0:00

Howdy gear listener, CJ here,

0:02

your cowboy in the jungle,

0:05

rolling with the punches, playing out all my hunches,

0:08

making the best of whatever comes my way.

0:11

And I'm here

0:14

in 2023, introducing on

0:16

the public feed for the first time, for

0:18

a limited time,

0:19

an older bonus episode.

0:22

This is a bonus episode

0:24

that I made all the way back five

0:27

years ago in 2018, when

0:30

I thought the world was pretty fucked

0:32

up and insane, of course.

0:34

Subsequent years would just keep

0:36

escalating with a hold

0:39

my beer each time.

0:42

So this bonus episode

0:44

normally lives only on the

0:46

supporters feed for people

0:49

who support my work at five

0:51

bucks a month or more via Patreon

0:53

or Subscribestar.

0:56

But I've decided to put

0:58

it out for a limited time

1:00

on the public DHP feed for GenPop.

1:03

You know, how long I'll keep it there. I'm not

1:05

sure, maybe a month or two. At some point

1:08

down the road, I'll think to take it down, but

1:11

it'll be up there for, you know, a while,

1:13

but not forever, is my point. And

1:16

this

1:16

episode is myself and

1:20

good friend of the show, Joshua

1:22

Perry, who at the time was still doing

1:24

his Dusty Den podcast,

1:26

which I think maybe within a year

1:29

or less of us doing this joint bonus

1:31

episode, he

1:33

hung up

1:34

the Dusty Den podcast.

1:38

But anyway, he and I shared tastes in

1:40

a lot of things, including movies,

1:43

and he and I both had a

1:45

lot of affection for

1:48

Demolition Man. And so

1:51

on what was at the time the 25 year

1:54

anniversary of the film's release,

1:57

we did a joint bonus episode that

1:59

both of us

1:59

shared only to our Patreon

2:02

supporters at the time just discussing

2:04

and reviewing and analyzing the

2:06

film Demolition Man.

2:08

So why am I sharing

2:10

this on the public feed now in 2023?

2:13

Well basically what happened was a few days

2:16

ago I was tweeting

2:18

some stuff about dystopias

2:20

and how I think I tweeted something

2:22

along the lines of man back in

2:24

the 70s 80s 90s and aughties

2:27

Hollywood gave us so many dystopias

2:30

that warned us of the dangers

2:33

of tyrannical governments etc etc

2:36

and now isn't it said that Hollywood

2:39

now that we're living in a real

2:41

burgeoning dystopian regime

2:44

that gets more and more crazy and

2:46

dystopian and authoritarian seemingly

2:48

every day isn't it said

2:50

that now Hollywood are some

2:53

of this dystopian regime's biggest propagandists.

2:58

It's not the exact word for word of what I tweeted

3:00

but something pretty close to that effect

3:03

and the tweet went you know moderately viral

3:05

by my humble standards and I

3:07

noticed that a bunch of replies

3:09

and things in one way or another

3:11

reference Demolition Man either people who

3:14

knew I was a fan of that movie or people who I

3:16

don't think did and just you know happened to bring it

3:18

up and so

3:20

at some point I

3:22

just kind of did a quick search of Demolition Man you

3:25

know on Google or IMDb or Wikipedia

3:27

I don't even remember where just to

3:29

remind myself of exactly what year

3:31

it came out in and I

3:34

happened to notice that it came out in 1993 which means

3:38

this is the 30th anniversary this year

3:40

I think the movie came out in October if I'm not

3:42

mistaken so it's not you know exactly

3:45

like to the month but it is years wise

3:48

the 30th anniversary of

3:50

the release of Demolition Man starring

3:53

Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes and

3:56

this is one of my favorite movies of

3:58

all time

3:59

now I'm not saying

6:00

supporter you'll consider becoming one, and

6:02

you can get access whenever you want to all sorts

6:04

of extra bonus materials and goodies and things.

6:08

But anyway, without further ado,

6:09

I'm gonna hand it off to myself and

6:12

Joshua Perry in 2018 discussing

6:16

The Excellent Film

6:17

Demolition Man. You are

6:20

an incredibly sensitive man who inspires

6:22

joy joy feelings in all those around

6:25

you.

6:49

The Council of Franks, on behalf of delicious

6:52

Oscar Mayer 100% B. Franks, has declared

6:55

its official position. Oscar

6:57

Mayer 100% B. Franks are 100% B. Frank

7:02

Delicious. This summer, choose

7:04

delicious, choose 100% beef. Keep it Oscar. So

7:10

mellow greetings CJ. Hey,

7:12

good to talk to you again. Yeah, I was just

7:16

the other day

7:19

saw a reference to

7:21

Demolition Man somewhere, and

7:23

it sparked my thinking,

7:26

and I just was wondering

7:28

how long has it been since that thing

7:30

came out, and I looked

7:33

it up and I said holy crap it came

7:35

out in 1993, and it's 2018, so that's 25

7:39

years, and that's significant

7:42

for some reason, right? Yeah, 25 years

7:44

is like that's

7:46

one of those milestones for things.

7:49

Yeah, yeah, it's always the five, the

7:51

ones that end in fives and the ones that end in zeros

7:53

are always the significant ones.

7:55

Like I just some

7:57

months back got my 10-year thing at work.

8:00

you know, for being there 10 years. And I was like, Oh God,

8:04

I'm coming up on 15. So I'm, uh, I'm in 14

8:07

right now. So I, I

8:10

feel my wife just passed her 15 year anniversary

8:12

at her, uh, career. Yeah. It was,

8:15

makes you, makes you feel like you're getting up there a little bit.

8:17

Yeah. I've got a lot of that going on lately.

8:20

I've got my 15 year anniversary

8:22

of being married, um, this

8:24

December. Thank you. I was married

8:26

in 2003. And then also, um, last

8:30

month I celebrated

8:32

my elder daughter's 13 birthday,

8:37

13 year birthday. We just had that in March

8:39

for, for my oldest daughter. Yeah. So

8:41

I

8:42

have a, I have a teenage kid

8:44

now. Yeah, man, it's crazy. That's

8:46

weird. But anyway, when I, when I noticed

8:49

it was 25 years, I was like, man, I ought to do something

8:51

on a, on demolition man. And I said, Hey, I

8:53

know somebody who probably would

8:55

be into that. My buddy, uh, Joshua

8:57

from the dusty den. So thanks

8:59

for, thanks for taking the time to chat

9:02

about this movie, which I got to say,

9:05

I like it. I still like it as much as I did.

9:07

Um, when it came out, I was 12. So,

9:10

um, there's not too many movies that

9:13

I really liked when I was 12 that I

9:15

like equally now. I mean, you know, some

9:17

of the timeless classics like the original star Wars

9:19

films and you know, Indiana Jones

9:22

movies and jaws and stuff

9:24

like that, you know, sure. But there's a

9:26

lot of favorites. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff I liked

9:28

when I was 12 that, you know, I have

9:30

a hard time watching today, like a lot of the van dam movies

9:33

and stuff,

9:34

but yeah, which ironically,

9:37

well you bring up van dam, uh, Sylvester

9:40

Stallone for the people who haven't seen

9:43

it out there. We'll talk a little bit about, we'll

9:45

give you a little bit of a synopsis and talk about some of the

9:47

characters and some of the actors,

9:49

but van dam was actually, they

9:52

wanted him for the part that Sylvester

9:54

Stallone plays. Of John

9:56

Spartan and he either turned

9:58

it down or couldn't do it or whatever.

9:59

I think there was somebody else they were looking at too,

10:02

but so that's interesting that you brought

10:04

him up But he was in and and

10:07

it would have been kind of interesting to see

10:09

that dynamic with Snipes but

10:12

which I

10:13

He was there was another character

10:15

in the running for or another actor in the running

10:17

for

10:19

His part too, but we'll get to that in a little bit. Yeah.

10:21

Yeah I think I know who you're talking about

10:24

but as far as Van Dam all I can

10:26

say is I'm really glad That

10:28

it went to Stallone as John

10:31

Spartan said of Van Dam. I think it it

10:33

made a much better movie Yeah,

10:36

it would have it would have been

10:38

worse for this fan for this type of movie

10:40

I think it's

10:42

It was a really good casting Especially

10:45

for him as the hero because

10:47

it's a movie in my opinion and this is just

10:50

the way that I see it when I watch it It's

10:52

sort of like a sci-fi junk food

10:54

that has a little bit of something a

10:57

little bit of an undercurrent That

10:59

is interesting and a little bit deeper now

11:03

It's it's full of all the campy stuff

11:05

you would always expect from a movie like

11:07

this. That's your typical 90s

11:11

Sci-fi junk food, you know in itself

11:13

aware I think in that regard it pokes a little

11:15

bit of fun at itself throughout the film But

11:19

I think Stallone is like the perfect

11:21

Person for that like it's that expendables

11:24

thing, you know where

11:25

it's self-aware It knows that it's

11:28

an action movie, but it's also trying to make some

11:30

subtle statements about Society

11:32

and the future and utopianism

11:35

along the way And I think that's where people

11:37

like you and I appreciate it not only just for

11:39

the entertainment value But also

11:42

for the the subtleties that are sort of in

11:44

there behind this when some of them are

11:46

some of them are Not so subtle Some

11:49

of them there. They're kind of bludgeoning you with it. Yeah, but it's

11:52

you know, it's it's a

11:53

dystopia in

11:56

some ways in the 1984 and

11:59

Brave New World world

12:01

sort of flavor. And

12:03

it's also the fish out of water

12:05

because of traveling through time sort of deal

12:07

almost like a Connecticut Yankee and King

12:10

Arthur's court or something, but going

12:12

forward in time instead of back. And,

12:14

but at the same time, it's

12:16

like almost as much of a comedy

12:19

as it is an action sci fi film, which I

12:21

appreciate. I mean, I think a lot of movies

12:24

that are in the sci fi dystopia realm, they

12:28

can become so heavy handed that

12:31

they're they're really humorless. And

12:34

then it makes it so that

12:35

you still might appreciate them. You still might

12:38

appreciate the larger social

12:40

critiques they're trying to make. But at the same time,

12:42

it's not as enjoyable to watch

12:44

or to read. You know, I think about something like 1984. I

12:47

mean,

12:48

it's a really important book, but

12:50

it's not fun to read. It's just

12:52

lead and, you know, very, very

12:55

heavy handed and somber. And

12:57

I don't know. I mean, maybe maybe we shouldn't

13:00

ask that they put in a

13:01

bunch of snappy

13:03

Avengers style one liners in 1984.

13:06

But, you know, it's not the kind of book that's

13:08

just fun to read over and over again. Whereas

13:11

Demolition Man is I think it's a fun movie. Oh,

13:13

yeah. You get like the

13:15

don't lose your head right before like somebody's

13:17

head gets cut off or something. It's

13:20

full of that. But it is. You

13:22

mentioned

13:23

a Brave New World and

13:25

it gets compared to that a lot. A

13:28

lot of people are like, oh, it's loosely adapted

13:30

from I would not go so far as

13:32

to say it's a loosely adapted. I would say

13:34

there's definitely some inspiration

13:36

in there. And I mean, we can talk about I'm sure we'll

13:39

talk about that as we go. The story

13:42

is totally different. But there is some

13:44

elements of it that I think were borrowed from

13:46

it and definitely some similarities in

13:49

the sort of utopian esque

13:51

or dystopian future

13:53

that's set up in the novel and

13:56

then in this movie. And

13:58

those are some of the things that are more.

13:59

more interesting to me because I'm a huge fan

14:03

of

14:03

Brave New World and actually if on my website

14:05

on my blog that was the very first

14:08

blog entry that I did which

14:11

it wasn't a show, it was just a

14:13

quick essay that I penned about my

14:16

feelings on the book. And

14:19

it's one of my favorites because I'm much more interested

14:22

in, as I think you've

14:24

put it this way before, of

14:26

lateral oppression other than

14:29

top down authoritarian oppression. And

14:32

there's a little bit of both of that I think in the movie and in the

14:34

book but

14:35

that's sort of horizontal

14:38

societal pressure, that

14:41

kind of oppression is much more interesting

14:43

to me. And I think it's much more

14:45

real, it's much

14:47

more what we're going through. And

14:50

I think that makes some of the predictions

14:54

in the movie and sensibilities

14:57

very sort of on the surface and

15:00

easy to sort of see and identify with.

15:03

Yeah, it definitely shares the

15:05

kind of smiley

15:07

face, happy face

15:10

fascism of Brave New

15:12

World more than the

15:15

very gritty and grim fascism

15:17

of something like 1984. And

15:20

I think it's pretty clearly

15:22

self consciously somewhat

15:25

inspired by Brave New World because

15:28

one of the main characters last names is Huxley.

15:31

Yeah, La Nina Huxley. Yeah, that's a pretty

15:34

clear

15:34

tip of the hat there. And

15:38

La Nina is the name of the female

15:40

lead in the book. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right.

