
Rutger is dead? Oh, gosh.
Oh, dear. Small fragment of childhood and youth falling away.
He's getting the Julian Sands treatment.
So, the purpose of art is to inoculate you against evil.
Sorry, I guess I'm just dropping, like, mad random bombs into the conversation here.
But the purpose of art is to inoculate you against evil.
And so when I think of, like, for one of these battle scenes, my entire massive novel almost could have been made into a movie.
Are we past in 2019?
2001 Space Odyssey?
I don't think that was a great film.
I don't think that was a great film.
That was, like...
One short film that was good sandwiched between two pieces of what the hell is going on.
All art or just as terrible art.
So the purpose of art is to have you experience evil without the danger.
Right? So the purpose of art is to have you watch someone be corrupted so that you become afraid of being corrupted so that you avoid corruption.
Right? There was a movie, oh gosh, there was a movie about a director in the, he was an artist or a director in the Nazi regime and it was that bug-eyed actor, German I think, and sorry I can't remember the name of it or the name of the actor because it's like, I don't know, it's been like 40 years since I saw the movie.
Yes, I'm not young.
And it was about a director who gets progressively pulled into the corruption of the Nazi regime.
I think you're one of the best philosophers ever, but you were wrong about 2001.
Okay, you tell me about the end of 2001.
Well, he just comes back and he's like a space baby.
Yeah, right. I mean, they didn't even know.
Like, you understand, Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke didn't even know what the hell was happening.
They just made up stuff. They didn't know what was going on.
They didn't know how to end it. I think the bit on the spaceship is great.
If it's someone... Yeah, so, you know, you don't just walk into combat, you prepare, right?
You prepare combat.
Could be Klaus Kinski.
But you prepare for combat, and you do a lot of time preparing for combat.
Like, you think of a war like Wimbledon.
You don't just wander in and stop playing in Wimbledon.
You have to practice, right?
And so, you want to have been inoculated against immorality.
And corruption. So that when it shows up, right, this is why all the medieval plays had, you know, maidens falling prey to Satan and sleeping with the wrong person and then being cast out of society.
And this is just to warn you against immorality.
The purpose of art is to inoculate you against immorality.
That's what they said in interviews later.
They were just shooting from the hip with the ending in 2001.
No, that's not right. It was amazing.
It tears you apart. Watch it again if you're ever bored.
Sorry, I thought you were going to make an argument.
First of all, I saw 2001 twice in the theaters, and I actually saw it a couple of years ago, again.
And, I mean, yes, the space dances with the Blue Danube waltz, very clever, it's very cool, it's fun, but...
Oh, so what are your favorite movies?
Galaxy Quest was funny.
Hollywood doesn't want to minoculate people against evil.
They want to put people in a trance.
Yes. Yes, that's right.
So, the purpose of Napoleon is to tell you there is no evil.
There is no evil. Yes, it was a cautionary tale against populism, for sure.
But it also was not...
It was nihilistic, right?
Because the revolution was bad, the emperor was bad, the king was bad, the next king was bad.
So everything's bad.
I'd rather watch Star Trek.
Oh, the first one? Oof.
Third one was good. LDS of the 60s.
But... The book ends completely different.
Oh yeah, no, I went through a big...
I've never seen Soylent Green. I went through a big Arthur C. I read everything Arthur C. Clarke wrote.
Six Billion Names of God or Six Million Names of God.
Short stories. I read Childhood's End.
I read 2001. I went through a real kick of Arthur C. Clarke in my teens.
It was good stuff. Or make people think evil isn't really dangerous or threatening.
No, this... Napoleon is saying we live at the level of animals.
That's all. We live at the level of animals.
We grunt. We fuck.
We fight. We kill.
We die. We're just mammals with funny hats, right?
There's no morals, there's no good, there's no evil.
The mob is dangerous, but everything else is dangerous.
The important thing is to fuck your wife and have a baby, and love is an illusion, and death is inevitable.
The whole movie is just a bunch of apes in costumes running around fucking and killing.
That's all it is. That's all it is, and they have the language skills of your average cocoa as well.
Ugh! Like, literally, literally.
I'm not kidding. You think I'm kidding about this.
Do you remember, guys, if you've seen it, do you remember the scene?
Napoleon comes in and he wants to have sex with his wife.
And what does he do? What does he do?
What does he do? Interstellar Blue.
Interstellar was a terrible movie.
No, he didn't say that.
No. Well, he did once, but do you remember the other time he comes in and her hair has been done up by her maid or whoever it is, right?
Yeah. He literally growls and makes him.
And he stamps his foot like an impatient horse.
He grunts. He literally grunts and wordlessly mounts her like an ape.
No, he's not even mumbling.
He's just making sounds.
He's just making sounds.
I found the movie Interstellar a real snoozefest.
And, of course, if you know anything about the science, it's just completely ridiculous.
No, he lives...
And he stamps his foot like an impatient horse.
Have you ever seen The Agony and the Ecstasy with Charlton Heston?
No. No, it's saying Europeans are just fighty apes.
Fighty, rutty apes.
Or everyone, for that matter.
I don't know. Planet of the Apes with Heston.
Oh, I read the original book called Monkey Planet by Pierre Boulle.
Really, really frightening book.
A really, really chilling book.
I don't know if I've ever seen Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston.
But the jokes write themselves.
Yeah, I mean, he was just animalistic.
He liked to kill, he liked to fuck, he liked to drink, he liked to eat.
I mean, the whole movie was just human beings or flesh robots programmed to reproduce, fight and die.
And that they only say moralistic type language in order to further acquire resources so that they can fuck and fight and die.
If you love sci-fi, so when you love sci-fi, you love all that stuff?
