Marc Andreessen: How Movies Explain America

0:00:04 LA, in a lot of ways, is sort of, you could describe it as like it’s the archetypal American
0:00:08 city. Here’s the larger significance of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, or my view of it,
0:00:12 which is it captures a time and place that was absolutely critical to the evolution of
0:00:17 modern America. The reaction from the audience is extreme laughter. You are laughing during
0:00:23 the most island sequence for 20 minutes. Some movies don’t just entertain, they help explain
0:00:27 America. On this episode of Moderating the Situation, Catherine Boyle and I are joined
0:00:32 by A16Z general partner Mark Andreessen to talk about the films that capture the country’s
0:00:36 turning points, from Hollywood’s golden age to the counterculture, from the comedies we
0:00:41 could once make to the stories that still define us. We look at how different directors across
0:00:45 decades have reflected and sometimes predicted where America was heading, and what its art
0:00:48 reveals about the culture behind it. Let’s get into it.
0:00:56 Well, excited to have the Moderating the Situation crew back for another episode on movies. Mark,
0:00:58 thanks for joining again. Yes, excited.
0:01:03 So we want to go deeper into some of our favorite movies. Mark, I know from watching movies with you
0:01:08 that one of your genres you enjoy is movies about Hollywood. And so we want to start with Once
0:01:12 Upon a Time in Hollywood. Why don’t you talk about what’s so remarkable about that or why you wanted to
0:01:14 talk about it? The reason I want movies about Hollywood, I mean, one is they tend to be very
0:01:18 entertaining because, of course, the people who make movies about Hollywood are from Hollywood.
0:01:21 They know where all the bodies are buried, and they tend to put them all in the movies. And so
0:01:25 they’re, you know, a whole run of spectacular Hollywood movies. So for people who haven’t
0:01:32 seen, I would recommend Mulholland Drive. It’s one of Eric’s favorites. And then The Player,
0:01:36 which also is an all-time one. You know, there’s a bunch, of course, you know, famous ones like
0:01:40 Sunset Boulevard. But, you know, the iconic Hollywood movie, you know, now is Once Upon
0:01:44 a Time in Hollywood, you know, by Quentin Tarantino. And so the reason I like Hollywood
0:01:48 movies is because, you know, there are a handful of cities that have a claim to be like the ultimate
0:01:51 American city. And, you know, New York City is one of those, you know, I think, you know,
0:01:56 San Francisco in some ways, you know, where we are is. But L.A. and Las Vegas also put on the list.
0:01:59 By the way, for Las Vegas, see Bugsy. I’ll talk about that another time. But that’s the iconic Vegas
0:02:03 movie. But L.A. in a lot of ways, you could describe it as like it’s the archetypal
0:02:08 American city. Literally, it’s a great book we can put in the notes called Thinking Big,
0:02:11 where it goes to actually the creation of the city of Los Angeles. And basically, like Los Angeles,
0:02:15 you could argue, is the ultimate American city because it was the ultimate fake it until you
0:02:20 make it thing. Like it was the third of the cities. And very specifically, like it was desert. Like
0:02:24 there was absolutely nothing in L.A. And then, you know, literally it was like a land development
0:02:28 deal by a bunch of wealthy families in the late 1800s. And they literally placed newspaper ads
0:02:32 in Eastern newspapers. You know, this is before, you know, photography made it into newspapers.
0:02:34 And so like, you know, when there was like a picture of something in a newspaper, it’d be a
0:02:38 drawing. And so they would list land plots for sale in Los Angeles. And they would have like
0:02:42 line drawings of like, you know, orchards and like, you know, beautiful, everything’s green and
0:02:45 palm trees. And then, you know, people would like buy the land, move across country and discover that
0:02:49 it was just like blasted out desert. And then, you know, they famously created the city. They
0:02:52 carved it out of the desert. And then, you know, it’s a famous saga of how they went to get the
0:02:57 water, which turned into another great L.A. movie, Chinatown. And, you know, as you’d expect,
0:03:00 you know, Hollywood kind of goes for a certain interpretation of history. And so it, you know,
0:03:04 sort of painted in retrospect as like a purely evil activity. But, you know, there’s actually
0:03:07 like a very kind of straightforward reading, which is like, this is what was actually required to
0:03:11 create a city. But it wasn’t as black and white as sort of the Hollywood history has it. It was a
0:03:15 more complex story, but still, you know, very, very interesting, amazing story. And, you know,
0:03:18 cities like Los Angeles are created every day. So, you know, that’s a pretty big deal.
0:03:22 So anyway, like movies about L.A., I think when they reach the level of capital A art, you know,
0:03:27 they become movies about America. And so it’s like a great test bed or a great subject, you know,
0:03:30 or a great lens through which to look at the history of America. And Once Upon a Time in
0:03:35 Hollywood is, I would say, one of the top movies along that theme. Let me start by saying, if
0:03:39 anybody who watched this hasn’t seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, pause the podcast immediately,
0:03:44 go watch the movie, and then come back, because we are going to spoil the shit on it.
0:03:48 And it’s tremendously fun to watch if you haven’t read about it. By the way, I’d also say,
0:03:50 I’m like, it’s a tremendously entertaining movie. Like, it’s one of the most entertaining
0:03:55 pop-up movies. You know, it’s like infinitely rewatchable. The cast is ridiculous. Every frame
0:04:00 of the thing is amazing. So it’s also a very fun movie. So, okay, so here’s the larger significance
0:04:05 of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, or my view of it, which is it captures a time and place that was
0:04:08 absolutely critical to the evolution of modern America. And I think, Catherine, you’ll remind me,
0:04:10 but I think of the year, was it 1609?
0:04:11 1609, yeah.
0:04:15 1609, yeah, 1609. And so to put this in context, and the movie,
0:04:18 you know, kind of goes through this, but the movie doesn’t explain all the cultural backstory.
0:04:20 It shows you what happened, but it doesn’t explain the backstory. So I’ll just go through the backstory.
0:04:24 So, you know, basically, like, what we now consider to be the kind of a cultural revolution of the
0:04:29 1960s, you know, really started, you know, probably in, like, around 1964 with the Berkeley free speech
0:04:34 movement, and then kind of expanded or metastasized to include, you know, the sort of hippie movements,
0:04:38 and then, you know, the sort of birth of, like, modern rock and roll, and the rise of the
0:04:41 counterculture. And, you know, all of a sudden, everybody’s, you know, has long hair, and they’ve got beads,
0:04:44 and they’re, you know, they’re wearing suede jackets, and they’re not washing their Levi’s,
0:04:49 and, you know, sort of the whole counterculture. And so there was this, like, incredible explosion of,
0:04:52 I mean, this was the baby boomers who were, you know, becoming of age as basically high school and
0:04:58 college kids. This incredible explosion of art, culture, creativity, social innovation, you know,
0:05:02 the birth of, you know, the communes, you know, the entire hippie movement. And then, of course,
0:05:05 this is also a world where it went out of the Vietnam War was wrapping up. And so this was,
0:05:08 you know, the wrap up in conscription of people, you know, American kids being sent off to
0:05:12 Vietnam, but, you know, kind of, you know, I’d say non-volunteers. And so, you know,
0:05:17 the kind of anti-war movement kicked in, the college protest kicked in. And, like, the entire thing was,
0:05:22 like, you know, we kind of remember it as, like, this, like, incredibly, like, sort of spontaneous and,
0:05:27 you know, largely positive explosion of, kind of, you know, breaking out of the stultified cultural norms
0:05:31 of the 1940s, 1950s, you know, the creation of the modern, kind of liberated American society.
0:05:34 By the way, obviously, also right alongside that, you know, the civil rights movement,
0:05:38 and the feminism, the gay rights, and, you know, kind of the whole explosion of modern morality
0:05:43 through that period. And anyway, if you read the histories of the time, basically from 64 to 69,
0:05:47 it was just basically this, like, just glorious, wonderful thing with, like, absolutely no downside.
0:05:50 Like, you know, these kids that were, like, rioting on their college campuses or protesting
0:05:53 in the streets or, like, you know, getting stoned all day or, you know, having their whole hippie
0:05:57 thing or moving to communes and going back to the era. It’s like they had discovered a far superior
0:06:01 way to live, right? And they had discovered a far superior way to, like, coexist with nature and to
0:06:05 fight against the man and to fight against, you know, evil corporations and, you know,
0:06:08 you know, fight for the environment, to fight for the planet, fight for peace and the whole thing.