15:42

Yeah, so it's directly

15:44

an

15:45

oma, it's a hat tipping directly

15:48

to Huxley in the book. I mean,

15:50

it's hard to deny that. And then also

15:53

you had like the main,

15:56

I won't say the main character because there really

15:58

isn't one in Brave New World, But

16:01

one of the principal characters is John

16:03

the Savage. And in here you have John

16:05

Spartan, who

16:07

they constantly refer to

16:09

as, you know, savage and a caveman and

16:11

this and that. So that

16:14

also I think is pretty much directly

16:16

attributable to the novel.

16:19

Well, before we jump more into

16:22

the overall story, I

16:24

wanna just run through a little bit of specs

16:26

on the movie. So it came out in 1993 in October, I believe.

16:31

So would have been shortly after I turned 12.

16:34

And I remember I absolutely loved the movie when it came

16:36

out. It was

16:39

directed by Marco

16:41

Brambilla or Brambia. I'm not sure how

16:43

you say it. I think he's Italian. And-

16:46

He's like a artist, I think. Yeah, he really

16:48

didn't make much else in the way of movies. I think

16:51

he might've done like one more movie or something. He doesn't

16:53

have a huge amount of movies, which, you know,

16:55

again, I really liked this film. I

16:57

wish he had done more stuff. The

17:00

film was a box office success.

17:03

It was

17:05

a blockbuster.

17:08

According to Wikipedia, it made $159.1 million, which

17:14

was, you know, somewhere between two

17:16

and three times its budget.

17:18

And it's almost two

17:20

hours long. So it's, you know,

17:22

it's pretty long for a fairly,

17:24

you know, kind of lighthearted action. It

17:27

goes fast. I noticed when I was

17:29

watching it, I was like, man, it

17:31

flew by just cause of the humor, I think,

17:33

and the action. Yeah. And I got

17:35

to say, you know, whoever the team of guys

17:37

that wrote the screenplay, they

17:40

did a good job not

17:43

adding in a bunch of extra unnecessary

17:46

scenes or subplots or anything like that. Like it's

17:49

pretty hard to find any scenes in

17:51

there that you watch and you go, oh, what

17:53

the hell's the point of that? You know, they're just, they're

17:56

just screwing around. It's a pretty lean story,

17:58

even though it's almost two hours.

17:59

Let's see what

18:02

else we've got. So we've got Sylvester Stallone

18:04

as John Spartan. We've

18:06

got Wesley Snipes as Simon

18:08

Phoenix. Do you want

18:11

to say something about who

18:13

the role was originally offered to?

18:15

Yeah, they originally

18:17

offered it to Jackie Chan

18:19

and he wouldn't

18:21

do it because he didn't want to play a

18:23

villain and that's happened

18:26

before to him. He's been offered

18:28

roles before, back in this

18:30

decade, of doing

18:32

a role with a villain and he would consistently turn

18:35

him down because he thought he would sort

18:38

of get out of his wheelhouse of usually playing the

18:40

hero or the

18:41

sort of comic sensibilities

18:44

kind of thing. And

18:45

I think it was a really interesting

18:48

choice for Snipes

18:51

though and I gotta say,

18:53

Wesley Snipes is one

18:55

of my favorites. I really like

18:57

Wesley Snipes as an actor. I think he's

18:59

awesome. Anybody who's biggest

19:02

crime is tax evasion

19:05

is a hero to me automatically. I

19:08

like that about him and he's also a

19:10

legit badass. He's

19:13

been doing martial arts since he was a teenager,

19:17

like 12 years old or something like that. He's like

19:19

a fifth degree black belt in

19:22

Shota Khan, Karate. He's

19:25

a habikido black belt. He's done jiu-jitsu,

19:27

kickboxing. I mean he is a legit,

19:30

could mess you up in a minute kind

19:32

of guy

19:33

and he was actually along

19:35

that line. I don't know if you know this

19:37

but I know we both listen to Rogan every once in a while

19:40

and he was supposed to fight Joe Rogan

19:42

in the UFC. They were

19:45

all geared up in training to fight each other but the contract

19:47

fell through and they never did it. Wow. Back

19:50

in 2005, yeah, they were gonna legit

19:52

fight because Joe Rogan's a black belt in jiu-jitsu

19:55

and also a

19:56

black belt in

19:57

Take Wando and some

19:59

other stuff too. But yeah, they were they were gonna

20:01

fight. It was it was a real deal. But wow,

20:03

that would have been really cool. Yeah.

20:06

All the all the martial arts and stuff he does in his films,

20:08

like in Blade and stuff like that. Right. Like

20:11

a lot. He choreographs a lot of that. He's really,

20:13

really a talented guy.

20:15

Yeah. And he really plays it up as Simon. Simon

20:17

Phoenix. He's really, you know, self-consciously

20:20

almost cartoonish with it. Oh, yeah. But

20:23

I got to say, I think I

20:25

think that Jackie Chan made the right choice

20:28

of not taking this role. I

20:30

really can't see him in it. And

20:33

yeah, I mean, he's he's good. He's obviously

20:35

great at doing martial art stunts and everything

20:37

like that. But he's as

20:40

an actor, he's basically good at playing the kind

20:42

of lovable, nice guy who's, you know, sometimes

20:44

a bit of a goof. But like, that's kind

20:46

of, you know, he's not exactly the the

20:49

most versatile actor around. And

20:51

I really have a hard time picturing Jackie Chan

20:53

as Simon Phoenix, whereas I

20:55

think

20:55

Wesley Snipes is much more

20:57

suited to the character.

21:00

Well, you can see that I think they were

21:02

just originally going for totally the

21:04

martial arts angle with Snipes

21:07

and are,

21:08

you know, with Jackie Chan, rather,

21:10

and then Sean Claude Van

21:12

Dam. So it's

21:15

it's one of those things. And then Steven Seagal, that

21:17

was the other one they were looking at for Sylvester

21:19

Stallone's role. So they were looking

21:21

for martial arts people. And

21:24

it's if you look if you watch it, and

21:26

I noticed this when I was rewatching it,

21:28

a lot of the angles during the

21:30

filming and stuff, there's a lot of

21:33

like sort of slanted or

21:35

diagonal angles

21:36

with the cinematography. And it's got a

21:38

very comic book style

21:41

and of direction, which I found

21:43

pretty interesting, given that we were talking

21:46

about how the director is more like into artistic

21:48

stuff. Right. And this had

21:50

almost like a comic book sensibility. And

21:52

I thought the way Wesley Snipes played

21:54

it

21:55

while over the top and cartoonish,

21:57

I felt like it was supposed to be that way. And then it worked.

22:00

Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting with his bright

22:02

yellow hair and then his

22:04

like bright primary

22:07

colors

22:08

outfit like bright red shirt and

22:10

overalls. It's like Smosh

22:12

gosh. Yeah, right. I mean supposedly this

22:15

is a guy who in the 1990s like took

22:17

over all of the crime in the inner

22:19

cities Of LA and whatever and

22:21

I'm just looking ahead of me. He's dressed like

22:23

a character out of you know Yogi

22:25

abigaba or something. Yeah, he's like a DC

22:28

Comics bad guy Like he's

22:30

like the Joker kind of thing You know like almost

22:33

in the the fun loving kind of way where

22:35

he's just so over the top like I'm a bad

22:37

guy You know, that's that's what I am his his

22:39

motivations are unclear it's

22:42

just he's just a fun character to watch

22:44

and

22:46

His outfit is funny, but it's so 90s.

22:49

They're so

22:50

like everything about this movie is

22:53

90s

22:54

pop culture

22:56

with the

22:58

the main characters, you know with the characters who

23:00

sort of travel and not only say time travel into

23:02

the future because that's not really What they do, but but

23:05

in practice it is kind of what they do. Yeah. Yeah There's

23:08

that there's that contrast of

23:10

the 90s versus the future

23:12

And I just think that that's cool because we're both,

23:14

you know, remember the 90s very well So

23:17

yeah, I remember the the kind of music

23:19

that they're talking about and stuff

23:21

in the film And if you look in Lenny, no

23:23

Huxley's office

23:24

She has all these little 90s sort of Easter eggs

23:27

up on the wall like lethal weapon posters and stuff

23:29

like this and right It's

23:31

you know, that's stuff that we sort of grew up with

23:34

or at least we're in high school for

23:36

me during during those times Yeah,

23:38

I guess I would have been probably in maybe sixth

23:41

grade or there about so when

23:43

I graduated in 97 so

23:46

and

23:47

we've got Sandra

23:50

Bullock, of course as Lenny, no Huxley the

23:53

the female cop in

23:55

the future and We've

23:58

got

23:59

Dennis Leary

24:00

and one of my favorite roles he

24:02

ever did is Edgar Friendly, the leader

24:05

of the literal and figurative underground.

24:09

And then we've got Nigel Hawthorne

24:11

as Dr. Cocktoe, who's the sort

24:13

of scientist slash

24:17

political

24:18

leader of

24:20

the future. And

24:22

then we've got a couple of sidekick cops. We've got Benjamin

24:24

Bratt as Alfredo

24:27

Garcia. We've got briefly Rob

24:29

Schneider. This I guess was his

24:31

job audition for

24:33

his later role with Stallone in Judge

24:36

Tread as the goofy sidekick. So

24:39

briefly there. Oh and then we've got

24:42

what's his name,

24:43

Glenn Shaddix as Associate

24:46

Bob. He's a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah.

24:49

And then he was Otho in Beetlejuice.

24:54

Oh that's right.

24:55

He was great in that. Like he's so he's such a

24:57

funny character actor. And

25:00

then you also have I think

25:02

it's Steve Kahn as Captain

25:04

Healy. He's he's in the beginning. He's

25:06

doesn't have a very big part

25:09

but he basically plays the exact same

25:11

part

25:12

that he plays in Lethal Weapon

25:14

which is like the gritty police

25:17

captain who's

25:18

you know trying to set the

25:20

rogue cop straight.

25:22

And I thought that it was funny that

25:24

he plays that same exact character

25:26

in Lethal Weapon and then later on

25:28

again

25:29

leaning into Huxley's office you get

25:31

the Lethal Weapon poster. A little Easter egg

25:33

sort of nod to that film

25:36

sort of that action junk food genre

25:38

you know.

25:39

Right yeah well Stallone's

25:41

character John Spartan is clearly

25:44

an homage or

25:47

I don't know exactly what you call it maybe an homage isn't

25:49

the right word but is

25:52

clearly the

25:53

an archetype of the amalgamation

25:56

yeah yeah of the the 80s 90s

26:00

Yeah, cop who's almost

26:02

it's almost like just a modernized version of

26:05

the archetype of the cowboy, right? Where you've

26:07

got this guy who he's

26:09

a man of action. He's a guy

26:11

who's not very good at following all of the official

26:13

rules and doing things by the book

26:15

and he's pretty bad at that. But

26:18

he does have his own code of

26:21

right and wrong and you know,

26:23

ultimately he he does things for

26:25

the greater good and to catch

26:27

the bad guys, although this always then brings

26:29

him into conflict with his superiors and that sort of thing.

26:32

So I mean, it's everybody from from

26:35

Dirty Harry to

26:38

you know, Mel Gibson's character in Lethal Weapon

26:40

to John McLean in the Die Hard movies

26:43

to you know, dozens and dozens

26:45

of others. But I mean, it's just

26:47

it's just such a classic of that genre.

26:50

Pretty much anything from the late 70s through

26:52

about I don't know the mid 90s where

26:55

you know in in a cop movie, it's almost impossible

26:57

to find find a cop movie

26:59

that doesn't have a character like that.

27:02

Yeah, it's true. It's very it's

27:04

a good time capsule film. I think

27:06

for

27:07

the time that it was made for 1993

27:10

for an action movie. I think you can be like, oh,

27:13

this was what 90s action or

27:15

action sci-fi was was like, you

27:17

know, again, I think it's very self aware.

27:20

One of the funny things that I found

27:23

about it was that the post apocalyptic

27:25

future that is shown

27:28

there's sort of well two futures from when the movie

27:30

was filmed. There's there's where the movie starts

27:32

out, which is Los Angeles in 1996. That's

27:35

only three years removed from

27:37

when it was filmed in the future that they're

27:40

predicting in three years

27:42

is like terrible. Like

27:44

L.A. is like on fire. It's like a battle

27:47

zone. There's just gang members running around with Uzis

27:49

everywhere. It's just crazy.

27:52

Yeah, yeah, that's very it's very interesting that that's

27:55

it's a classic case where they kind of seem

27:57

to have taken

27:58

a snapshot of.

29:59

of hostages in the wreckage.

30:03

And so John Spartan gets

30:05

in trouble for that and ends up being sentenced

30:08

to cryo prison

30:10

for manslaughter of

30:12

those hostages. So

30:14

yeah,

30:15

cryo prison may be based

30:17

on the urban legend about Walt Disney. I don't

30:19

know.

30:20

It's it's interesting.

30:22

Actually, that's one of my the parts I like

30:25

a lot about how

30:27

they got these people into the future.