Okay. Well, if your argument is that there's no such thing as bad sci-fi, I invite you to watch Edward's Plan 9 from Outer Space.
That may cure you of that.
You should see Planet of the Apes.
Uh... I, um...
Don't trust anyone over 30, kid.
One of Heston's lines from Planet of the Apes.
Omega Man. Oh, the Omega Man was, like, literally traumatized me, that movie, because I was six years old at boarding school for the first year, and they played that movie, which was, like, zombie chasing, blowing up, mutilation.
like it was incredibly horrible movie for little kids away from home to see.
My friend watched 12 Angry Men as a child.
Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty good. It's pretty good movie All right, um poltergeist freaked me out as a kid
I don't think I've ever seen that. Yeah, I don't generally, I mean, I looked at all the trailers, and it's like, oh my gosh, this is all just terrible.
Dawn of the Dead, is it a zombie movie?
movie? I've never seen that. No, I mean I remember when there was a phase where
everybody was really big into the Walter White stuff and oh gosh what was that
show's name?
And I tried an episode or two and I'm like this is just the most horrifying
appalling nihilistic evil monstrous horrible stuff that I could conceivably
imagine and I can't imagine how much I would pay to not see this.
Breaking Bad, yeah. Breaking Bad.
Walking Dead. I watched one or two episodes of The Walking Dead, but maybe more than one or two, and it was just like, we're surrounded by...
Geeks or nerds or whatever they called them.
And we're surrounded by zombies, but we have to go over here to get it and we've got to come back.
Yeah, Breaking Bad. I just couldn't do it.
Shaun of the Dead. That was kind of funny.
I mean, there are little bits of Shaun of the Dead that are funny that everyone's kind of a zombie because they're just running around on their cell phones or whatever, right?
No idea what anyone saw in Breaking Bad.
Oh, I don't know. Better Call Saul is better.
See, when I say something is the worst thing humanly possible and you say, well, so-and-so is better, it's like, yeah, okay.
So many shows just glorifying violence.
The Sopranos, a biker show from Out West that was on HBO. Well, like Sons of Anarchy, right?
Sopranos was interesting.
I watched maybe two seasons of The Sopranos, but it was interesting because, of course, there's the psychology and the family and all of that kind of stuff, so that was interesting.
The whole thing, oh, Breaking Bad is an edge case to disprove the non-aggression principle.
What if a nice teacher gets cancer and can't afford treatment?
I thought it was a good show because it depicts a person whose acts of desperation results in a slippery slope of bad decisions.
But it says that you should reserve your moral horror for people who are torturing and murdering others because they can't afford cancer treatment, which is not the kind of...
Not the kind of situation that people are going to experience in their lives.
So it's like a trolley.
Oh, you know, I can understand where people are coming.
He's got cancer and he's going to die, so he's got to cook meth.
It's like, oh, come on, man.
This is not the moral issues.
How about you talk to people about not abusing their children?
No! Morality has to be something completely otherworldly.
I just joined your locals tonight.
Fun conversation. Well, welcome.
Breaking Bad was a psyop to sympathize with criminals.
Yeah. Yeah, I think there was...
It's not a Coen Brothers. There was a new Coen movie.
And... Oh God, it just looked like beyond awful.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
It's my favorite show of all time.
Pure comedy gold every episode.
Is that... That's the one with Danny DeVito?
Well, it invites you to sympathize with Walter so it provokes reflection on what is right.
It's the oldest trick in the book to have you sympathize with an evil person.
Right? Well, you know, you've got to see where he's coming from.
You know, there's a lot of people who can't afford cancer treatments.
Do you know what they don't do? Become mass murdering criminals.
So, oh, there's an evil guy, but, you know, have some sympathy for the guy.
I'm going to give you some backstory, man.
In other words, you should sympathize with people who will never, ever, ever sympathize with you.
That's the goal, man. Sympathize with people.
Big Lebowski, best comedy.
Oh, that's dark, man.
That's dark. You might like All Creatures Great and Small.
Oh, yes. I watched that when I was younger.
Oh, gosh. Early teens?
It used to be on a show with Goldie.
Channel 17 from Buffalo.
They had these... They would occasionally run Fawlty Towers.
And they had these endless, endless pleas for money.
Unlike mine. Redomand.com slash donate.
Or you can donate right here, right now.
Yes. The...
All Creatures Great and Small.
I actually didn't... James Harrington, right?
I didn't read the books, but I did see the shows, and the shows were very, very funny.
Big Lebowski was very funny.
Doesn't it start off with a guy getting peed on?
Like it's really dark and nihilistic isn't it?
And the...
Oh the fat guy character is really really terrifying.
Hey, Steph, I made a donation earlier and posted a question.
If you get a chance, I will check it out, my friend.
All right, let's do this.
If you are a supporter, 12 Monkeys, I watched that half asleep.
I don't remember much of it.
I did say earlier on that I was going to go donor only.
After about now, we've gone a little over an hour.
If you are a supporter of the show and you want to go donor only, I am...
Happy to do it. Hit me with a Y or an N if you would like to go down around me.
The Coen brothers are creepily nihilistic and not very good with plot.
I mean, they've got some very funny, biting dialogue.
The scene from No Country for Old Men where the psychopath is questioning the old guy in the gas station.
Okay, so I'm going to answer this question.
The guy who donated, I don't want to have him donate or tip and then give an answer that he can't see.
So... If this is to Cobrian, if we go donor only, only for supporters, if we go donor only, will you be able to see the answer?
I don't want to say thanks for the donation and then paywall the answer.
Will the donor only be potentially spicier?
Yes. If I join the year tonight, does that count?
Yes. And thank you for joining.
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