0:06:12 And so it was this, like, incredible kind of wave of positivity. And, like, you know,
0:06:15 the very good argument that there was a lot, too. You know, a lot of people do believe that and that
0:06:19 it was, like, a time of great cultural creativity that, you know, led to enormous amounts of, like,
0:06:22 amazing art that we still have today. And so that, you know, there’s a lot to like about it.
0:06:27 And then basically what happened is in 1969, it sort of came that the sort of positivity came to a
0:06:31 screeching halt. Yeah. Sort of the movement, you know, basically, like, you know, turned, you know,
0:06:36 very much the dark side, you know, that sort of began the long slide into the sort of 1970s.
0:06:42 And that slide was basically a slide into, you know, variously, among other things, you know,
0:06:47 it was a slide into, like, drugs, you know, very bad drug overdoses, you know, the shift in sort of
0:06:51 soft drugs, hard drugs, you know, a lot of people who participated in the sort of cultural movement
0:06:55 in the 60s ended up, like, dying. We’ll talk about the death later on because, you know, the movie
0:06:58 directly hits that. But, like, there was just an extraordinary amount of death that followed,
0:07:03 you know, degradation and that, you know, turned into, you know, sexual liberation. It turns out
0:07:07 has dark sides. You know, maybe it isn’t so great for everybody. And specifically, maybe it isn’t so
0:07:11 great for women, at least in some ways. And then, you know, and then look, you know, in the 70s,
0:07:14 it was like, you know, Vietnam, like, very bad. And then the energy crisis, that economic
0:07:18 recession, that inflation, you know, just, you know, this very kind of, you know, bitter,
0:07:22 divisive, you know, politics, you know, in a lot of ways, you know, sort of the beginning of the
0:07:26 political kind of dynamic that we see playing out today. So in the 70s, kind of things went really
0:07:30 bad. And then, you know, the bookending movie, Once Upon a Time is the movie sort of about that
0:07:34 pivot point. I’ll talk about that. And then, you know, Boogie Nights is maybe the movie on the other
0:07:37 side of that, right, which is like, once the culture is kind of sliding down a hill into chaos and
0:07:42 madness and disease of death, Boogie Nights captures that on the other side. But for the purpose of
0:07:45 today’s discussion, we can focus on 1969. And so if you read the histories of time, basically what
0:07:50 happened was it was the Charles Manson murders, specifically in Los Angeles. And then sort of
0:07:53 on behalf of America, it was the Manson murders that basically were the turning point. The Manson
0:07:58 murders are the thing that people point to, and they kind of say, oh, that was the moment when we all kind
0:08:03 of realized, oh, shit, there was a dark side of this whole thing. And like, oh, my God, here we go.
0:08:07 And so let’s talk about that. Like, let me just close off this introductory part,
0:08:09 though, with kind of the most amazing thing about the movie that I found, which is,
0:08:13 if you know the history of that period, I mean, the Manson murders were super famous
0:08:16 at the time. They’re still famous in American culture. Kind of everybody knows that there
0:08:19 was this guy, Charles Manson, that had this death cult. He was implicated, these kids to like go out
0:08:23 and kill random people. And, you know, there’s still like all these, you know, questions like,
0:08:27 how the hell did he do that? Right. And so everybody knows that he was kind of intertwined
0:08:30 with Hollywood and intertwined with the movie industry and the music industry. And he was part of that
0:08:35 whole thing. And so, you know, everybody kind of knows that. Oh, and then specifically for people who
0:08:38 know anything about that, they’re sort of famously, the Manson murders are also known as the Sharon Tate
0:08:43 murders, because there was this like incredibly, you know, vivacious, attractive, bubbly, you know,
0:08:48 enthusiastic, young, blonde actress named Sharon Tate, who at the time famous, that was actually
0:08:52 married to Roman Polanski, who was, you know, one of the leading, you know, kind of new, you know,
0:08:56 Hollywood movie directors of that time. And they were this new Hollywood glamour power couple.
0:08:59 And then Sharon Tate, among other people, you know, Sharon Tate was one of the people murdered.
0:09:03 And so Quentin Tarantino comes out, you know, when he first announces the movie, he comes out and he
0:09:06 says, you know, Quentin Tarantino is going to make the movie about the Charles Manson murders.
0:09:12 Right. And if you’ve seen, you know, any other Tarantino movie, like Pulp Fiction, for example,
0:09:16 you’re just like, oh my God, you know, it’s going to be like, this is going to be horrible.
0:09:20 Like, you know, like, like the Manson murders are bad enough, but like, you know,
0:09:26 turning them into like a, you know, Tarantino style, you know, mass slaughter violence, you know,
0:09:31 reservoir dogs, you know, just like blood and guts, you know, uh, exploitation, you know,
0:09:34 basically super high of exploitation movie as he’d done in the past. Uh, it was just like,
0:09:37 it was a horror show. And I was actually, I was actually personally worried about it. Cause my,
0:09:41 my wife got all excited to, to, to see the movie. Uh, cause you know, she, you know,
0:09:44 cause it’s, cause it’s going to start Leo DiCaprio and Brad Kent and it’s going to be about
0:09:47 Hollywood and spirit fashion and, you know, all this, you know, design and all this creativity.
0:09:50 And she’s like, we got to go see this movie. And I’m like, I’m like, we can’t go see the movie
0:09:55 because you are going to be so traumatized by what he puts on screen that like, you’re never
0:09:58 going to want to ever see a movie ever again. And you’re going to hold it against me for the rest
0:10:01 of my life. But it didn’t prevent you from seeing this movie. Cause it’s obviously just going to be
0:10:05 a complete horror show. Like it’s just going to be a disaster. And actually Sharon Tate’s family
0:10:09 actually came out and basically said when this movie was first announced, basically said like,
0:10:12 wait a minute, hold on. Like, you know, we don’t want the memory of our, you know, of our,
0:10:16 you know, of our, of our family member, you know, uh, you know, we still love, you know,
0:10:20 many, many decades later, you know, kind of, you know, turned into basically fodder for,
0:10:23 you know, basically Hollywood exploitation. Um, and then there was this like amazing thing that
0:10:27 happened and nobody knew anything about the movie, which is, uh, Tarantino, at least the way
0:10:31 stories recorded, Tarantino actually let, I think it was Sharon Tate’s, it was either sister
0:10:36 and maybe sister or something like that, read, read the script. Uh, and immediately, um, the family
0:10:43 did a 180, um, and they came right out and they said, we completely approve. And I remember at the
0:10:49 time reading that and I was like, what the hell? Like how, how is it that he could possibly get that,
0:10:53 that, that, that Tate family of all people on board with putting this on screen? And of course,
0:10:57 you know, that, that, that leads to kind of the, you know, the movie sort of turns into a Valentine,
0:11:01 a Valentine to Hollywood and to America and specifically to Sharon Tate. Um, you know,
0:11:05 it’s like, it’s like, you know, it, it really, you know, kind of restores her memory in an amazing way.
0:11:12 Can I, it’s something very smart and the movie for those of us who, who love Tarantino and follow
0:11:16 his work. So I think there, that, that was like the common theme was like, oh God, this is going
0:11:20 to be horrific. Right. And especially if you’ve read about, if you know the Manson murders, if you’ve
0:11:26 read about how gruesome they are, like, yes, that was sort of the dominant theme, but his, you know,
0:11:31 he, he had, he made a few films between, but like, I’d say the last other fantastic Tarantino film
0:11:38 was the revenge fantasy and glorious bastards, which is of course, like, you know, again, like
0:11:42 could have been, but it is extremely gruesome, but at the same time, it’s a revenge fantasy of what
0:11:47 could have happened. What could have happened if someone had killed Hitler. And so in the very
0:11:53 beginning of the movie, there’s a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio also at the end, but there’s a scene in the
0:11:58 very beginning where it shows all of his films and he has the famous flamethrower from Ingrorious
0:12:04 Bastards. And so if you’re a Tarantino fan, you’re like, wait, wait, wait, which direction are we going
0:12:08 in? Are we going in gruesome violence with no purpose, which I would argue Tarantino is always
0:12:13 misunderstood in that way? Or are we going in a, are we going in a different direction, a little
0:12:17 more fantastical, a little more what could have happened? And so for those of us with like the
0:12:22 eagle eye in the theater, I think, I think we kind of, we kind of knew, you know, especially as you said,
0:12:26 like the family said, oh, it’s great. It’s going to be fine. We kind of knew, okay, this, this film is
0:12:32 not going to be nearly as bad. And Tarantino is going to take us in a different direction, but he did put
0:12:34 that little Easter egg in there for us in like the first 10 minutes of the film.