30:30

I think that that's pretty cool. And it reminds

30:32

me a little bit of minority report. And

30:34

I want to get to that later because I really like that

30:37

film. But and the

30:39

story that it's based off of by Philip K. Dick, who's

30:41

one of my favorites. But when you talk

30:43

about the 1996 Los Angeles and

30:46

we alluded to a little bit already, the

30:48

way just to give people idea who maybe

30:50

are listening this before they've seen it

30:52

before you even get the credits.

30:55

Stallone is like

30:57

air dropping out of a Huey with

30:59

an Uzi in his hand, blowing away bad guys on rooftops.

31:02

I mean, that's the kind of movie this is. It's not

31:05

you know, you're not watching Brazil or something,

31:07

you know, like like that, it's

31:09

when we're talking about these books that

31:12

it references. It's very

31:14

action oriented and it's very

31:17

almost over the top action oriented

31:20

to where, you know, he's jumping out of the helicopter

31:23

and he's like, you got to send a crazy

31:25

guy to catch a crazy guy, you know, and he's just

31:27

I'm like immediately shooting people.

31:29

And it's you're just like, whoa, it's the

31:32

credits haven't even rolled yet. So it

31:34

is you get right into it and right

31:37

away, you know, that it's it's over

31:39

the top.

31:40

Don't take it too seriously. But then you

31:42

get a nice surprise because some

31:44

of the stuff in there is a little cerebral.

31:47

So that's why I like it. It's so contrasting.

31:49

You know, it's so fun to watch. But yeah, the cryo

31:52

prison.

31:52

So they put

31:56

these it's like subliminal messaging.

31:59

I forget. what they call it exactly. Rehabilitation.

32:02

Yeah, and they do it through a sort of

32:05

sound, like

32:07

it's, I forget what they call it, it's,

32:09

man,

32:10

it's on the tip of my tongue. Yeah,

32:13

I don't remember either, but somehow they're able

32:15

to project this into their

32:18

mind as they're frozen slash

32:20

asleep.

32:21

Yeah, and he's away for 70 years, so

32:23

they're gonna freeze him for 70 years, that's

32:26

his sentence. Right, but

32:28

then we snap to only 36 years

32:30

in the future, so

32:33

only about half his sentence. It's 2032,

32:35

and we are in what is now known as San Angeles,

32:40

which apparently is an

32:43

amalgamation of the entire

32:45

San Diego through Los Angeles

32:48

metro area. And

32:50

Simon Phoenix

32:52

gets thawed out and woken up for

32:55

a parole hearing, because apparently that's

32:58

something they do. And

33:00

by the way, I couldn't help but thinking, isn't

33:02

it weird? I mean, we

33:04

kind of have an idea why, because

33:07

of what gets revealed about this, but

33:09

right off the bat, to me, it was always fishy,

33:11

like, wait a minute, he's getting thawed out

33:13

for a parole hearing,

33:15

and that hasn't happened yet to Stallone, right?

33:19

You would have to assume that if Stallone got 70 years

33:21

for manslaughter, that Simon

33:24

Phoenix's sentence, whatever it was, must have

33:26

been much bigger. Oh yeah, you're

33:28

going in deep for that one. I didn't

33:30

even think about that. Yeah, well. It's

33:33

true. It's just one of those little things I noticed,

33:35

and I can remember noticing that even as a teenager,

33:39

watching the movie going, it just seems

33:41

kind of fishy, that they would, you know, you'd assume

33:43

that this guy got like hundreds of years of

33:45

a sentence for all the things they said he did, and

33:48

he gets a full-fought

33:50

parole hearing, apparently, you know,

33:53

they never mentioned

33:53

that it happened to Stallone. That's

33:55

true. I just remembered,

33:58

it's called Synoptic.

33:59

suggestion. That's the way that they're programmed.

34:02

And it is also another hat tip

34:05

to Brave New World because if you remember in the book,

34:07

that's the way the children are conditioned. One

34:09

of the many ways that the children are conditioned is

34:12

there's these suggestions while they sleep and

34:14

they're incubators and all these different things that

34:17

tell them

34:18

what caste system they're supposed to live

34:20

in, like if they're alpha or beta or whatever,

34:23

for those of you that have read the book and if you

34:25

haven't you better go read it because it's so good. But another

34:27

thing that they sort of took directly from the book

34:30

is the synoptic suggestion. So there

34:32

you go.

34:34

So Simon Phoenix is

34:36

at his parole hearing and

34:39

somehow magically knows

34:41

the password to

34:43

let him out of his restraints and all that. And

34:46

he manages to escape from the prison. And

34:48

in the process, he commits

34:51

the first MDKs

34:53

in like two decades.

34:56

Yeah, death kill, murder, death, kill. Yep.

35:00

And in the cops like hardly even know what

35:02

to do when the code 187 comes

35:04

up at the police station, they don't even know

35:06

what the hell it means. Yeah, I thought I

35:08

wrote that down. I thought that was so funny because

35:11

he does. He kills

35:13

the

35:14

probation officers and they're

35:16

like code 187. They have to like look it

35:18

up in the database. And that was a phrase

35:20

that was very popular and like rap music and stuff

35:22

in the 90s. Right. You know, 187

35:25

on undercover cop or whatever. And then

35:28

so it's, you know, very, very fresh

35:30

in the mind of the 90s

35:32

kids

35:33

and it was hilarious. The

35:35

way that they react

35:37

because it's not, it's now 2032. That's

35:40

how far we are in the future. And

35:42

there hasn't been a murder or I

35:46

think that he says something like there has not been

35:48

one of the cops says there has not been a unnatural

35:51

death or a death not caused

35:53

my natural causes since like 2010

35:56

or something like that. So nobody really knows anything

35:59

about aggression.

35:59

or

36:01

anything like that. They've all sort of been neutered from

36:04

the visceral experience of life.

36:06

Yeah, the police deal with things like

36:08

foul language and people being

36:11

out after curfew.

36:12

Yeah, yeah, and everybody has

36:14

these greetings, like the greeting I had in

36:17

the beginning for CJ where I said be

36:19

well is sort of a joke

36:21

or mellow greetings, that's the way they

36:23

talk to each other. It's like living in a

36:25

fucking Walgreens or something. I'm like,

36:28

that's what they say here. I don't know if that's what they do in Florida,

36:30

but

36:31

here they're like, have a great

36:33

day, be well. And I'm sort of look back at

36:35

them, I'm like, oh, that's kind of creepy. Be

36:37

well, John Spartan. Yeah,

36:40

and so, and they're not allowed to touch, so

36:43

they can't like, they'll go

36:45

to give each other a high five

36:46

and like stop and do this like circular

36:48

motion with their hand and it's so goofy

36:51

and hilarious. Yeah, I love when

36:53

the one cop

36:56

walks up to Stallone once he's thought out

36:58

and says, I formally convey my

37:00

presence and hold his hand up and

37:03

Stallone slaps him a high five and

37:05

is like, hey, how you doing? And then the guy like freaks

37:08

out. Yeah, we're not

37:10

used to physical contact greetings. Yeah,

37:13

it's great. And did you notice that like

37:16

the music in the beginning of

37:18

the film is like, the typical action

37:20

music that you'd get in the 90s and stuff like that, it's

37:22

all dramatic. And the minute you're

37:25

put in the future,

37:26

you see, you know, Lina Huxley

37:28

talking to a doctor on their

37:31

video phone in her car or whatever. And it's just

37:33

this elevator music that's in

37:35

the prison. It's like this very,

37:37

it's automatic, everything's super sterile

37:40

and clean. And you know,

37:42

they're very passive.

37:44

In fact, like

37:45

one of the comments that

37:48

Lina Huxley makes in the very

37:50

beginning of the film, like immediate introduction

37:52

to our character,

37:53

you immediately know who this character is. She's

37:55

talking about how all this lack of stimulus

37:58

is boring or something like this.

37:59

and the

38:01

doctor she's talking to on

38:03

the phone says, oh don't think about it,

38:06

try not to think about it. We've taken care of all that

38:08

stimulus, who

38:10

needs all that stuff. We don't have to think deeply

38:12

anymore, we took care of it. So they

38:15

immediately set it up, which is like Soma,

38:17

again, in Brave New World, which is the drug

38:20

that's distributed

38:21

to society to keep everybody

38:24

just sort of like peaceful and happy

38:26

and it's just like Xanax basically. It

38:28

just, you know, it sort

38:30

of Xanax people out, it makes them not really care about

38:32

too much and that scene is a good thing.

38:35

Yeah, yeah, and it's a theme

38:38

that, you

38:40

know, it's based on some trends that

38:42

were already starting in the 90s

38:44

that have clearly gone a lot further by now. The

38:47

whole idea of like nerfing

38:49

the world and safe

38:51

spaces and trigger warnings and

38:55

no one should have to encounter anything that makes them

38:57

uncomfortable at all and

38:59

all this, it brilliantly

39:01

is taking that stuff, which was really just

39:04

getting going in its modern form

39:07

in the early 90s. But, you know,

39:09

this is around the time that

39:10

the people we know as millennials were being

39:13

born or were little kids.

39:15

So, you know, people who are just a little bit younger

39:18

than you and

39:18

I and that's

39:21

the beginning of that trend where like everyone

39:23

has to wear, you know,

39:25

a helmet and elbow pads to go to the park and

39:27

they can only go to the park if their parent goes with them

39:29

and stands right next to them the whole time and,

39:32

you know, no kids get time

39:34

to just kind of, you know, run off on

39:36

their own and be Tom Sawyer and all that kind of stuff.

39:39

And, you know, when you combine that

39:42

with medicating, particularly

39:45

of boys in the schools

39:47

just for being energetic and all that kind

39:49

of stuff, it's like,

39:50

yeah, that's where we're going. We're going

39:53

to some weird nerf ball future

39:56

where everything is super

39:58

duper. you know,

40:00

OCD, control freak, progressive

40:03

kind of stuff. I like to think of it that

40:05

we're just ignoring nature and trying

40:07

to make our own nature. Like, I

40:10

think in

40:11

the book that I just covered, The True

40:13

Believer, I think Eric Hoffer calls it soul-forming

40:16

in a way that progressives sort of

40:18

view the world, is that they're trying

40:20

to make,

40:22

they're trying to make us be something that they

40:24

view as ideal.

40:26

And one

40:27

of the ways that they

40:29

do that, in my belief, and I don't wanna go too

40:31

much on a tangent, is, you know,

40:34

medication over prescription and just

40:36

sort of, you know, not that it's like a conspiracy

40:39

or anything like that, but it's sort of gradualism.

40:41

We just sort of want less stimulation

40:45

and

40:45

we try to make these

40:48

kids be something

40:51

that they really shouldn't be at a certain

40:53

age. And, you know, people

40:55

are like, oh, why are they running around and acting crazy

40:58

and stuff like that? Well, because they're kids and they've got all

41:00

this energy. And if you don't give them something to do,

41:02

you know, they're going to find something to do and that's

41:05

normal. But

41:06

I don't think people like to accept that sometimes. You

41:08

know, they think everything should just be,

41:10

as they say in Fight Club, as peaceful as

41:13

Hindu cows. Yeah, yeah,

41:15

yeah, it's the result of all these trends,

41:18

you know, the hover parenting and all these

41:21

sorts of things. So we've

41:23

got Lenea Huxley, who, like you said,

41:26

is, and

41:28

I think many of us probably

41:31

have at least at some point in time felt

41:33

like we might have been born in the wrong time period.

41:36

Yeah. And I think she definitely, you

41:38

know, she's a person who's nostalgic for a time

41:40

period that she never really knew. She's nostalgic

41:43

for the 20th century. And

41:47

I've definitely felt that way at various points in time,

41:49

especially as a history guy, where every now

41:51

and then I'll be looking into something and

41:53

it's sometimes tempting to have nostalgia

41:56

for time periods you've never actually lived in. you

42:00

know, people often have nostalgia for the time period of their

42:02

childhood, which,

42:03

you know, there's reasons

42:06

for it that are

42:08

potentially valid and reasons for it that are kind

42:10

of problematic. Like, for example, if you

42:13

had a generally good childhood, then you're

42:15

gonna think that the overall time period

42:17

was probably a better time period than it was. And

42:20

yeah, you see this with boomers a lot. Yeah,

42:23

yeah. And, and people have a tendency

42:25

to

42:26

ignore

42:28

the negative things of past

42:30

time periods. And so, you

42:32

know, I think it's a very realistic,

42:34

believable thing that you would have someone

42:38

in this nerfball future who,

42:41

on some gut level, kind

42:44

of feels like this ain't right. And

42:46

that for all of its faults and flaws,

42:50

that some aspects of the past

42:52

might have been preferable to

42:55

today. And,

42:56

and she's a, you know, a fairly

42:58

well rounded character in that she's not,

43:01

she's not simplistic. You

43:03

know, there are things that Stallone says and

43:06

does from the past that really put her off and make

43:08

her uncomfortable. But at the same time, she

43:10

also has this admiration of the

43:13

previous time period when, you know, things

43:15

were a bit more gritty, but also

43:17

a bit more human.