0:12:38 So it’s funny you bring that up because I of course totally missed that when I was watching the movie.
0:12:42 I just thought it was like, it was like a, you know, he’d, so, so for people who haven’t seen
0:12:46 that, Leo DiCaprio plays a sort of a, a Steve McQueen style movie star on the 1960s,
0:12:50 named Rick Dahl. It was kind of, as the movie starts, his kind of career is imploding.
0:12:53 He’s trying to figure out how to kind of turn things around and stay relevant to the times. And it
0:12:58 does, it shows these books from his, his prior movies in the universe. And what, but I just figured
0:13:01 it was just like a throwaway. Oh yeah, I see what’s a flamethrower. That’s funny. Ha ha.
0:13:06 Like it didn’t even for a minute occur to me. I mean, you know, it’s just, oh, we’re
0:13:08 going to spoil it. We’ll just say the flamethrower plays a critical role.
0:13:10 It’s a pretty critical role.
0:13:17 Have you ever been happier to see the flamethrower get taken out than at the, at the end of that
0:13:21 movie? But yeah, I mean, I, I just, I was like literally, I enjoyed the movie so much when
0:13:25 I was watching it, but I did not know. I mean, I knew it had to be something amazing that I
0:13:29 wasn’t expecting in order to get the Tate family on board. But like, I, I still was, I still
0:13:32 was like sitting there in a state of dread for the entire movie, you know, still anticipating
0:13:36 that he would somehow, anyway, and so to spoil the movie, he, he, what’s one of the time in
0:13:40 Hollywood, he, he basically, he basically tells you the story of the Manson cult and of Hollywood
0:13:44 at that time. That’s sort of how that all intertwined. And he takes it all the way up to the night
0:13:49 of the murders, but then he, he takes a left turn, um, in the history as he does as an old
0:13:53 friend of history. And so, and, and, and so the, the, the kid, the Manson cultists who, who
0:13:56 in real life culture are taken in the movie, they, they, they go, they go, they go in the
0:14:01 house next door, which, which, which is Leo’s house. Um, with, uh, with any, with, with Leo’s
0:14:06 friend, uh, Brad Pitt, uh, and Brad Pitt’s character. Uh, by the way, I don’t know if, uh, you, I don’t
0:14:10 know if you know this, Kevin, I’m curious if you know the backstory and the Brad Pitt character
0:14:14 is it, it, you just quite see this in the movie, but it explains a lot, which is basically Tarantino’s
0:14:19 conception of him as he’s basically the most deadly man in the world at that time. So he’s, he’s like a,
0:14:23 you know, he plays not just a war hero, but like a green beret, like, you know, super highly
0:14:27 decorated, you know, basically super soldier, uh, but he’s just become a Hollywood stuntman.
0:14:31 Um, and so basically the, um, you know, the, the, the Manson killer is basically walking
0:14:35 exactly to the wrong house because number one, they’re up against this guy who basically like,
0:14:38 you know, spent the proceeding, whatever, you know, 20 years, you know, kill a people for
0:14:42 America. Um, uh, you know, basically Captain America. And that, and then number two, it turns
0:14:46 out Leo still had the flamethrower in his barrage. Um, well, there’s also, there’s also
0:14:51 the backstory that you’re, you’re not totally sure how good Cliff is. Like there’s a whole backstory
0:14:56 of, did he kill his wife? Um, which is actually in the film and then also in sort of the backstory,
0:15:01 but like there, he, he is, he is, he is, you know, a deadly, as you said, like a very deadly
0:15:07 person. Um, but that final scene, um, and yeah, there’s no way you can anticipate, like, even
0:15:11 if you knew, okay, maybe it’s not going to be as gruesome or there’s going to be some sort
0:15:16 of like revenge fantasy. There’s no way you can anticipate how genius, like the run-up
0:15:19 into it is. And then also the final scene, because there’s this whole other thing that
0:15:24 happens in the movie where you forget that you’re watching a movie about the Mansons. Like
0:15:29 you forget that you’re watching this, this horrific, like what, what it’s supposed to be. And there’s
0:15:34 a, there’s like a 30 minute scene, um, of Rick Dalton. Who’s the, who’s sort of this, you
0:15:39 know, um, aging, like he’s losing his place in Hollywood. He, he sort of, you know, is,
0:15:45 is sort of at a, at a loss for why he’s no longer powerful. Right. Like, and, and, and
0:15:50 he has this moment where he stars in this like kind of cheesy Western with this like 11 year
0:15:56 old girl. And it’s like a movie within a movie. And it is like probably the best encapsulation
0:16:00 of like what happens to actors in Hollywood. So you kind of lose track of the fact it’s like
0:16:04 here’s Sharon, Sharon Tate, and she’s at the Playboy mansion, she’s dancing, she’s this new
0:16:09 generation, but here’s this old generation of like hyper masculine figures who can’t get
0:16:14 work. And there’s, there’s, it’s just a genius movie within a movie where the little girl
0:16:17 says to him, and it’s probably like one of the most memorable lines. She’s like, that’s
0:16:21 the best acting I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And I mean, it’s like, just even if they’d
0:16:25 stopped the movie there, it would have been just as brilliant. Right. But then it goes on
0:16:30 to this other sequence where you’re like, oh yeah, we’re watching, we’re about to see the
0:16:34 most gruesome, you know, possible like this. I mean, and, and, you know, I wasn’t alive
0:16:38 in 1969, but I can imagine it’s like, if, you know, if Jennifer Lawrence, if it happened
0:16:41 to Jennifer Lawrence, or if it happened to Margot Robbie or Robbie, who’s actually playing
0:16:47 her, right. It would just be this horrific thing. Um, but you kind of forget because there’s
0:16:51 all of these just beautiful, hilarious sequences that run up to it. You forget that you’re watching
0:16:56 a movie that’s supposed to end in this horrific violence. Um, and of course I’ll, I’ll let you
0:17:00 continue Mark, but it doesn’t, it ends, it ends at a different type of horrific violence,
0:17:05 but not female on female violence that characterized the Manson murders, which I think is, is another
0:17:12 kind of subtext of, of the, of the film. Um, it’s just how, how gory and violent the actual
0:17:16 episode is, but you, you don’t actually see that. So I’ll let you continue, but there’s a whole other
0:17:20 part of the Hollywood story that’s really fascinating. Yeah, no, that’s, that’s exactly right. And by
0:17:24 the way, uh, the pop quiz, Catherine, uh, the, the, the, the little girl, the, the little
0:17:28 girl, uh, actress, uh, who, who was she in, who was that intended to be in real life? I don’t
0:17:33 know actually. Uh, Jodie Foster. Oh, oh, is that, oh, that’s who she’s supposed to be?