43:19

Yeah. She, she's obsessed with nineties

43:21

culture. She's a nineties researcher and it's

43:24

a part was part of her education

43:27

or something like this. She's got all these nineties

43:30

nostalgia in her office and

43:33

that they definitely set her up very clearly

43:35

as

43:36

that kind of, that's who she is in

43:38

the movie. You know, there's, there's

43:40

no one that else that really fills

43:43

that role. And

43:44

it's her idea, I think, if

43:47

I recall correctly to

43:49

convince, she tries to convince her supervisor

43:51

that they need to, to thaw out

43:54

John Spartan to go

43:56

catch Simon Phoenix, who is

43:58

now loose.

43:59

He did these 187 murder death kills.

44:02

So who are they going to get to find

44:05

him? I think they say

44:06

you have to get a 90s cop

44:08

to catch a 90s criminal

44:11

or something like that.

44:12

Right. Well, initially they dispatch

44:15

some regular future cops

44:17

with their little zappy sticks.

44:21

And it's a really comical scene

44:23

when these guys confront Simon Phoenix

44:26

and they're being told what to do by this little

44:29

kind of smartphone type device. And

44:31

it's hilarious saying a firm voice,

44:34

get on the ground or else. Yeah,

44:36

it's so funny. And of course,

44:39

you know, Simon Phoenix just beats

44:41

a crap out of them and I think kills them or whatever. And

44:44

it's just hilarious to see. And

44:48

it's definitely one of the predictions

44:50

of the future that the movie

44:52

got wrong, which is predicting

44:55

that in the future, cops would become

44:58

very, you know, not

45:01

violent and very almost

45:03

kind of weak. Robotic. Yeah.

45:07

And instead we've got The Rise of the

45:09

Warrior Cop as that

45:11

book by I think Radley Balco was titled.

45:14

Right. So we've we've got a weird trend in

45:17

the reality of the last few decades where

45:19

at the same time most violent crime

45:21

rates have been in a long term decline since about

45:24

the early nineties. The cops have become

45:27

more and more militarized and more

45:29

and more about just, you know, plan

45:31

A is overwhelming force. That's

45:33

it. And, you know, that's something they definitely

45:36

got wrong is this prediction of you would have

45:38

these harmless wimpy cops that, you

45:40

know, can hardly even deal with a jaywalker.

45:43

And instead we've got we've got the cops that will,

45:46

you know, shoot your whole family because someone

45:48

said you might have a pot

45:49

planning your garage.

45:51

Yeah. There's they're so soft

45:53

and lame in the movie. It's it's so

45:55

funny. It's like, again, it's one of those over the top

45:57

elements. But I think what it's

45:59

trying.

45:59

to do and maybe what the screenwriters

46:02

were trying to hint at

46:04

subtly or maybe not so subtly. It

46:06

was just sort of the fragility of homogeny,

46:09

you know, and how the lack of visceral

46:11

experience, you know, and the lack of hardship

46:14

doesn't prepare you for

46:17

the future, which is where they

46:19

are now. These two characters are in the future.

46:21

And I think that's a very

46:24

good comparison to

46:26

what's happening

46:28

now. Like, I think we're not

46:30

preparing

46:31

ourselves, especially if you look at the

46:33

younger generations, for the future,

46:37

because we're teaching people that

46:40

life is all about the

46:42

lack of hardship or just being

46:44

happy or just having no obstacles to

46:47

overcome. And that if there is an obstacle,

46:49

it's not your fault. Or if

46:52

there is something that you

46:54

need to do, well, you shouldn't change

46:56

to make yourself better. You should just celebrate this

46:58

thing. That's a problem about yourself

47:01

because we're all so beautiful and perfect. You

47:03

know, if you've, I don't know, it's we're

47:06

becoming very soft, I

47:08

think, in large part because

47:11

we don't acknowledge that

47:13

hardship, sadness, violence.

47:16

These are all part of who we are, like

47:19

as a species. And it's

47:21

part of what makes us us.

47:23

And I think

47:25

that that's something that, again,

47:27

for a movie that doesn't take itself seriously and is

47:29

very campy, that's an issue that I'm

47:31

really interested in. And it does have an

47:34

undercurrent that sort of speaks to the dangers

47:37

of

47:37

trying to

47:39

sterilize everything.

47:41

Yeah, and over protect everybody.

47:44

And, you know, having the wimpy cops, it makes

47:46

perfect sense within the logic of

47:49

the history

47:51

of the movie of 1996 to 2032. I mean, it

47:53

makes perfect sense

47:57

given what has happened in the timeline,

47:59

in the story.

47:59

So, you

48:01

know, it makes sense within the logic of the movie, but it's

48:05

an interesting thing to me to wonder about, which is

48:07

how come in real life over

48:09

the past few decades we have had

48:11

on the one hand simultaneously this

48:14

trend of

48:16

over-protecting everybody and

48:18

then simultaneously with that the cops

48:20

get more and more violent and

48:23

more and more, you know, the opposite of the

48:25

cops in the movie. I

48:27

don't know if there's any easy answer to explain this

48:30

dichotomy. It seems contradictory

48:32

that at the same time when more

48:35

people are getting

48:36

soft,

48:37

the cops are getting more and more militarized.

48:41

It is interesting and that's a subject,

48:44

I mean, jeez, we could probably do 10 episodes

48:49

just talking about

48:50

that dichotomy, you know, and that

48:52

sort of paradox.

48:54

But while it does fit

48:56

within the context of the film,

48:58

it is one of those things where

49:01

I think the way you see

49:03

it today manifesting itself

49:05

in our reality is more along

49:07

the lines of 1984, you know,

49:10

than a Huxley of

49:12

a Huxley in nature. It is more

49:14

authoritarian in a sense. We

49:16

have, I think, a more authoritarian

49:19

but more obedient society.

49:22

I think that's a problem.

49:25

I'm sure you would agree that, or you

49:27

know, most people probably listening to the show would agree too,

49:30

that that is just a recipe

49:33

for subservience, you

49:35

know, and abuse of power and

49:37

things like this.

49:38

But it's all very interesting.

49:40

Yeah, my take on it is, and

49:43

I don't think this, I'm the first person to put it this

49:47

way, but it seems

49:49

like we kind of got 1984

49:51

and Brave New World both. So we've got

49:53

like a two tiered system where for the

49:56

kind of upper middle and

49:59

affluent

49:59

classes,

50:01

they live in the world of Brave

50:03

New World.

50:05

Whereas for

50:06

the poor people, for

50:09

a lot of the ethnic minorities

50:11

and that sort of thing, they live more in 1984. So if you're a

50:16

rich kid in Beverly Hills in

50:19

the present of reality,

50:21

you live a life that in some ways is

50:23

more comparable to Brave New World in

50:25

that you're controlled more by pleasure.

50:28

Whereas if you're the

50:31

poor kid born in South Central or someplace like that,

50:34

you experience something more like 1984

50:36

where there's harsh authority, there's

50:38

more like jackbooted style authority rather

50:41

than this kind of gentle authority. So

50:44

it seems like we've got sort of a caste system

50:47

in the present, which

50:50

there sort of is in the

50:52

film as well, and we'll get to that as

50:55

far as the people living underground. But it

50:58

seems like it's not as big of a thing as the

51:01

real life underclasses in

51:04

terms of their numbers and insignificance and all

51:06

that. So anyway,

51:08

yeah, the

51:09

long story short, the cops

51:11

of the future are not up to dealing with someone like Simon

51:13

Phoenix, to put it mildly. And

51:16

so Phoenix

51:18

goes looking to get guns, which

51:20

are very hard to come by, and he ends up

51:22

having to go to a museum.

51:25

Meanwhile, like you said, Huxley

51:27

gets the idea of thawing out John

51:29

Spartan

51:30

early to get him to catch

51:33

Simon Phoenix. And he gets the

51:35

idea or she gets the idea from

51:37

talking to an older cop. Oh,

51:40

yeah, yeah. There's the

51:42

older black cop who at

51:44

the beginning of the movie was a young cop

51:46

who was a helicopter pilot who,

51:48

you know, knew John

51:50

Spartan. And so

51:53

he's the guy who she

51:56

asks because he's the oldest cop around,

51:58

she asks him, how did you get Simon Phoenix

52:01

the first time and he tells her oh

52:03

it was this one guy John Spartan you

52:06

know the one

52:08

man dirty Harry John McLean

52:10

etc kind of guy and

52:12

so that then gives her the idea to

52:15

thaw out John Spartan

52:17

so they they thaw

52:20

him out and then we kind of

52:22

get the exposition of how

52:24

the future got this way because of course then she's

52:26

got to explain things to to

52:28

John Spartan once he once he thaws out in

52:31

this sort of Rip Van Winkle situation

52:33

yeah

52:34

another just a comment on

52:36

that the the way the criminals are

52:38

preserved in

52:40

these cryo cylinders or

52:43

whatever you want to call it to me

52:45

and again when I'm watching this

52:47

I've got brave new world always

52:49

in my mind

52:51

it's very much like the savage

52:53

reservations in the in the

52:55

book for those of you unfamiliar with the book

52:58

they're one of the vacation

53:01

things that the the

53:04

affluent or the other normal people in society

53:06

will do is they

53:08

will go to these if you're I guess

53:11

lucky enough or you want to research it or something like

53:13

this they'll go to these reservations where people

53:15

live like natives and they are

53:18

not adapted to the normal society

53:20

it's almost like a preserve like a wildlife

53:22

preserve is the way they look at it and they view

53:24

these

53:25

people who are

53:27

sort of behave in tribal

53:30

type ways

53:31

they view them as sort of like animals

53:34

and they look at them like you know we

53:36

would look at like a gorilla at the zoo or something

53:38

like that just sort of you know maybe

53:40

not quite to that extent but

53:43

very much like a savage and they

53:45

constantly refer to John

53:48

Spartan and Simon Phoenix

53:51

but especially John Spartan aka

53:53

John the savage in the book they they

53:55

constantly refer to him as a caveman

53:57

and the ander thaw savage so

53:59

there is that parallel that

54:02

they're looking at these

54:04

people who were frozen. You know

54:06

basically like the way

54:08

the people in the book are looking

54:11

at

54:11

the reservations i just thought that

54:13

that was kind of interesting parallel

54:16

there. But

54:18

the the other thing i wanted to say was.

54:21

Wesley snipes his character simon

54:23

phoenix one of the things that you're clued

54:26

into right away is he's given

54:28

this knowledge of how to navigate the future

54:30

a little bit.

54:31

And he doesn't know how we got it

54:33

so and based on that and

54:35

the way he escapes in the film from

54:37

the the the pearl hearing.

54:40

You already know that likes someone

54:43

is helping him out so you're yours

54:45

is they don't make it too.

54:47

Hard to figure out they sort of put it right

54:49

there for you like okay he's been he's

54:51

getting.

54:53

Some help from the inside right

54:56

here he goes up to this booth

54:57

right before the he has this interaction with the cops

55:00

and it's actually funny scene because

55:02

there's this guy there's this guy in this booth. And

55:05

i don't know what kind of it looks like a phone

55:07

booth there's a computer in there. And

55:09

he's like i don't feel good about myself yeah

55:12

and the computer is like you're worth something

55:15

you give people around you happy joy joy feelings

55:18

and legs west like throws him out of

55:20

it. But

55:22

it's just another one of those funny little side

55:26

scenes that makes you laugh at how

55:28

soft you know the day are in

55:30

the future right yeah you

55:32

know what it called to mind for me was around

55:34

the same time period is when al franken.

55:36

Would do the character on saturday night live stewart

55:39

smalley did you ever saw oh yeah yeah

55:41

i'm good enough i'm smart enough and

55:43

dog on it people like me. Yeah

55:46

remember that yeah and again it echoes

55:49

some of these trends that have carried forward

55:51

in real life of everybody. Everybody

55:54

needing counseling anytime something goes

55:56

mildly wrong everybody being

55:59

on like five different. psychiatric medications

56:01

all the time, everybody needing trigger

56:03

warnings and safe spaces and all this sort

56:05

of thing. And the evidence

56:08

that that actually makes things better

56:10

is pretty uneven at best.

56:12

So

56:13

they kind of

56:16

in talking with John Spartan after he's thought out,

56:18

we get a little bit of backstory that

56:20

apparently there was a giant catastrophic earthquake

56:23

in 2010. And then after that

56:26

is when the LA

56:29

and San Diego metro areas merged

56:31

into this thing called San Angeles,

56:34

which they don't go into detail about the political

56:37

power structure

56:39

within which that functions. Like it's kind of unclear

56:41

is the United States still above

56:43

that? It sort of portrays

56:46

San Angeles almost as if it's like a city

56:48

state, you know, a large rolling city

56:50

state. We don't get a sense that there is

56:52

that there are layers of government above it, because

56:55

Dr. Cocktoe, who

56:57

is apparently the mastermind of

57:00

this society, who's also the guy who invented

57:02

the cryo prison back before the quake.

57:05

Dr. Cocktoe is basically

57:08

kind of like the the soft fascist

57:10

dictator, it seems like anyway,

57:13

you know, the smiley face version of

57:16

Kim Jong Il.