0:17:36 Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I didn’t realize that. Okay. She’s not under that name, but that’s basically
0:17:40 the character is mostly on Jodie Foster. That makes sense. Uh, and, and so, and, and let’s
0:17:46 bring it up because like she’s representative of, of new Hollywood. So, so, so, so Jodie Foster
0:17:50 was in that, in that era was like a rising, busy child star. Uh, and then she, she had her
0:17:54 breakup role in, uh, I think in, um, in Taxi Driver, um, you know, where she’s just like,
0:17:58 you know, cause like incredibly revelatory, you know, acting performance. Uh, uh, and
0:18:03 so she’s sort of representative of the new, of the quote unquote new Hollywood, um, with
0:18:07 the much more naturalistic, like the actual naturalistic acting style that took over from
0:18:10 the much more stylized style of the fifties and sixties. And so, so, so yeah, I just bring
0:18:14 that up because to, to your point, part of the story there is Rick Dalton, you know, basically
0:18:19 trying to get out of basically making cliched happening genre stuff, right. Where he just
0:18:22 plays the same tough guy over and over again. Well, so, so the running joke up until that
0:18:26 point is that Rick Dalton starts, started out his career as like a tough guy, movie
0:18:30 star. Um, and then basically, uh, you know, over the years, like that, that, that archetype
0:18:34 was kind of fading in 1969. And so he was increasingly be, uh, being cast as the bad
0:18:37 guy. Um, and then, you know, and then the thing is, you know, the bad guy, you know, gets
0:18:40 like punched, is not the guy who punches and knocks people out. He’s the guy that gets
0:18:43 punched and knocked out. And he started on this downward slide and he has absolutely no
0:18:47 idea how to adapt himself to this new world. And in fact, and again, the way the movie
0:18:50 and the way this intersects with the other, the other part of the movie is, you
0:18:54 know, uh, is literally what Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate move in next door, you know,
0:18:58 to his character. And he, and literally he’s like, Oh my God, if I could just figure out
0:19:02 a way to get invited over for like a barbecue or something where I could just meet
0:19:05 Roman Polanski, who’s like the, you know, the, the, the leading kind of new Hollywood movie
0:19:09 director of that time. If I could just get captured in one of his movies, then I could
0:19:13 stay relevant, you know, for the next decade. And he just had like, absolutely, there
0:19:16 was just absolutely no reason for like Roman Polanski or Sharon Tate to give, to give
0:19:19 this Rick Dalton character, you know, the time of day, cause he just, he represented the
0:19:24 past, they represent the future. Um, until of course at the very end of the movie, uh, you
0:19:27 know, Rick Dalton saves, you know, saves her life. Um, and that, and that she isn’t, you
0:19:31 know, that’s the significance of, of him being invited over at the end of the movie is, is
0:19:36 that sort of his entree to Hollywood having basically been taught by Jodie Foster as an
0:19:43 11 year old in actually how to act basically it comes together. It’s, it’s, it’s such a
0:19:47 genius way anyway. Yeah. So, so, so basically like the, the, the sort of macro, the macro
0:19:52 relevance of this just to kind of restate the thesis is, you know, like if the Manson murders
0:19:57 were, were kind of where the cultural revolution, the 1960s went bad, then once upon a time in
0:20:01 Hollywood is sort of the, the, it’s sort of the fantasy or the love letter to a different
0:20:06 America in which that didn’t happen. Right. And, and, and, and basically things kept going
0:20:12 in like a much more, a much more positive direction. Um, but by putting on screen the
0:20:17 alternate direction, my view is like, he really highlights how bad it was that that’s not what
0:20:21 happened. And so the, the, the tragedy of the Manson murders is not just the tragedy for
0:20:25 the people who were killed and for their families. Uh, and it was just a profound tragedy, but the
0:20:29 tragedy was like for basically for all of LA. Cause like LA, if you talk to people who were,
0:20:32 who were around during that period, like things got dark in LA, like very quickly,
0:20:35 like people, people, people were so freaked out by the Manson murders. Like they didn’t
0:20:38 know how many other serial killers running around. They didn’t know how many other cults
0:20:41 there were. They like, everybody all of a sudden had to like lock their doors. Like people stopped
0:20:45 going out. Like it became like, and by the way, this was the beginning of the heyday of the serial
0:20:50 killer, you know, Ted Bundy. And, you know, like it was the beginning of this like wave of these
0:20:54 things where people got like really, really seriously freaked out. Um, and, and, and so that
0:20:57 was the other, but, but then just generally in America that, you know, as I said, like that was the
0:21:03 beginning of the downward slide in the seventies. And so by, by making the what if impositive kind
0:21:08 of, you know, all, you know, counterfactual so clear, it sort, to me, it sort of highlights and
0:21:12 illustrates in, in maybe the way that nothing else has been able to do kind of the darkness that
0:21:17 actually played out in real life. Totally. Totally. And, and, and like, I, I went back and watched,
0:21:22 uh, the beginning of the sequence cause it’s actually a long sequence of violence. Um, but what I
0:21:26 remember so much, I read the reviews before not knowing, you know, they, they try to not have
0:21:31 spoiler alerts and critics were very divided. It was like, this is so violent. This is extremely
0:21:37 violent. And what, what’s funny about seeing it in the theater, um, which was, I’m so glad
0:21:41 I saw it in the theater is that the reaction from the audience. And these are, again, it’s
0:21:44 like, if you’ve been opening weekend, these are people who like really wanted to see this
0:21:52 movie or our Tarantino fans is extreme laughter. Yes. As it is, you are laughing during the most
0:21:55 violent sequence for 20 minutes. And what’s, what’s really funny about what’s happening on
0:22:01 screen too, is that Cliff, Cliff, who’s the, you know, the stuntmen, um, the, and again, this is a
0:22:06 spoiler, like turn this off. I’m going to go into detail that he takes an edible, like, or LSD. I can’t
0:22:12 remember if it’s an edible or LSD. Smokes, smokes an LSD cigarette. Yes. So, so right before, so he is
0:22:16 like high as a kite when these guys come in, which is also like a funny part of it. And then, and the
0:22:22 other part that you have to like, Tarantino is so particular about details. And so the music that is
0:22:28 playing when they come in is actually this like a psychedelic rock band, like, and he shows the kind
0:22:32 of transition of the sixties through music, through the entire thing, which is really important. But that
0:22:37 scene, he’s listening to, um, uh, the Supremes that set me free. Why don’t you babe? Right? Like,
0:22:41 so it’s this perfect moment of like, set me free. And these guys come in, he’s high and
0:22:49 he’s like, is this, is this real? But, but Cliff, Cliff’s response is like laughter. He’s laughing
0:22:53 at these women. Right. And these women, you know, they have their, their knives, like they are ready
0:23:00 to, to do, to do the deed, you know? And, um, and, and he’s laughing. And I think it’s in some ways,
0:23:05 it’s, you know, Tarantino always has sort of these like takes on like masculine violence and, and, you
0:23:09 know, can, can you kind of, can you comment, can you can take the power out of whatever situation
0:23:14 happened in history by just like this extreme violence? And like, you know, it’s about to happen
0:23:18 and there’s like a, I won’t ruin the pit bull part, but like, there is something where it’s like-
0:23:19 Let’s ruin it. Let’s ruin it. We’re ruining it.
0:23:25 No, no. Okay. Like he, he sixes pit bull on, on these women. Right. But he, but the, would, would,
0:23:30 watching it again, you’re like, this is, it’s fascinating because if, if the Mansons had been
0:23:35 met with laughter, right, like instead they were met with, these are the most evil, they’re, they’re,
0:23:39 you know, they’re, they’re, they’re taken by the devil, right? Like they were met with fear. And,
0:23:43 and to Mark’s point, like that set off serial killers, like it gave power to this extraordinary
0:23:49 evil for, for decades. And I think the point of it is like, what if Cliff, the most masculine,
0:23:56 deadly man in the room had just been high and laughed and like, you know, sicked his pit bull on,
0:24:00 on, on, on these, on these women who, you know, are kind of silly and high themselves. And like
0:24:06 the whole thing had become a comedy, which it turns into like 20 minutes of just sheer hilarity,
0:24:10 like just absolute hilarity, even though it’s the most violent thing you’ve probably seen in the last
0:24:11 several years.
0:24:17 He, he, he, the Bradford character beats a him to death with a telephone. Yeah. It’s just the funniest
0:24:18 thing you’ve ever-
0:24:23 It’s like, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s like, and, and, and the flamethrower shows up, right? Like,
0:24:27 I mean, it’s, it is there, you could not conceive of the type of violence. It meets,
0:24:31 it meets the most horrific violence that we know is coming. Right. And like, that’s the backstory to
0:24:36 this too, is like, you know, what really happened. So you have this weird end of response of, you know,
0:24:42 what actually happened. And it’s so tragic. Uh, but it was women on, you know, I always think it’s
0:24:46 interesting that it was like the Manson family, right? They called themselves family. It was a
0:24:51 perversion of the family. And they actually killed a woman who was eight months pregnant,
0:24:55 starting a family. So it’s like this horrific, all that’s a whole, whole other narrative to this,
0:25:02 but like the fact that it’s met with even more extreme violence. And, and at the time it was
0:25:06 during, you know, it was during Me Too as well. So it was violence against women, but of course,
0:25:10 everyone wants that violence to happen because you don’t want the alternative to happen. So it’s this
0:25:17 very strange, um, movie going experience, uh, that is both delightful, but also like, you know,
0:25:21 a lot of mixed emotions that I think, you know, probably that’s why I think critics were so divided
0:25:24 on it. Um, I loved it, but that’s why I think critics were divided on it.
0:25:29 Yeah. And then if you, if you can tell us about, you know, one, one notch, it’s, it’s capping your
0:25:33 point. It’s like, it’s like the ultimate square in the form of Rick Dalton. It was like, you know,
0:25:37 still putting bro cream in his hair and trying to be like, uh, you know, kind of James Dean tough guy,
0:25:41 you know, you know, when that’s not what the world wants. Um, and then, uh, and then, you know,
0:25:45 basically, like I said, you know, Captain America, like an icon of the American military, you know,
0:25:49 at the time that, you know, by the way, at the time of Vietnam in which, you know, the military was,
0:25:53 you know, not, was, it was not viewed at the level of respect that the American culture has right
0:25:57 today. You know, the, the, the fact that those two, you know, end up basically beating and roasting
0:26:02 a bunch of hippies to death at the height of the counterculture. It’s an incredibly crowd-placing
0:26:06 movie. And as you said, it kind of happened in sort of the, sort of, you know, very,
0:26:10 very close to peak woke, um, kind of during our cultural revolution in the last decade.
0:26:14 Like it’s, it’s, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know if she, I don’t know if it’s properly
0:26:18 characterized as like a reactionary movie, but it, it, it, it definitely not. It was definitely not
0:26:22 the arc, the moral arc of, of, of, of other attempts at arc during that time period.
0:26:27 Totally. Totally. And, and, and just even the, the final scene of, as you said, him getting invited
0:26:32 over and her sort of being blissfully unaware of this happens. I mean, that’s all magical of it.
0:26:35 Like she had no idea that someone has, this happens.
0:26:41 Um, and you see like the camera sort of pan up and it’s like, this is like, it just genuinely
0:26:45 feels like this is, you know, in the same way that Glorious Bastards was a revenge drama of what
0:26:50 could have possibly happened. This is also like the once upon a time in America story, like what could
0:26:56 have happened? Um, and, and it was a weird movie going experience in 2019 to be surrounded by people
0:27:01 who were laughing, who loved it. You know, it, it, it kind of went against everything you were reading
0:27:05 in the news, which is that like, you know, no, no one agrees with, with sort of this,
0:27:10 this alternative history. I mean, it was, it’s just a brilliant film, um, that, that, yeah,
0:27:12 I’m excited. There’s a sequel coming, right, Mark?
0:27:16 There is a deed. There is a, there is a deed, which is going to be, uh, and let me also say,
0:27:19 number one, there’s a sequel coming, which, you know, it’s going to be just incredible, I’m sure.
0:27:26 Uh, but also, um, there was a, there, Tarantino is so funny. So you guys may both remember this,
0:27:31 but back before the internet and even back before like DVDs and video rentals, if, if you like, if
0:27:35 you, if you didn’t see a movie, when it was the theater, like you didn’t see it and like, it might
0:27:38 show up on TV, like two years later, but they would have cut all the good parts out and they would
0:27:42 have, you know, stuck in all the commercials. Um, and so you like have this in one shot to see a movie
0:27:44 in the theater. And then if you want to see it again, and it was out of theater, you couldn’t.
0:27:49 And so there was this, there was this genre of paperback novelizations, um, of, of movies.
0:27:52 And so what you would do is you would buy the paperback novelization and then you could read
0:27:55 that as many times as you want. So, you know, my, I had to show all these things when I was a kid,
0:27:59 you know, Star Wars and all these things, you know, read them all like 14 times. Um, and so anyway,
0:28:04 so Tarantino being, you know, sort of a child of this era, you know, like, like I am, um, Tarantino
0:28:09 actually wrote a paperback novelization of the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And he specifically
0:28:14 wrote it as a paperback novelization. Uh, and so it came out in paperback. Um, uh,
0:28:18 and it very much is an homage to this, but of course being Tarantino, it’s, it actually
0:28:21 turns out, of course, it’s not just a paperback novelization. It turns out it’s like an entirely
0:28:27 new novel. Um, and so, and, and, and it’s actually funny because it doesn’t, it’s, it’s, it’s,
0:28:29 it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the novel is set in the same world of the movie
0:28:34 and has, and, and, and, and goes much deeper into the themes of the movie. But like, he doesn’t
0:28:37 even get, he doesn’t care at all about like having the plot of the movie actually in the novel.
0:28:41 And so he just throws away right up front in the novel. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then Rick Dalton,
0:28:44 Rick Dalton like wrote to a bunch of hippies, you know, his clearing pool that night. Right. So
0:28:48 like, it’s like the plot’s not the point for, for the novelization. And so the, the novelization,
0:28:52 I think, I think it’s a, it’s a very few people have read it, you know, kind of just by, by
0:28:55 ratio of how he, how he came out of it. I think, cause I think people didn’t know what to make
0:29:00 of like literally a paperback novelization in like 2022 or whatever it came out. Uh, but I think it
0:29:04 is, he does a reasonable claim on being a great American novel. Um, because, and the reason
0:29:09 specifically, uh, Kevin, I think it is right a lot because it just, it goes much deeper into all the
0:29:13 themes of the, you know, that we’re talking about. And so it, like, it goes really deep into the
0:29:16 transformation of Hollywood that was happening at that time. You know, it goes really deep into the
0:29:19 making, you know, this, the, the Western show that happens inside the movie, which is actually a real
0:29:24 show called Lancer. Uh, it goes, it was actually a real show with, with that, you know, with that
0:29:28 setup and with those actors. Um, and it goes much deeper into, into all the characters and it goes
0:29:33 deeper into the Manson family. Uh, and so it’s, um, uh, yeah, it’s really amazing. And by the way,
0:29:37 I should also say, uh, uh, yeah, yeah, the mood, the movie does have a scene in which it is left
0:29:41 ambiguous as to whether or not Cliff Booth, uh, killed his wife. Uh, by the way, let me just say
0:29:46 the wife played by Rebecca Dayhart, um, who just like, I think she’s in the movie for like 30 seconds
0:29:51 and she almost steals the movie. Like she’s just hysterically funny. And she plays like the meanest
0:29:55 like wife in the world. She’s just like hectoring and like screaming at Brad Pitt. And then literally
0:30:00 on a fishy boat, Brad Pitt has a spear gun in his lap. Um, and it’s sort of, and in the movie it’s,
0:30:05 it’s like set up as basically, you know, there was a spear gun accident, um, you know, following
0:30:09 this argument and, and did, did, did, did Brad Pitt actually, actually deliberately kill his wife or
0:30:13 not. Um, and of course in the novelization, it makes very fair. Yes. He, he, in fact, yes, he,
0:30:18 I think it’s, I think it’s in the, I think it’s in the novel. I think it’s like, yes, Brad Pitt
0:30:23 definitely killed his wife who got away with it. Um, and then I think of that, I think, I think he says
0:30:26 the novel, he says, and that was one of the three times that Cliff Booth committed murder and got away
0:30:33 so anyway, anyway, for those of you who’ve only seen the movie, it turned, it turns,
0:30:37 it turns out the Cliff Booth character actually, yes, uh, has a real dark side. And yes, the,
0:30:39 the hippies picked the wrong house, uh, stuff to stumble into.
0:30:46 And, and so is the, we were talking offline about how it’s, you know, there’s some relevance to today
0:30:52 is, is the connection that, you know, the 2010s to some people was seen as a sort of glorious march
0:30:57 towards, uh, you know, progress. And then, you know, whether it’s the 2020 Floyd riots or
0:31:03 more recently the Luigi, you know, Mangione murder or the murder of Charlie Kirk, there’s kind of this
0:31:08 moment of, oh my God, this thing is gone off there. Is that, is that kind of the, yeah.