57:17

And yeah,

57:19

I mean, they don't really go into that. It's just

57:21

sort of implied that that

57:23

San Angeles is like its own political

57:26

sovereign entity somehow. My

57:29

my impression was that that was sort of all

57:32

that was left

57:33

after

57:34

at this point in the future, is that like

57:36

you said, it was sort of a city state or

57:39

a some

57:41

sort of quarantined

57:43

utopia, you know, like, but

57:46

I do get the sense that they

57:48

don't allude to anything else being out

57:50

there. Yeah, there's never any conversation

57:53

about it all. In fact, when they go to the museum

57:55

that where will they go, they

57:58

go to they get to a museum because

57:59

as

58:00

Simon Phoenix figures out that's the only

58:02

place he can get some guns and

58:05

which is pretty funny but they

58:08

go there to on a cop

58:10

hunch from John Spartan

58:13

they go there and they talk about how

58:15

there is a

58:17

underground sort of display

58:20

in this museum of pre-earthquake

58:23

Los Angeles and that's one of the things that they

58:25

drop down in and are fighting in but

58:28

that's what I got the sense that this

58:30

is a very isolated area and

58:32

it's interesting the utopia

58:34

that they set up and the way that they set up

58:37

Dr. Cocteau

58:39

is it's very religious in

58:41

nature and it speaks to

58:43

the religious nature of progressive utopianism

58:46

I think totally and I covered

58:48

that my last podcast talking

58:50

about

58:51

the true believer about how sometimes

58:54

the

58:55

fervent progressive anti-religious

58:58

people are religious in their own nature their

59:00

religious their religiosity

59:02

of their progressive utopianism is

59:05

pretty much the same thing as a lot of fanatical

59:08

fundamentalists it's just it takes

59:10

a different form but

59:12

I think that that is one of those

59:14

things where

59:17

it's almost they almost seem like

59:19

a like a Scientology kind of thing

59:21

you know like he's just this

59:24

supreme leader and this robe and

59:26

he has happy joy joy feelings but

59:28

like you said it has smiley face fashion is right

59:30

right you're right under the surface it's extremely

59:33

sinister and controlling and in diabolical

59:35

sure well what he definitely called to mind

59:38

for me and I think probably is

59:41

what the writers of this film were

59:43

thinking of was

59:45

there is a long history of of

59:48

gurus coming specifically

59:51

out of California

59:53

right think about about all the gurus

59:55

and some of them eventually become sort of

59:58

acknowledged full-on cult leaders

59:59

and some of them never quite, you know, go to that

1:00:02

level or whatever.

1:00:02

But think about all the guru

1:00:05

type people,

1:00:06

usually men, who come out

1:00:09

of California since maybe

1:00:11

the 1960s who,

1:00:13

you know, they've got some sort of thing

1:00:15

that combines new age stuff

1:00:17

and self-help. Yeah, I mean, Scientology

1:00:20

would be, you know, something kind of along those

1:00:23

lines. And then other less

1:00:25

famous sorts of gurus who are

1:00:27

sometimes explicitly religious

1:00:29

and sometimes not, who sometimes combine

1:00:32

elements of Christianity with kind

1:00:34

of more left-wing, new age-y stuff

1:00:37

or blend it with Eastern stuff. And,

1:00:40

you know, not all of those sorts of figures

1:00:42

are ultimately malevolent.

1:00:44

I mean, some of them

1:00:46

seem to not be, have

1:00:49

some sort of darker ulterior control free

1:00:52

cult leader motives, but some of them clearly

1:00:54

do. I mean, didn't Jim Jones originally

1:00:56

start in California? I think

1:00:59

so. That's why I was just getting ready to

1:01:01

bring him up. Yeah. Yeah. And he

1:01:03

was, he was a very

1:01:05

left wing guy in a lot of ways. And

1:01:08

so, you know, people like him, they show

1:01:10

you that, that there is

1:01:12

often this darker side to, you

1:01:15

know, for people who think that, that left-wingers

1:01:17

and progressives are just pure humanitarianism

1:01:21

and there's nothing potentially dangerous

1:01:24

or problematic about them. You

1:01:26

know, people like that, like Jim Jones

1:01:28

or like Cocteau in this movie show you that, no,

1:01:30

there's actually a very sinister

1:01:33

side because these people,

1:01:35

even if they're not like classic sexually

1:01:38

abusive cult leaders, if nothing else,

1:01:40

they are very authoritarian. It's

1:01:42

just, you know, the classic

1:01:45

iron fist with a velvet glove on that there's,

1:01:47

there are such OCD control freaks

1:01:50

who want to control everybody's, you know, dietary

1:01:53

habits, sexual habits, et cetera,

1:01:55

that they can be really totalitarian

1:01:58

against anyone who. doesn't go along with the program.

1:02:01

They know what's best. Right. Yeah.

1:02:04

It's, it's classic paternalism

1:02:06

being, being taken to its extreme.

1:02:08

Smoking is not good for you. And it's been deemed

1:02:11

that anything not good for you is bad. Hence

1:02:13

illegal alcohol, caffeine, contact

1:02:16

sports, meat.

1:02:17

Are you shitting me?

1:02:18

John Spartan, you are fined one credit

1:02:21

for a violation of the verbal morality statute.

1:02:24

What the hell is that? John Spartan,

1:02:26

you are fined one. Bad language,

1:02:29

chocolate, gasoline, uneducational toys, and

1:02:31

anything spicy. Abortion is

1:02:33

also illegal, but then again, so is pregnancy if you don't

1:02:35

have a license.

1:02:37

So

1:02:37

we, we find out in, in conversations

1:02:40

that John Spartan has things

1:02:43

like, um,

1:02:44

smoking, alcohol, caffeine,

1:02:46

contact sports, meat, bad

1:02:49

language, chocolate, gasoline, uneducational

1:02:52

toys, anything spicy, salt,

1:02:55

abortion, but also unlicensed pregnancy,

1:02:58

I think that's most of the things they mentioned in the movie.

1:03:00

I might've missed a few, but all of these things

1:03:02

have been declared to be bad for you and hence

1:03:04

have been declared to be illegal. So

1:03:07

this is a result of Dr. Cocteau

1:03:10

imposing his utopian vision on

1:03:14

San Angeles. And

1:03:16

of course, one of the most humorous ones that pops up over

1:03:18

and over again throughout the film is the bad

1:03:20

language. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I

1:03:22

mean, it's, it's hilarious where, you

1:03:24

know, anytime someone says a curse word, they're

1:03:28

somewhere a speaker has

1:03:30

Dr. Cocteau saying you have been

1:03:32

fined however many credits for violating

1:03:34

the verbal morality statute. Yeah.

1:03:37

And it's, you can

1:03:38

hear in the background throughout the,

1:03:40

throughout the movie. That's what's so funny is like, it's

1:03:42

not a gag that they just do in the beginning

1:03:45

because it is like Stallone says like, you know, 10

1:03:47

bad words in a row and just gets a bunch of them out

1:03:49

there and it's, he gets it for toilet paper because

1:03:52

toilet paper in the future. So

1:03:54

yeah. Yeah. Well, that's another, that's another mystery

1:03:56

to this day that fans of this movie have.

1:03:59

Which the film even ends on right what

1:04:02

the hell's with the three seashells, but

1:04:04

yeah But it's yeah it throughout

1:04:07

the background and then you'll hear somebody cuss and then off

1:04:09

in the very distance You know background

1:04:11

you'll hear you've been fine one credit

1:04:13

for violation of the you know,

1:04:15

whatever blah blah blah Yeah, the verbal morality

1:04:18

statute has what they call it and

1:04:21

that definitely to me It's not obviously

1:04:24

it's not the same thing But

1:04:26

it does have a clear parallel in all of the

1:04:28

policing of free speech that's going on right now

1:04:31

in Certain college campuses

1:04:33

and in various other venues where people

1:04:35

are worms to like online platform. Yeah. Yeah

1:04:37

exactly exactly Where people

1:04:40

are having their their

1:04:43

speech suppressed in the

1:04:45

name of oh It's hate speech and we have to

1:04:47

protect everybody from it and that sort of thing

1:04:49

So yeah, I think I think the

1:04:51

louder with Crowder guy. What's his name?

1:04:53

I forget Steven Crowder Yes, I

1:04:55

think Steven Crowder just got a

1:04:57

like ban from Twitter or something or at

1:05:00

least suspended Just saw

1:05:02

Jordan Peterson tweeting about it and I was like Jesus. Yeah,

1:05:04

hard to bleach Yeah. Yeah. Well,

1:05:07

I mean, obviously they didn't nail it exactly in

1:05:09

how it goes I mean as far as I know a lot

1:05:11

of those people don't care if you say fucking shit

1:05:14

and whatever but

1:05:16

But we we clearly do have some

1:05:18

speech police going on.

1:05:20

Yeah, there's certain things you can't say like absolutely

1:05:23

there's Words

1:05:25

that are so taboo. You

1:05:27

just you can't say I'm under the penalty of at least

1:05:31

maybe not a fine but severe

1:05:34

social scrutiny

1:05:35

to the point where it's

1:05:37

I don't know it's it's a

1:05:39

creepy time as far as

1:05:41

Express self-expression goes you got to

1:05:43

be very very careful of

1:05:45

what you say because people etch it in stone

1:05:48

Also, you're not allowed to make very

1:05:50

many mistakes. That's the one

1:05:52

area

1:05:54

I have very few sympathies

1:05:56

for celebrities in our obsession with celebrity

1:05:58

culture. I I

1:05:59

constantly poke fun at that and my podcast

1:06:02

and stuff.

1:06:03

The one area where

1:06:05

I cut them a little slack

1:06:07

is they are far more censored

1:06:10

than the average Joe and

1:06:13

they the scrutiny like

1:06:15

on an athlete or something like that or

1:06:18

or an actor if they say one thing

1:06:20

that is outrageous or

1:06:22

they're having a bad day or they

1:06:24

call somebody a bad name or

1:06:26

maybe they say something negative

1:06:28

about the military. God forbid you know

1:06:31

like they can be destroyed

1:06:34

and their whole livelihood taken away from them

1:06:36

now in most cases I wouldn't much care because

1:06:39

I think most of them are kind of creepy but

1:06:41

it is interesting how quickly

1:06:44

the tide of society

1:06:46

can turn on you if you just utter one

1:06:49

bad utterance nowadays can really

1:06:51

even land you in legal trouble so.

1:06:53

Yeah yeah I mean it's not like doctor cocktail

1:06:56

finds you credits or anything but in practice

1:06:58

it's if anything it's even a bit

1:07:01

worse. No cuz

1:07:03

at least back then like we never get a sense of

1:07:05

the exchange rate we don't know what a credit can buy

1:07:07

maybe it's worth a lot we don't know but you

1:07:09

know I mean

1:07:11

theoretically you could just say alright fine

1:07:13

I'll spend a couple credits so I can say a couple things

1:07:15

I want to say. Yeah you know

1:07:17

maybe use them to solve toilet paper because as

1:07:20

we find out Stallone goes in after

1:07:22

his long cryo prison nap and

1:07:26

drops a deuce and comes out saying you

1:07:28

guys are out of toilet paper and

1:07:31

where there's normally toilet paper there's

1:07:33

three seashells and.

1:07:36

And Rob Schneider this is one of his few

1:07:39

moments in the film Rob Schneider laughs as

1:07:41

a little you know persnickety laughing goes he

1:07:43

doesn't know what the three seashells are still

1:07:46

on looks at him kind of threatening Lee and Rob Schneider

1:07:48

immediately goes well I could see how that be confusing. Yeah

1:07:51

yeah it's very funny that's a it's a funny scene

1:07:53

Rob Schneider also like

1:07:55

when they initially find out what a 187 is

1:07:58

he like starts throwing up.

1:07:59

Like, cause he just can't handle the fact

1:08:02

that someone would kill someone else. Like

1:08:04

he just totally unprepared for that reality. It

1:08:07

just makes him sick to his stomach. It's just funny.

1:08:09

Yeah. And that's when Stallone solves his TP

1:08:12

problem by just

1:08:14

saying a whole bunch of swear words directly into

1:08:16

one of those listening devices that finds you. And

1:08:19

they give, it apparently prints you off a little paper receipt

1:08:21

each time. So there you go. And

1:08:24

I'm assuming the whole rest of the time during

1:08:26

the movie that he's around, anytime he's got

1:08:28

to do a number two, he must walk

1:08:29

over to one of those things and just, you know, start

1:08:32

doing George Carlin's a word you can't say

1:08:34

on television or something. We

1:08:37

also find out, you know, we get all

1:08:39

the things we mentioned about

1:08:41

like their weird awkward greetings and non-contact

1:08:44

stuff and whatever. And we also find out

1:08:46

that there's, there's a pretty totalitarian

1:08:48

surveillance system in

1:08:51

San Angeles where everybody's got, got

1:08:54

a tracking device on them. Of course, Simon

1:08:56

Phoenix did not have one implanted in him, although

1:08:59

John Spartan had one implanted in

1:09:01

him and that pretty much

1:09:04

you're tracked wherever

1:09:06

you go. So there's

1:09:08

a pretty totalitarian-ish

1:09:11

surveillance state

1:09:13

operating. And it's

1:09:15

interesting that at one point, John

1:09:17

Spartan refers to all this as fascist

1:09:20

crap, right? Yeah. And

1:09:22

it's kind of interesting because his character in

1:09:24

some ways you could argue is a little

1:09:26

bit kind of right-wing fascistic

1:09:29

in that, you know, he's the, he's the

1:09:31

dirty hairy kind of character who is

1:09:34

willing to do whatever it takes to get the bad guys.

1:09:39

And so he's, he's got the sort of right-wing

1:09:42

fascism going on versus Cocktoe's

1:09:44

left-wing fascism. And

1:09:46

yet even he, which, you know, maybe we can get into

1:09:48

this later, but like the film

1:09:51

is sort of

1:09:52

conservatarian. It's

1:09:55

not pure libertarian overall.

1:09:58

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

1:09:59

Definitely, you know, like

1:10:02

the police officer saved the day anytime. I mean

1:10:04

anytime you have a film like that I think you

1:10:07

know unless it's

1:10:09

you know that high noon esque type of like

1:10:11

sort of screw your authority Kind

1:10:13

of ending which you definitely don't get here. I

1:10:15

had some things to say about the ending But

1:10:19

it's it is what it is like, you

1:10:21

know, it's an it's a 90s action

1:10:24

film, you know science fiction action film It's

1:10:26

not it's not a clockwork orange. Yeah,

1:10:28

it's not it's not taking itself that seriously

1:10:31

It's just got some cool undercurrents and some

1:10:33

cool undertones that are that are interesting to talk

1:10:35

about right? Yeah. Well, it's interesting

1:10:37

I think

1:10:39

To contrast it with something

1:10:41

like escape from New York where

1:10:44

you know an escape from New York isn't is not as Comedic

1:10:47

as demolition man, but it has some

1:10:50

you know, some funny moments and things

1:10:52

in it But just to compare

1:10:54

the character of snake Pliskin with

1:10:57

the character of John Spartan You

1:10:59

know ultimately at the end of the day even though Spartans

1:11:02

kind of a rogue cop. He's ultimately

1:11:04

You know a cop who's trying to to

1:11:06

enforce the law and all that and

1:11:08

yeah compared to snake Pliskin where he's like full-on

1:11:11

just I basically got in trouble for

1:11:14

for not following orders in the military

1:11:16

and all that and and it's much more

1:11:18

of a Libertarian character

1:11:20

than then Spartan rooms from

1:11:22

a much more libertarian I'm sure director

1:11:25

writer producer with Deborah Hill and John

1:11:27

Carpenter I mean there that they have libertarian

1:11:30

sensibilities But it like

1:11:33

if we get off on a tangent talking about John

1:11:35

Carpenter or escape from New York This will

1:11:37

be an eight-hour pod. That's isn't that we're

1:11:39

getting into like our favorite movie kind of

1:11:41

territory there. That's true Yeah, well, you

1:11:44

know sometime sometime in

1:11:46

the future Maybe we'll have to do

1:11:48

an episode where we talk about some of those carpenter

1:11:50

films from the 80s

1:11:52

maybe maybe in the fall

1:11:54

or something but Anyway

1:11:56

setting that aside. So Let's

1:11:59

see Oh, we also find out that

1:12:02

oldies, like when you turn on the oldie station

1:12:04

in your car on the radio, it's

1:12:07

commercial jingles. You

1:12:10

know, these, these happy, crappy

1:12:12

commercial jingles like from way

1:12:14

back, I guess, mostly from like the fifties or

1:12:16

sixties or something. So

1:12:18

then that comes up repeatedly throughout

1:12:20

the movie where they'll, they'll turn on and it'll

1:12:23

be the Oscar Meyer Wiener song or something, you

1:12:25

know, goofy like very, it's very,

1:12:27

sort of speaks to consumerism, I guess, you

1:12:29

know, and our people nowadays, what's

1:12:31

people's favorite thing to do during the Superbowl? I

1:12:34

was like, oh, well, some people watch it for the commercials.

1:12:36

It's just a little creepy. Yeah.

1:12:39

And you know, there's some of it that I'm, I'm guilty of

1:12:41

as well. Like for example, um, in

1:12:44

some places in our house, my wife and I have

1:12:46

the old retro tin signs

1:12:48

of things, right? And I'm like, huh, you

1:12:50

know, uh, it's kind of weird

1:12:52

that, that

1:12:53

like today a sign for, I

1:12:57

don't know,

1:12:57

Miller

1:12:58

highlife beer or

1:13:00

a sign for, uh, Chevy

1:13:04

cars or whatever that

1:13:06

is either

1:13:08

an actual sign from, from 60 years

1:13:11

ago, or is a replica of it, that

1:13:13

now a

1:13:14

lot of people, including myself, look at that and go like, Oh

1:13:17

yeah, it's kind of, you know, neat retro art

1:13:19

basically. Oh

1:13:20

yeah, absolutely. But at the time it was considered

1:13:22

like just, you know, the same way we would look at an ad

1:13:25

somewhere today. It's like, Oh, it's just disposable.

1:13:27

You know, it's an ad. So yeah, it is

1:13:29

kind of interesting to think about that, how sometimes

1:13:32

consumer stuff, crass

1:13:35

commercial culture and whatever does become

1:13:37

considered art down the road.

1:13:39

Sure. We, uh, my wife and

1:13:41

I

1:13:42

just, we pulled up this YouTube. Um,

1:13:44

it was like a whole bunch of old,

1:13:47

like eighties and nineties commercials for things. And

1:13:49

we were showing the girls, uh,

1:13:52

we were like, look, this is the stuff we played with. And

1:13:54

these are, I remember this commercial. I remember this Saturday

1:13:56

morning cartoon commercial, uh, after these

1:13:58

messages, we'll be right back.

1:13:59

animation things and stuff. And like we were watching

1:14:02

all these things and we were carrying

1:14:04

on and laughing and the girls were laughing

1:14:06

at us because we thought that stuff was funny and

1:14:08

they couldn't believe how we thought it was funny. And it

1:14:11

was a really kind of interesting and funny

1:14:14

bridging of generations, you know?

1:14:16

But yeah, I mean, so I'm guilty

1:14:18

of it as well. It's one of those things where

1:14:21

it's part of your culture, you know? Yeah.

1:14:23

Yeah. So I think I always have

1:14:26

kind of mixed feelings on those sorts of things

1:14:28

where part of me goes cultural elitist

1:14:31

and is like, oh, what a bunch of, you know, the

1:14:33

cultural equivalent of fast food and whatever.

1:14:35

And then part of me is like, yeah, but some of that stuff I

1:14:38

still kind of like and enjoy and whatever. Yep.

1:14:41

I actually watched a few

1:14:43

times with my kids on

1:14:46

YouTube. There are some collections of like

1:14:49

a bunch of different 80s cartoon.

1:14:51

Yeah. Intro. Yep.

1:14:53

Yep. Where it's just one after the other. It's like a half an

1:14:55

hour of, you know, every single intro

1:14:58

theme song because, man, did those 80s cartoons

1:15:00

have some great theme songs and

1:15:02

great intros. They really, they really

1:15:05

knew how to make it seem cool. Voltron

1:15:07

one is like five minutes long. It's like,

1:15:09

it talks about like a galactic empire. Yeah.

1:15:11

They give you the whole backstory. They

1:15:15

couldn't, my girls couldn't get over how things

1:15:17

would be to be continued.

1:15:19

Like they were like, when I dropped that on them, they

1:15:21

were like, what do you mean? I was like, no,

1:15:25

the storyline would, uh, would go on

1:15:27

for several episodes before you ended that

1:15:29

particular story arc. And then

1:15:32

you'd have to wait till next Saturday to figure

1:15:34

out and they were like next Saturday. I know. And it, and

1:15:36

it's so, so barbaric, so barbaric,

1:15:38

you'd have to like make an appointment with your TV and

1:15:41

be like, all right, at eight o'clock on

1:15:43

Saturday, I've got to be there. And everybody

1:15:45

better shut up because they're

1:15:47

recording this, you know, unless you had the VCR

1:15:49

hooked up. Yeah. And then you got to sit

1:15:51

through every single commercial. And I

1:15:54

mean, just so barbaric. Really.

1:15:57

I mean, I kind of look back on some of that stuff with

1:15:59

nostalgia and some of But I look back like the people in

1:16:01

the future on demolition man where I'm like, wow, primitive.

1:16:04

Savage CJ. Yeah. Yeah. Snicking

1:16:07

Savage. Oh yeah. We'd have to drive over to Blockbuster

1:16:09

and wait in line to pay five dollars to rent a

1:16:11

crappy VHS tape for two days. At

1:16:14

a time machine. Go back today. Yeah.

1:16:17

Yeah. So getting

1:16:19

back to the overall story, the things

1:16:21

just kind of a helpful way to sort of go go

1:16:23

through picking apart different aspects of this. Otherwise

1:16:26

it would just be complete random chaos. So

1:16:29

as I'm in Phoenix goes to the museum and goes to I

1:16:31

love this title, The Hall of Violence,

1:16:34

where

1:16:35

it's the only place in this Nerf ball

1:16:38

universe, San Angeles, where you

1:16:40

can even see actual weapons. And

1:16:43

he gets his hands on some guns and stuff,

1:16:45

which

1:16:46

what I thought was was hilarious and

1:16:49

seemed to me. I know what you're going to say. Hard to hit around. There's

1:16:52

there's apparently

1:16:54

huge amounts of live ammunition. Yes. Like

1:16:57

infinite ammo in this

1:16:59

museum. Yeah. And live ammo like, you

1:17:02

know, you're in this super duper, you

1:17:04

know, wimpy anti-violence

1:17:07

future

1:17:08

and they

1:17:10

they still have live ammunition around

1:17:12

and they

1:17:12

store it with the displays of the weapons

1:17:15

at the museum. I've been to a bunch

1:17:17

of museums where there's weapons

1:17:19

of some sort as part of the displays.

1:17:22

I've never ever seen

1:17:24

live ammo.

1:17:26

Anywhere in the museum,

1:17:29

you

1:17:29

know, and that was just

1:17:31

one thing that to me, I was like, oh, that's

1:17:34

it's just a bridge too far for me to accept

1:17:37

that there would be piles of live ammo.

1:17:39

Yeah, it's ridiculous. But it's it's ridiculous

1:17:41

again in that

1:17:42

junk food way. Sure. Like it's in

1:17:45

an interesting point in this fight scene, which is

1:17:47

pretty awesome, by the way, like for what it

1:17:49

is, for the kind of movie, it is the

1:17:51

fight scene

1:17:53

with when John Spartan gets there

1:17:55

and confronts him. And all this stuff starts happening

1:17:57

and they fall down into this exhibit.

1:17:59

underground from the earthquake

1:18:02

when they're shooting at each other

1:18:04

and doing karate on each other and all this stuff and

1:18:06

trading wise cracks yeah oh it's

1:18:08

one one line after the other yep but

1:18:11

Simon Phoenix stands up and he's

1:18:13

like shooting a newsy or something at at John

1:18:15

Spartan and one of his one-liners is it's

1:18:18

a brave new world yeah shoot him and

1:18:20

another another direct hat tip

1:18:23

to

1:18:23

Huxley's work so I thought that

1:18:26

I noticed that that's the first

1:18:28

time I noticed it was when I was rewatching it that he ever

1:18:30

said that so

1:18:31

yeah yeah well I mean most

1:18:33

of that this was a movie I watched a

1:18:35

bunch of times like I can remember renting

1:18:38

it on VHS multiple times in the years after

1:18:41

it came out and I

1:18:43

hadn't read Brave New

1:18:46

World I'm trying to remember when I first read Brave

1:18:48

New World

1:18:49

I might not have read Brave New World until maybe

1:18:52

high school maybe not even until after that I'm not

1:18:54

sure

1:18:55

yes it's one of my favorites it's I

1:18:57

put it over 1980 and we're probably one of the few

1:18:59

people that put it over in 1984 but yeah

1:19:02

well my favorite of that genre is This

1:19:04

Perfect Day by Irela

1:19:06

Vin I think that I list your

1:19:08

show on that it was three I think three

1:19:11

books you talk about yeah I did I did 1984

1:19:13

I did Brave New World and I did This

1:19:15

Perfect Day and I think this perfect

1:19:18

day is deserves

1:19:20

to be better known

1:19:21

than it is it's on my list yeah

1:19:24

definitely check it out sometime it's I'm

1:19:27

not sure why it's not better known than it does other

1:19:29

than maybe I don't know maybe it was too

1:19:31

accurate and people are kind of put off by that I don't

1:19:33

know but

1:19:34

it's

1:19:35

by Irela Vin who you know

1:19:38

wrote Rosemary's Baby and I think

1:19:41

Stepford Wives and a bunch of other

1:19:43

like Irela Vin is a very successful

1:19:47

writer and this is just one of his

1:19:49

less less known books but it's

1:19:51

interesting because it kind of you know has some

1:19:54

similarities to the other dystopias and

1:19:56

some things of its own but

1:19:59

well we We find out during

1:20:01

the fight in the

1:20:04

museum that Simon

1:20:06

Phoenix came out of cryoprison much more

1:20:08

dangerous. As you said, apparently

1:20:10

his rehabilitation

1:20:13

programming while he was frozen was

1:20:15

not typical of what's normally

1:20:17

given to the cryoprizners. Instead

1:20:20

of being programmed with

1:20:22

some, you know, harmless activity, like

1:20:25

we eventually find out Stallone has been subliminally

1:20:27

programmed to be a knitter and he

1:20:29

just, you know, starts knitting and knits all this stuff.