0:31:11 So I would say whichever side of the political and social spectrum you’re on,
0:31:16 like the world that we live in today is a much darker version of what everybody thought we were
0:31:20 going to be living in. I mean, like, so for people who were like 100% on board with like the
0:31:25 social, so back up a second there to your point. So like, I think there’s a very direct analogy of
0:31:32 let’s call it 1964 to 1972 or something, um, with the reelection of Richard Nixon. Um, like
0:31:36 that cultural revolution that happened during the sixties, kind of the hippie Vietnam, you know,
0:31:41 kind of revolution. Um, I think what we, what we in America have been through the last decade is
0:31:44 sort of another version of that. Like, I think we, what we went through our version of that. It started
0:31:49 around, I would date it to like 2015, 2014. And then, you know, it basically that era sort of ended
0:31:53 November, November, November, 2024. You know, obviously if you’re on the right, you’re like,
0:31:57 oh my God, thank God that’s over. Um, and you know, the world could move on. If you’re on the left,
0:32:01 of course, you’re like, oh my God, what just happened? How did, you know, how did the revolution
0:32:06 go so bad? But that is precisely what happened at the, at the end of the revolution in the 1960s.
0:32:11 And specifically I mentioned 1972. So Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and it was like a
0:32:14 hard fought race and very dramatic in the soda right. But then he was reelected in 1972
0:32:19 in a landslide. Like I usually was together. It was like a 49 state landslide or some crazy
0:32:22 thing. Like it was just like an overwhelming landslide. So it was like the American people
0:32:27 basically rose up and, and basically said, yeah, no more of this. It’s over. Um, and, and so we,
0:32:33 we, you know, we, we, I mean, the echoes are just like profound, uh, of, of, of how this played
0:32:36 out and, you know, and they’re echoes, right. It’s, it’s not exactly comparable, you know, in Iraq
0:32:39 and Vietnam, you know, play different roles and so forth. And the economy, you know, has developed
0:32:43 different ways and, you know, Trump and Nixon are different people and so forth, but, and
0:32:46 the social movements are different, uh, uh, you know, and times have changed, but still
0:32:51 like there, there, there was, there was a cultural revolution. It was, you know, either glorious
0:32:56 or terrible for some period of time and then get ended. Right. It was just like a sequence
0:32:59 of events happened where just like, it was over and you’re out the other side and you’re
0:33:04 in a new world. Um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and I would argue like, that’s exactly
0:33:07 what that, that’s exactly the process kicked off in 69 of the mass and murders, and then
0:33:11 sort of bookended to 72 with Nixon’s reelection and then kind of slide into the 1970s and
0:33:15 then ultimately the 1980s with that transformation. And then I, I would argue like that, that’s
0:33:19 precisely the same kind of transition that we’re going through right now. Um, and I, I think
0:33:23 it’s either, it’s either thrilling or horrifying people in a very similar way, um, that, that,
0:33:27 that the end of the sixties, uh, uh, either thrilled or horrified people. Yeah. Catherine,
0:33:32 would you agree with that? I would, I would. Um, and I, I also, since you mentioned
0:33:37 Vietnam, I want to transition to the best Vietnam war film ever made.
0:33:41 Okay. This is, this, this is everything we’ve set up until now is noot toast as compared
0:33:45 to the extremely controversial plane that Catherine is about to make. Please go for it.
0:33:51 It is, it is, it is by far the best Vietnam war film ever made. Um, and of course it incorporates
0:33:57 every Vietnam war film ever, ever made, including deer hunter, full metal jacket, um, you know,
0:34:03 once, uh, or, um, born on the 4th of July apocalypse. Now the best Vietnam war film ever made
0:34:07 is Tropic Thunder. Uh, but it also happens to be one of the best films about Hollywood.
0:34:13 Um, actually are, I would actually say that once upon a time in Hollywood, while it is incredible
0:34:19 film is more about America, but Tropic Thunder is also about America in different ways and reveals
0:34:24 a lot about America, but is, is by far the best Hollywood film ever made. Uh, I’ll let Mark talk
0:34:28 about why that is. Um, so let’s data, let’s data. Tropic Thunder was what year?
0:34:33 It was 2008, which is actually very important. Um, because I think one of the things that
0:34:40 people forget is that, um, 2008 was also the year where we had a, a POW from the Vietnam war
0:34:46 running for office against the first black president in history. And that is in very important context
0:34:52 for all of the themes dealt with inside of Tropic Thunder, which of course is a comedy. Um, it’s a
0:34:59 satire, but it satirizes everything in the kind of before times 2008. Um, but I think that is a very
0:35:05 important subtext to what came out during an election year where those two themes were on display. Um,
0:35:08 but I’ll, I’ll let Mark get into the summary, um, since it’s also one of his favorite films.
0:35:13 Well, it is, although I, I, I, I’m going to, I’m a deferred. So like I said, you know, I think it’s,
0:35:17 I think it’s a, it’s a start of a fun, you know, it’s maybe the funniest movie, funniest Hollywood
0:35:20 movie the last 25 years or something like it’s just, it’s just like an incredibly entertaining
0:35:24 movie. Um, and just for people to just have a sense of like how much times have changed,
0:35:27 like the most, I mean, there’s many amazing things about it, but one of the most amazing
0:35:31 things about it is, you know, they go, the great actor, Robert Downey Jr. Uh, plays the entire
0:35:37 movie of blackface and not only plays the entire movie of blackface, like I would say extraordinarily
0:35:46 commits for the bit. Um, he’s a method actor, played a method actor movie in method playing
0:35:51 another method actor, you know, playing an actor and, and, and a type of blackface, um,
0:35:55 again, which, which to your point on, on, um, once upon a time in Hollywood, when the film
0:36:00 was first announced, this was known that, that Robert Downey Jr. was, was going to be playing
0:36:03 an actor in blackface. And as you can imagine, it was the same thing that happened with once
0:36:07 upon a time in Hollywood, where it was like, like the, you know, in the same way that the,
0:36:11 the Tate family was terrified of what would happen in the film. Um, there was a whole kind
0:36:16 of, you know, terror of what, what is going to like Robert Downey Jr. Like, like, like he’s
0:36:21 destroying his career. Like who does Ben Stiller think he is doing this movie, right? Like no one
0:36:26 actually knew the backstory or how it would be satirizing Hollywood actors who will go through
0:36:33 any extreme length to win an Oscar. Um, but, but when you get into the film, it is handled so
0:36:37 beautifully and delicately. And actually I was, I was reading, um, I was reading about sort of how they
0:36:41 handled it, um, when they were producing it, which was that they invited, you know, a number of members
0:36:45 of the NAACP, they invited, you know, a number of different, like very thoughtful critics and said,
0:36:49 you have to see this film first and see. And it was again, the same sort of thing where it’s like
0:36:54 everyone saw it first and they said, don’t worry, it’s perfect. Right. It’s hilarious. Um, and so I’ll
0:36:59 let you continue, but like they handled it in a way. Wait, wait, did, did they have to apologize in
0:37:04 the 2010s? I remember Jimmy Kimmel had to apologize for blackface, uh, or, or one of these people,
0:37:09 or did they get away with it? Interesting point. So they didn’t, so when it came out, it was so clearly
0:37:14 satirizing, um, white actors who were trying to win an Oscar, right? Like, so it was clearly
0:37:20 satirizing everyone. It was not, it was, you know, it was, it was sort of universally beloved so much
0:37:25 so that, that Robert Downey Jr. was nominated for an Oscar, which is a whole other backstory to how
0:37:31 they made that happen because it was kind of a continuation of the movie that they, as a joke,
0:37:36 petitioned the Academy, you know, it said, for your consideration. And the Academy actually nominated him for an
0:37:43 Oscar for the role. So it was so, it was so beloved, like what he did and how, how, how brilliant the
0:37:48 role was that no one cared. But I believe it was like 2017 or 2018 when this sort of like new crop
0:37:54 of young people came through journalism and said, like, this is horrible. They tried to sort of cancel
0:38:00 him. You might know Mark better if, how he handled it, but like it clearly, they did not cancel Robert
0:38:04 Downey Jr. For doing a satirization of, of the role he played.