1:20:33

And that's kind of more typical of what these guys get

1:20:35

in cryoprison that Simon Phoenix instead

1:20:37

has been given rehabilitation like,

1:20:39

you know, various fighting

1:20:41

skills and disciplines and demolition

1:20:44

and terrorism instruction and all

1:20:46

this, like basically programming him to

1:20:48

be a super criminal. So John

1:20:51

Spartan, who I think in their original

1:20:53

fight at the start of the movie didn't have much trouble handling

1:20:55

him hand to hand. John Spartan finds

1:20:57

himself outclassed by Simon

1:21:00

Phoenix in the future. So again,

1:21:03

something that makes you wonder,

1:21:05

right, along with how does he know how to break

1:21:08

out of prison? How does he know how to navigate this future

1:21:10

world, etc? Who the hell

1:21:12

gave him this unusual

1:21:14

rehabilitation?

1:21:17

So Dr. Raymond Coteau, of course. Yeah,

1:21:19

we find that out because on

1:21:21

his way out of the museum,

1:21:24

Phoenix encounters Coteau

1:21:27

along with his wonderful sidekick, Associate

1:21:29

Bob. I love that guy. Yeah,

1:21:31

I mean, he's so funny. But

1:21:34

Phoenix is pointing

1:21:36

a gun at Coteau and finds he just cannot

1:21:39

bring himself to shoot him.

1:21:43

And then basically we find

1:21:45

out that it was in fact Coteau

1:21:47

who released Simon Phoenix and who

1:21:49

gave him all this information and

1:21:52

everything. And the reason

1:21:55

that Coteau

1:21:57

wanted to thought Phoenix was to use

1:21:59

Phoenix

1:21:59

to go after Edgar

1:22:02

Friendly, who apparently

1:22:05

is somebody that Cocktoe is more

1:22:07

upset about and

1:22:10

scared about than someone

1:22:12

like Simon Phoenix, who's like a

1:22:15

mass murderer or whatever.

1:22:16

Yeah, I think there's a two-pronged

1:22:19

approach, I think we find out, that Cocktoe

1:22:22

has. And one of them is to

1:22:24

eliminate Friendly, the leader of this sort

1:22:26

of underground people who still want to live like normal

1:22:28

humans. And I'm

1:22:31

sure we'll talk about that in a minute. And

1:22:33

he also wants to re-scare

1:22:36

society,

1:22:38

so he's given even sort of more control

1:22:40

and authority

1:22:42

over their futures and the way society

1:22:45

should be run. So

1:22:47

he's sort of this grand

1:22:49

architect. I mean, in the movie, if

1:22:51

it wasn't already painfully obvious that he

1:22:53

was the mastermind, I mean, they make it

1:22:55

very clear here. But

1:22:58

I think that it's almost like,

1:23:00

I guess his

1:23:03

primary objective is to get Friendly.

1:23:06

But that secondary objective, which he goes over

1:23:08

towards the end of the movie,

1:23:11

it's very much like false flag-ish,

1:23:13

you know what I mean? Yes. So

1:23:16

that's what it brought to mind, was that he was using

1:23:18

him in sort of a false flag scenario,

1:23:20

which is we do that. So

1:23:23

like throughout the history of time, that's something that's

1:23:26

a tactic that people use. Right,

1:23:29

right. Yeah. Which is to scare the hell out of people

1:23:31

by

1:23:32

with some atrocity that you're actually

1:23:34

behind. And then... Or

1:23:36

at the very least that you're enabling in some way by

1:23:39

standing down or turning a blind eye,

1:23:41

even if in some cases in real life, you're not directly

1:23:44

causing it, but you're sort of deliberately

1:23:46

standing back to allow it to happen. Yeah.

1:23:50

And yeah, that was something that definitely stood out to

1:23:52

me as well, that I was thinking about a lot watching

1:23:54

this movie again for the first time

1:23:56

in a bunch of years that

1:23:59

you've got this.

1:24:01

this liberal smiley

1:24:03

face, fascist

1:24:05

control freak who seems

1:24:08

to be very soft and gentle

1:24:10

and oh he's, you know, just gently

1:24:13

trying to be the paternalist and whatever.

1:24:16

And then it turns out that he's actually

1:24:18

deliberately

1:24:19

enabling

1:24:21

an actual violent criminal, right?

1:24:24

Because we don't see Cocktoe

1:24:26

directly kill anybody. And

1:24:29

he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who ever would. And

1:24:31

yet he's willing to put

1:24:34

things into motion that

1:24:37

will ultimately, you know, with Simon Phoenix

1:24:39

getting set free with all this additional training and

1:24:41

everything that is going to cause

1:24:44

a lot of actual violent crime. And

1:24:46

he's okay with it for the greater good. And

1:24:49

yeah, this whole kind of false flag idea. And

1:24:51

in general, people who want

1:24:54

more

1:24:56

government control of things always

1:24:59

seem to kind of have this

1:25:01

tendency where they're

1:25:04

okay

1:25:05

with like deliberately standing

1:25:08

down, you know, the people

1:25:10

or institutions that would normally be

1:25:12

supposed to be protecting people. Know

1:25:15

that some really horrible thing happens

1:25:18

so that they can then justify

1:25:21

their clamp down. And

1:25:23

I'm not saying I believe in every false flag wild

1:25:26

theory out there,

1:25:28

you know, but basically someone who

1:25:31

would say that

1:25:32

possibly 9-11 was the result

1:25:35

of some sort of deliberate – again,

1:25:37

not even necessarily that the Bush administration actively

1:25:40

made it happen, but to

1:25:42

some degree allowed it to happen. Or

1:25:45

same thing with at least some of the mass shootings where

1:25:47

people

1:25:48

point out various things that

1:25:51

seem kind of weird where it's like, wait a minute, did

1:25:53

the authorities deliberately let this guy get guns

1:25:55

who, you know, by all the

1:25:57

existing laws and rules should have never

1:25:59

been able to get any guns like what's

1:26:02

going on here and Pearl Harbor yeah yeah

1:26:04

and it's hard to say I mean I'm sure sometimes

1:26:07

it is just incompetence I'm sure

1:26:09

sometimes it is but I

1:26:11

don't know if it always is and

1:26:14

I think you know that's something I give this

1:26:16

movie a lot of credit for that they

1:26:18

in

1:26:19

some ways sort of imply

1:26:22

that cock-toe is the real

1:26:24

villain more so than Simon Phoenix

1:26:27

oh Simon Phoenix is just sort of a pawn

1:26:30

and yeah he he directly kills

1:26:32

way more people than cock-toe does but

1:26:35

the cock-toe is ultimately more sinister and

1:26:37

more dangerous from the big-picture perspective

1:26:40

no

1:26:40

as we could talk about Bolton right

1:26:42

now if you want

1:26:45

to give that for this one with speaking of hawks

1:26:49

who take their deferments for

1:26:52

Vietnam but then you know they want to they never

1:26:54

met a war they didn't like so yeah yeah

1:26:56

when I when I saw that that Bolton

1:26:59

was named as National Security Advisor

1:27:02

very surreal I was like almost

1:27:04

about to step out my back door and start digging a bomb

1:27:06

shelter at that point just this

1:27:09

is we are in dangerous

1:27:10

waters these days and Trump

1:27:12

is is going full neocon

1:27:15

now I think I think Kushner has

1:27:17

successfully kind

1:27:20

of just taken over all the foreign policy

1:27:22

of that administration and is just stacking

1:27:25

the deck with neo cons we've got Pompeo

1:27:27

as Secretary of State now it's like they figured

1:27:30

out a way to make me

1:27:32

really sad to see the Exxon CEO

1:27:35

go they actually found

1:27:38

a way where I'd be like damn it I wish the Exxon

1:27:40

CEO was still the Secretary of State you

1:27:42

know but anyway yeah that's oh

1:27:46

it's it's the topic for another time but I had

1:27:48

to throw that in there that it all it is often

1:27:51

a lot of people want to blame

1:27:53

you know and you see this all this in Vietnam and stuff

1:27:55

that people would blame the soldiers and stuff like this

1:27:57

but it's there's always people behind

1:28:00

the strings you know there's always someone behind on

1:28:02

the strings on on much of the world's violence

1:28:04

that typically doesn't have their hands dirty

1:28:07

there's the psychopaths you know that know how to manipulate

1:28:09

people right writing and you talked about

1:28:11

this at length and your twenty one key concepts.

1:28:14

Episode i think you deal with this a

1:28:16

lot which is one of my favorites of yours but yeah

1:28:18

i might actually do do a

1:28:21

sequel to that right over some other concepts

1:28:23

still still in the vague daydreaming

1:28:27

plea pre planning sort of stage but. Yeah

1:28:30

in in it to some degree it reminds

1:28:32

me of

1:28:34

this sort of phenomenon depicted in

1:28:36

the movie reminds me of things

1:28:39

like the CIA

1:28:41

and potentially other elements of the US government

1:28:44

actually being complicit in

1:28:46

things like the narcotics trade and all

1:28:48

that where it's like. It's a win

1:28:50

win for them because on the one hand they can make money

1:28:53

for black operations that's

1:28:55

you know not traceable that's not coming through

1:28:57

Congress or whatever and that they can just use

1:29:00

as a slush fund to do whatever they want with and

1:29:02

at the same time for the

1:29:04

aspects of the government that are actually engaged

1:29:07

in policing the drug war it's

1:29:09

like it's great if if

1:29:12

you're the DEA and and

1:29:14

the narcotics in America jumps up

1:29:17

you know in availability because it gives you more. Work

1:29:20

and you can then use that to increase your

1:29:22

budget and all these sorts of things

1:29:24

right i mean if if people just naturally

1:29:27

stopped wanting to do drugs i don't think

1:29:29

they ever would but if they did somehow just go i

1:29:31

think we're okay we don't need drugs anymore i

1:29:34

mean the what would the DEA do how

1:29:36

would they justify their budget how would they justify

1:29:38

their existence right i mean to some degree

1:29:41

it is to the benefit of cops that

1:29:44

there always be a certain amount of scary

1:29:46

crime.

1:29:47

No absolutely like it's i'm

1:29:50

you know i don't talk about what i do for living

1:29:52

on the show but i'm in the public service

1:29:55

realm and you know one

1:29:57

of the things that you know

1:29:59

we. Say is you know

1:30:01

hey they never stop making dummies are they

1:30:03

never stop making the world never gonna run

1:30:05

out of bad people are the world's never gonna run

1:30:07

out of people who do dumb things so that's

1:30:10

a job security. Right

1:30:12

that's sort of the mentality of people who are who

1:30:14

are in that you know a similar business so

1:30:16

right.

1:30:17

Well but uh do you wanna move along and

1:30:19

talk about the taco bell oh

1:30:21

yeah yeah yeah they. Yeah

1:30:24

cocktail is is playing

1:30:27

as if john spartan scared

1:30:29

scared off simon phoenix and saved him from a woman reality.

1:30:33

We know the viewer that it's

1:30:36

that cocktails got some sort of leverage or control

1:30:38

over simon phoenix because he basically just tells him he

1:30:40

can't can't kill him and he can't so

1:30:43

then you know pretending to be.

1:30:46

To be gracious for being saved cocktail

1:30:49

invites john spartan

1:30:52

to

1:30:52

taco bell right which.

1:30:55

This the way taco bell is

1:30:58

dropped into this movie has gotta be

1:31:00

one of the most like blatantly

1:31:02

over the top but the same time funny

1:31:05

and amusing product placements. Of

1:31:08

of this entire decade of movie making words

1:31:10

just like. I'm again

1:31:13

it's a time capsule right because this

1:31:15

is the time period when taco bell was

1:31:17

just starting to take off and really become. A

1:31:20

big thing you know competitive with burger

1:31:23

king and mcdonalds and wendy's in terms of

1:31:26

how many how many restaurants it has and how

1:31:28

much people thought about it when they wanted fast

1:31:30

food. And I can remember like oh

1:31:33

man me in the nineties whole boy did

1:31:35

I eat some taco bell I'll tell you what

1:31:38

and I can't I can't blame it all in this movie. I

1:31:41

was a bit ahead of the curve because where my

1:31:43

dad's house was at this time

1:31:46

there was a taco bell like right

1:31:48

around the corner practically so.

1:31:51

You know in kind of the late eighties early

1:31:53

nineties period when taco bell was just sort

1:31:55

of becoming a big thing. There's

1:31:57

still were a lot of areas around where I lived where.