0:38:07 So just to, just to fill this in and then we’ll, we’ll get to that. I’m going to get to the, Catherine,
0:38:13 the Vietnam aspects of this, but Vietnam war movie aspects to this. But yeah, so just specifically what
0:38:19 happened was, correct me if I have this wrong, Robert Downey Jr., a white American actor, plays a
0:38:24 white Australian actor who is a method actor, who I think was sort of loosely inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis
0:38:28 as sort of a, you know, sort of that, that kind, that kind of sort of, you know, super elite, you
0:38:32 know, there, there’s a couple of scenes where you see, where you see, where you see Robert out of
0:38:39 black, but, but dressed up with as, uh, dressed up as the, uh, as the Australian actor who like has
0:38:42 like, I forget what it’s like, translucent green eyes or something. Uh, it’s this very striking,
0:38:47 striking look and like this very plummy Australian accent. Um, and so it’s a white American actor in real
0:38:54 life playing a white Australian actor, playing a Southern black man in blackface for the entire
0:38:59 movie. On top of that, I believe that, uh, Robert Downey often, often improvises, uh, through it,
0:39:02 through it, throughout his movies. And I think a fair amount of the, uh, uh, I think a fair amount,
0:39:06 a fair amount of the portrayal, uh, was, was, was, uh, was him on the spur of the moment, which is,
0:39:10 which is, you know, fairly incredible, uh, uh, when you see it, uh, cause he, he fully, fully
0:39:14 inhabits the world. And then of course he’s, he’s actually in the movie. He’s actually, he’s in the,
0:39:17 you know, in, in, in, in the movie, inside the movie, he’s in this, he’s in a platoon with of course,
0:39:22 after black guy, it was a young black actor whose name I can’t recall, but he just like,
0:39:26 it’s a fresh having us. It was such a thrill to him. He’s a, it’s a brilliant, like the way they
0:39:32 play off each other is brilliant. His name on the film is Al Pacino, but Al Pacino? Al Pacino.
0:39:39 He’s a rapper. He’s a rapper who becomes an actor. Yes. And, and there’s a whole other.
0:39:44 Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, no, no, no. I was going to say there’s a whole other through line there of his,
0:39:48 his role, because I think one of the things that everyone remembers of the film is they have the fake,
0:39:54 trailers before the film starts. And he is Al Pacino, the rapper, and he’s telling a drink that
0:40:00 he calls booty sweat. And, and what’s so funny about like how brilliant this film is, because it not only
0:40:05 like, not only do they satirize Hollywood in the film, they were like first Barbenheimer. Like what
0:40:10 they did, they’re like, we’re going to market this in so many funny ways. They did incredible things
0:40:14 before and after the film. But one of the things that the, that they did was they made booty sweat
0:40:21 into an actual drink, marketed it through the entire Oscar petition. Like they, they went so far. I mean,
0:40:26 the only film that’s done this as, as exceptional as Trumpet Thunder was, was Barbie. But they, they,
0:40:32 they, they figured out how to turn every aspect of this film into a, into marketing genius. The other
0:40:37 smart thing that they did, by the way, the, one of the actors that Ben Stiller, Ben Stiller plays this
0:40:43 guy named Tug Speedman, who is based on a dumb Tom Cruise. His name is Tug Speedman, right? Like where did
0:40:49 they get that name? It’s Tom Cruise. But they also have Tom Cruise in the movie as, as the producer
0:40:56 who’s based on Harvey Weinstein, uh, less, less, I can’t remember his name. Less Grossman. Less Grossman,
0:41:00 yes. Um, and so, but they didn’t want anyone to know Tom Cruise was in the film. So they actually sued
0:41:05 anyone, any of the paparazzi who took pictures of him before, because they wanted people to come to the
0:41:09 theater and not know that Tom Cruise was in it. And of course he like wrote his entire role,
0:41:15 like, like he, he, to your point in improv, like he improvised that entire role and wrote it. Like
0:41:19 it was kind of hit Tom Cruise’s brainchild. I think they originally offered him something else. And he’s
0:41:24 like, no, no, no, I, I want to play Harvey Weinstein. And it is genius, but they did so many things to
0:41:30 make sure that the entire sort of cult of the movie outside of the movie was like Hollywood produced.
0:41:36 Um, where you, to, to, to Mark’s point, you have this method actor playing a method actor who is
0:41:41 trying to get an Oscar through his method acting, who ultimately ends up getting nominated for the
0:41:47 Oscar, losing to Heath Ledger, the, the year that Ledger died posthumously, um, when it was awarded
0:41:53 to him. But it’s like, they, they could not have, but it is a 20 year project. That’s the other,
0:41:56 that’s the very interesting thing about this was like Ben Stiller has been working on this since the
0:42:00 eighties. And it was just that year where they were finally able to get it made.
0:42:06 And it is this brilliant commentary on all of Hollywood. And we can get into the Vietnam stuff
0:42:11 too, because I think it’s also commentary on that, but it’s, it’s, it is the best Hollywood film ever
0:42:15 made, even in the fact that they were able to successfully sway the Oscars.
0:42:19 Right. Well, it was also Catherine, your point, it was also the reset of the Tom Cruise image issues
0:42:24 of the time, because this was after the sort of run of controversy around him and psychology and his
0:42:28 personal life and all those things. And there was a, so this run of very bad publicity. A lot of people
0:42:32 in the industry were worried that he was not going to be a bankable movie star anymore. And I think
0:42:36 that this role in this movie was basically his recovery from that, which, which was pulled off
0:42:39 absolutely perfectly. And of course he then went on to be an even bigger movie star than before.
0:42:40 Totally.
0:42:45 Yeah. So it’s a great career resurrection in the middle of this. Yeah. And then, yeah, just,
0:42:49 just in terms of like how, how much times have changed or, you know, somebody once said that the
0:42:56 past is a, is a foreign planet or, um, or another country, um, uh, is yeah, like you had, you had an
0:43:01 American actor being nominated for an Oscar for, for a character performed in black, blackface in 2008
0:43:07 directed by a Hollywood filmmaker is obviously a genius, but you know, within 10 years was like,
0:43:12 he, you know, Ben Stiller subsequently became one of the wokest Hollywood figures, uh, you know,
0:43:15 in the, in the years that follow, like, you know, all, all through the last decade,
0:43:19 like Ben Stiller has been like, you know, to, you know, to, to the left of Shea Guevara on every
0:43:24 social and political issue. And so, and I, I, you know, I, I don’t know, uh, I’ve never been in my
0:43:29 great environment as art, but like, I wonder how much of his shift to the far left, uh, politically
0:43:31 and socially was, uh, was a reaction to having made this movie.
0:43:36 Well, and the other thing is, I mean, everyone focuses on Robert Downey Jr., but there are like
0:43:41 at least four other untouchable things that happen in that film. Um, so the, the disability advocates,
0:43:45 actually when the film came out, the, the people who were most upset in 2008 were the disability
0:43:52 advocates, um, because of the, um, commentary on what’s, I believe it’s coming on what’s eating
0:43:54 Gilbert Grape, right? Never like, I’ll just say.
0:43:55 Well, and Forrest, Forrest Gump, and Forrest Gump.
0:43:57 And Forrest Gump, yes, yes.
0:44:01 And Rayman, and Rayman, but yeah, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, Simple Jack.