1:31:59

you couldn't find a Taco Bell for miles and miles

1:32:02

and miles, but I had one right around

1:32:04

the corner. So I was, I was hip

1:32:06

to it. Man, when I saw this on Demolition Man, I

1:32:08

was like, cool. You know, yeah.

1:32:11

Yeah, it was in the European version of

1:32:13

the film. It was, they changed

1:32:15

it all to Pizza Hut. I don't know if you knew that. Because

1:32:19

there was no Taco Bells in

1:32:22

Europe. So the European

1:32:24

audience would have not really got the reference.

1:32:26

So they changed it to Pizza Hut. Interesting. Yeah,

1:32:29

because what

1:32:29

is it? Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC,

1:32:32

I think.

1:32:33

I don't know if they still are, but at least at that time,

1:32:35

they were all owned by the same, the same

1:32:37

parent company. Oh yeah, maybe.

1:32:40

Yeah, yeah, that's true. And I know that because there

1:32:42

were a few restaurants built around where I

1:32:44

was growing up in South Florida by maybe the late 90s,

1:32:46

where they were combos. It would be like

1:32:49

one restaurant that would do Pizza Hut, Taco

1:32:51

Bell, and KFC. It was really weird. Yeah,

1:32:54

I don't know. It was in the film. In the film, Taco

1:32:56

Bell is the only restaurant that has survived what

1:32:58

they call the franchise war. So

1:33:00

every restaurant is Taco Bell. Yeah, yeah,

1:33:02

and it's kind of humorous because Stallone is like, oh

1:33:05

boy, Lina

1:33:07

Huxley is all excited to go to Taco Bell.

1:33:09

And Stallone's like, well, you know, I could use a burrito,

1:33:11

but you know, it's

1:33:13

Taco Bell. And then she

1:33:15

has to explain to them. And then they go there and they get this weird

1:33:18

food that doesn't look anything like Taco Bell. They get these little,

1:33:21

I don't know, yuppie hors d'oeuvres or something. Yeah,

1:33:23

because salt and everything that's good in life

1:33:27

is bad for you and illegal. Yeah, no salt,

1:33:29

no meat, no nothing good. They

1:33:31

go to Taco Bell and

1:33:33

this is,

1:33:36

I love when they go in there and

1:33:39

there's the guy who's playing

1:33:41

piano and singing and he's kind of like a cheesy,

1:33:44

loud singer kind of a guy. And

1:33:46

he's singing the Jolly Green

1:33:49

Giant song. I didn't

1:33:51

notice that. I did not notice

1:33:53

that one. The

1:33:55

Valley of the Jolly Green

1:33:57

Giant. That's great.

1:33:59

And it's just an over the top cheesy,

1:34:02

you know, piano playing loud singer type guy. And

1:34:04

they're a Taco Bell and it's like the sort of place, sort

1:34:07

of restaurant where like you got to wear a tie and stuff. It's

1:34:09

like really fancy.

1:34:11

And then

1:34:12

while they're there

1:34:14

is when they have their

1:34:16

encounter with the scraps,

1:34:19

the underground people

1:34:22

where they attack the Taco Bell. And

1:34:26

at first you kind of think like, oh

1:34:28

no, these are like savage Vikings

1:34:30

who are just coming in to kill

1:34:32

people and break things and steal stuff and

1:34:34

whatever. And then it turns out like, no,

1:34:36

they actually, they're

1:34:38

just basically on a food raid.

1:34:41

And these are the people who are

1:34:43

led by Edgar Friendly

1:34:45

whom Cocktoe wants to kill so much.

1:34:48

He's the resistant thing. Hashtag

1:34:50

resistance. That's

1:34:53

it's there. They're a resistance of the future as far

1:34:55

as trying to

1:34:56

they would rather live, you know,

1:35:00

in squalor underground and

1:35:03

have to steal for food and maintain

1:35:05

their

1:35:06

human sensibilities and their visceral

1:35:08

life experience than

1:35:10

conform to this pseudo

1:35:13

utopia that's

1:35:16

void of a lot of ranges

1:35:19

of human emotion and human experience. So

1:35:21

they prefer to take the hardships and live

1:35:24

more as we know human life than

1:35:26

to have it easier and conform

1:35:28

to this weird cultish society.

1:35:30

Yeah. And the upside is they get to be

1:35:33

more free though. Yeah. Yeah.

1:35:36

You like their world when you see it. Stallone

1:35:39

definitely likes it. John

1:35:42

Spartan when

1:35:43

later on in the film when he

1:35:45

meets them for the second time, he definitely

1:35:47

appreciates what they have going even

1:35:49

though it's dirty and filthy and the other

1:35:52

people with him can't stand it. Yeah.

1:35:55

And you know the underground people, the scraps

1:35:58

to some degree, they reminded me of the pearl.

1:35:59

from 1984 where,

1:36:03

you know, they're not really part of the elite

1:36:06

of this society. And on the one

1:36:08

hand, that means that they're poor, they're

1:36:10

dirty, they don't have the same

1:36:12

physical standard of living as

1:36:15

the elites, but at the same time they're

1:36:17

able to,

1:36:19

in many ways, be more free and

1:36:21

to maintain more of their humanity and to

1:36:23

not have to conform to

1:36:26

this culty society

1:36:28

that's grown up. It made me think of the proles a lot,

1:36:31

you know, when Winston Smith encounters

1:36:33

them and kind of realizes like they're actually

1:36:35

more free in a lot of ways. Also made me think a little

1:36:37

bit about Thaddeus Russell's book, Renegade

1:36:39

History of the United States, you know, when you're

1:36:42

looking at like prostitutes and

1:36:44

criminals and whatever, and you're like, oh, in some ways,

1:36:47

you know, they're, they live more free. But

1:36:49

then...

1:36:50

Sure. You want to talk about

1:36:52

the comment that La

1:36:55

Nina makes on the way to Taco Bell,

1:36:57

where she talks about the Schwarzenegger Library. Oh

1:36:59

yeah, yeah, right. So

1:37:02

that's one of the sort of prophetic things I think

1:37:05

about the movie, is they talk about how

1:37:09

he's like, John can't

1:37:11

get over

1:37:12

that

1:37:14

there's this thing called the Schwarzenegger Library,

1:37:16

and then she's like, oh yeah, he was president. And

1:37:20

he's like, what? Like, it's a big gag.

1:37:22

And remember, this was in 1993. So

1:37:25

that like that Schwarzenegger would be, you

1:37:27

know, in political office. I mean, it speaks

1:37:29

to the sort of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger

1:37:33

rivalry, also of the time being

1:37:35

action stars.

1:37:37

Yeah, it was a friendly rivalry. But at

1:37:39

the same time, like he shows some disgust

1:37:41

at it. And I think that's sort

1:37:43

of a nod to their rivalry. I thought that was kind of

1:37:46

funny. Yeah, they say something like,

1:37:48

wait, he wasn't born here. How could he, how

1:37:51

could he become president? And she says, well, thanks

1:37:53

to the 61st amendment. So

1:37:58

well, in the aftermath of.

1:37:59

fighting off the scraps, which allows

1:38:02

Stallone to again, you know, do great action

1:38:04

hero fighting and stuff, is

1:38:07

when Huxley proposes that

1:38:09

they have sex. And she has this very

1:38:12

kind of

1:38:13

awkward verbal

1:38:15

proposal where she's like, well,

1:38:17

you know, the links between violence

1:38:20

and reproductive stuff has been

1:38:22

extensively documented. And so, would

1:38:25

you

1:38:25

like to have sex? And

1:38:27

it kind of made

1:38:30

me think about

1:38:31

the way things are headed amongst

1:38:34

the progressive intelligentsia

1:38:37

in terms of how they often are demanding

1:38:39

that you get explicit verbal consent for

1:38:42

every stage of the sexual process

1:38:44

with somebody. That's interesting. That's interesting.

1:38:47

Yeah. Because like that seems to be where they want

1:38:49

to be headed, where you have this really

1:38:51

awkward kind of like, okay,

1:38:54

can I now have permission to put

1:38:56

my hand on your shoulder? The love

1:38:59

contract. I think Chappelle had a bit

1:39:01

about that on the Chappelle show. Yeah. You

1:39:03

have to sign the love contract. Yeah. Remember that. Yeah.

1:39:05

You've got like everything. It has to be explicitly.

1:39:09

It just made me think of that the way she's like so formal

1:39:11

and awkward and whatever. I mean, I know

1:39:14

part of it's just that's how these people are in the future.

1:39:16

But so then their

1:39:18

sex is, of course, this bizarre

1:39:21

kind of

1:39:22

virtual reality thing in which there's no physical

1:39:24

contact, because of course we

1:39:26

find out that all transfers

1:39:29

of fluids are pretty much illegal, leaving kissing.

1:39:32

And the only fluid transfers that happen to do

1:39:34

things like procreate take

1:39:37

place under controlled conditions

1:39:39

in laboratories with licensed

1:39:41

technicians and all this sort of thing. This

1:39:43

was the creepiest thing about the movie to me

1:39:45

was this scene. Like, uh,

1:39:48

I think it was done well too. Like, I think it

1:39:50

was shot well, like, um,

1:39:52

the way they made it, the

1:39:55

devices that they're using, uh, and

1:39:57

they, it's, it's playful in the movie there. It's

1:39:59

not like

1:39:59

it's slapstick like the

1:40:02

rest of it is but at the same time

1:40:04

it does have sort of like a creepy undertone

1:40:06

and you know

1:40:07

John spartan doesn't like it at all like

1:40:09

he immediately it's sort of it Overcomes

1:40:13

him at first and he's just like whoa, you know

1:40:15

cuz it's like directly beaming into his brain or

1:40:17

whatever whatever experience they would

1:40:19

be having normally and

1:40:21

He doesn't like it at all. He's

1:40:23

very put off by it

1:40:25

Diff it's different than

1:40:27

the way sex is used in

1:40:29

Brave New World in Brave New

1:40:31

World. That's one of the

1:40:34

uniting aspects of

1:40:36

Society it's a very laws

1:40:39

a fair sexual attitude where everybody

1:40:41

just sort of has sex with one another and it's

1:40:44

very Unemotional the things

1:40:46

that are taken out of it in

1:40:48

The book Brave New World is

1:40:51

sort of the emotional aspect of

1:40:53

you

1:40:54

know having intimacy with somebody

1:40:56

else and it's just seen as something

1:40:58

you do just to pass the time is take

1:41:01

your soma and You know be

1:41:03

with whoever else, you know the next person instead

1:41:06

of having sort of any kind of monogamy monogamy

1:41:08

is

1:41:09

almost like outlawed

1:41:11

in

1:41:12

The book as is like motherhood

1:41:15

and and childbirth these things are considered

1:41:18

disgusting and even the word mom

1:41:20

is

1:41:22

Like it's like a bad word and in

1:41:24

the book in Brave New World. So that's

1:41:26

a big contrast

1:41:29

That I would say I saw between

1:41:32

sort of the principles of Huxley's work

1:41:35

Versus the film they sort of went in a different

1:41:37

direction, but it does have a similar

1:41:40

Sensibility like childbirth

1:41:42

or having a child isn't doesn't seem

1:41:45

to be like illegal or anything in this

1:41:48

Like family, I don't think is illegal in

1:41:50

the movie, but there's not really family

1:41:53

in the book. It's all central state controlled

1:41:56

They're just sort of grown in laboratories and

1:41:58

this sounds like

1:41:59

there might be some of that in the movie

1:41:59

movie, they just don't go into it. Um,

1:42:02

like there's no fluid transfer and stuff like that.

1:42:04

Like children are sort of grown,

1:42:07

so to speak, and in the book

1:42:09

and put into different cast systems, just to move society

1:42:12

along, but there's not really relationships.

1:42:15

And if you do develop a relationship in the book,

1:42:17

it's frowned upon and you're sort of shunned

1:42:19

by society till you give it up. This

1:42:22

is seems different,

1:42:23

but equally disturbing.

1:42:26

Yeah. Yeah. It again,

1:42:28

to me calls to mind

1:42:31

some of the,

1:42:32

the puritanical streak that

1:42:35

you find amongst some modern day

1:42:37

progressives where they're

1:42:39

so into not just policing speech,

1:42:42

but policing people, sexual behavior

1:42:45

to the point where,

1:42:47

where they, they, they really trying

1:42:49

to, trying to figure out how to, how to put

1:42:51

it. It's, it's, it's an interesting dichotomy right

1:42:53

now where you have, I think the over-sexualization

1:42:56

of society, I won't say over, but the

1:42:58

hyper sexualization of society in certain

1:43:00

ways, but also like

1:43:03

the

1:43:04

almost puritanistic sensibilities

1:43:08

in another way, like there's a very sort

1:43:10

of puritan direction and hyper

1:43:12

sexualized direction existing

1:43:15

at the same time. Yeah. It's very awkward. And

1:43:17

I think that's why we having the problems

1:43:19

that we have is that we're, we're sort of torn

1:43:22

in two different directions. Yeah. Yeah. We're very

1:43:24