0:44:07 Simple Jack, yes. So the, the, the famous line that is said is, and again, I’m, I’m quoting the
0:44:13 film, never go full retard, um, which was okay to say in 2008, except for the disability advocates,
0:44:17 um, who were, who were very upset about it. And of course, like they were sort of on the fringe in
0:44:22 2008, but that was actually the thing that, that Ben Stiller had to apologize for because they,
0:44:28 they didn’t, they didn’t test the film on Simple Jack, but it was commentary from, from Robert Downey
0:44:34 Jr. In blackface saying everybody knows and then saying the line, right? Because, because,
0:44:40 because Tug Speedman doesn’t play it as he should. Um, he, he, he does the full Leo DiCaprio, what’s
0:44:44 eating Gilbert Grape sort of like, you know, full on, right? He doesn’t be a rainmaker, but there’s
0:44:49 two other things that happen. Um, so the, the other thing that I think people didn’t realize is that
0:44:57 it is so much of a commentary on Vietnam War film because a lot of Vietnam War memoirs in later years
0:45:01 have been proven to be completely disingenuous, right? So it’s like people who said they went
0:45:06 to Vietnam, didn’t go to Vietnam. And so in the storyline and the film, the guy whose memoir,
0:45:11 Tropic Thunder, the movie is actually based on, is a, is a member of the Coast Guard who never got
0:45:16 sent to Vietnam, who worked for the sanitation department, right? So like the, that’s like a
0:45:20 whole theme in the movie. And so there’s this like brilliant commentary also on like, you know,
0:45:24 veterans issues. And I think some veterans groups were upset about it. There were also people who
0:45:29 were very upset with, um, Tom Cruise’s portrayal. Um, and it was, you know, it was before we kind
0:45:33 of all knew who he was portraying and everything, but there were people who were very upset that they
0:45:38 felt that that was the stereotype. So like pretty much every character, like there was, there was
0:45:42 people who were, and again, these are fringes. It wasn’t like mass commentary on this, but they’re
0:45:49 like, they managed to insult like every protected group, um, in a way that like, like everyone kind of
0:45:53 was like, well, yeah, but it’s, it’s satire, right? So it was a totally different time in America,
0:45:57 but it wasn’t just, um, you know, focus on, on race relations. I mean, it was on, you know,
0:46:04 we had a V, again, we had a Vietnam POW running for president that year and, and, and basically a
0:46:10 mockery, like the greatest mockery of Vietnam film ever made. So in some ways it’s like this film was
0:46:13 just like so perfectly timed for the era we were living in.
0:46:17 Well, we still have to this day, let’s not name names on a, on a, on a, what else otherwise a fun,
0:46:21 a fun podcast, but there, there are sitting United States politicians in, in serious offices who
0:46:26 like literally faked Vietnam war records. Like that, like that’s not over. Like that’s actually
0:46:31 still the case. Um, and so to, to your point, like, you know, there, there were many people
0:46:34 obviously who serve very honorably Vietnam. And then there were people who like made up completely
0:46:39 fake stories and wrote them the rest of their career. Um, and like, you know that, yeah. So the,
0:46:42 the movie takes like, it’s your point of the movie among other things takes direct aim at that.
0:46:47 And I, I believe the guy wears a hook the whole film with his hand. I mean, like there’s like,
0:46:54 this movie is so brilliant. It’s so brilliant. And the levels of, of commentary, um, just are,
0:46:56 are remarkable to this day.
0:47:00 Yes. Yes. And so, yes, yes. Cute. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like, so yeah,
0:47:04 maybe this is a bookends the, uh, the previous, previous conversation of just like, yes,
0:47:09 this is clearly made before the culture, before our version of the culture revolution. Um, and so it’s,
0:47:15 it’s, it’s like a, it’s like, it’s like an ancient artifact. Um, uh, um, like I would say only now are
0:47:19 we reemerging into a world in which a movie like that could be made like for a movie like that for
0:47:23 the last probably what, 13 years or something would have been totally off limits. Um, and we’re coming
0:47:27 out into a world now where movies like that can get paid again. Yeah. Jimmy Kimmel’s not going to bring
0:47:34 back the man show, uh, her return to his, uh, his, uh, his roots. Um, for people who follow guests,
0:47:38 for people who don’t get the reference for anybody who followed the recent Jimmy Kimmel, uh, sort of
0:47:43 affair and all of the outrage, uh, it is worth going on YouTube and just, yeah, looking at clips from a,
0:47:49 uh, Jimmy Kimmel show 20 years ago, which was literally called the man show. Um, and, uh, to,
0:47:53 just to get a sense of the, uh, the, the long and twist, the long and twisty road that, uh, some of
0:47:57 our, uh, some of our highest, uh, most famous public figures, uh, have followed. And also a
0:48:01 tale of a tale of two comedians, right? Because it’s him and Adam Carolla, right? And it’s like
0:48:08 their, their careers have detoured dramatically since the show. Yes, that’s right. Two other films we
0:48:12 wanted to discuss, uh, were Oppenheimer and Fight Club. So let’s start with, let’s start with,
0:48:16 let’s start with Oppenheimer just because it’s, it’s more, it’s, it’s more recent. So I, I will make the
0:48:20 case. So I’m a, I’m a, you know, enormous Christopher Nolan fan. I’ve seen all his movies. I love all his
0:48:26 movies. I think they’re really tremendous. Um, you know, I think that I, you know, I say this,
0:48:32 I’m, I think Tenet is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Um, and like, I, I, I, I sat through
0:48:35 Tenet with a giant smile on my face, the entire movie. Like, I just thought that was just like
0:48:40 absolute magic. Obviously I love Deception. Uh, I love many of his movies. Um, uh, but I think
0:48:45 Oppenheimer was like an incredibly well-made movie, um, and had, you know, incredible performances and,
0:48:48 and was, was like, you know, put together really well. It was, you know, tremendously interesting
0:48:54 to watch. Uh, I, I, I will argue that it did not reach our level of capital A art. Uh, I think it,
0:48:59 it actually quite badly fell short, um, on sort of, uh, I would say morality and, um, and, uh, and,
0:49:05 and ultimately in, in, in importance, uh, to our culture. But, uh, yeah, I’m happy to give my feel
0:49:08 on that, but let me just start by saying, Catherine would just out of the gate, would you agree with me
0:49:11 on that? Or would you like to, would you like to take that? Would you like to take the pro side
0:49:15 that Oppenheimer was greater? No, I, I, I agree with you, but I probably, I probably concur. Like,
0:49:21 I probably have different reasons, um, than you as to why I didn’t think it worked. Like, and I
0:49:27 should, I should preface it with, uh, like I, I had hyped this movie so much where my expectations
0:49:31 might’ve been so ridiculously high that when I finally saw it, I was like, meh. But I do think
0:49:35 it’s interesting. Robert Downey Jr. was all, he won the Academy Award finally for Oppenheimer.
0:49:40 He deserved it for Tropic Thunder. I, he was fantastic in the movie, but I will say he
0:49:44 deserved it for Tropic Thunder. And if not for Heath Ledger, he would have won it for Tropic
0:49:47 Thunder. And I feel like that, that would have been really the role he should have won it for,
0:49:52 but he was fantastic in Oppenheimer as well. So to your point, like there, there were, there
0:49:57 were many good, uh, performances. My, my sort of criticism is probably different than yours,
0:50:00 but it probably has a lot more to do with like the actual sort of storytelling and filmmaking
0:50:06 than the actual, um, content of, of the, of the work. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So I, cause I would
0:50:09 say, uh, so for people who haven’t seen it, we’re going to spoil it. So, uh, Robert, Robert,
0:50:15 Robert Downey plays, uh, uh, a real life guy named, uh, Lewis Strauss, uh, who was a, um, it was a,
0:50:21 uh, very high ranking, like sort of important person of the, of the, of the 1950s, 1960s in the
0:50:25 government. Um, and, uh, ended up, I forget the exact role, but basically ended up overseeing,
0:50:30 um, uh, Oppenheimer having a security clearance stripped and, and basically being booted out of the,
0:50:34 out of the military industrial complex after, after, you know, basically leading the creation of the
0:50:39 atomic bomb. Um, uh, in the movie, the movie kind of goes through that whole story. Um, uh, and you
0:50:43 know, it’s, it’s a fantastic performance. All the, all, I mean, look, all the performances in the movie
0:50:47 were fantastic. Uh, uh, Jillian Murphy was just outstanding as Oppenheimer. And, and then that was
0:50:53 it, Ben, I think it’s Benny Safdie. One of the Safdie brothers, uh, played, um, Edward Teller. Um,
0:50:57 and like almost just stole the movie just with that portrayal. Um, and again, you know, a real person,
0:51:02 but creator, but later the creator of the hydrogen bomb. Anyway, so fantastic performances, fantastic direction.
0:51:06 Um, I, I will argue, but my, my critique of the movie though, it involves the following claim,
0:51:08 which is that Louis Strauss is actually the hero of the movie.
0:51:12 Yes. Maybe, maybe go into that history so people understand. Um, cause that is definitely not the
0:51:13 takeaway from the film.
0:51:17 Yes, that is not what the film intended. Uh, uh, you know, the film intended, I think the
0:51:20 film intended, see if Catherine would agree with this, the film intended to contrast basically a great
0:51:25 man Oppenheimer to basically a, uh, and, and ask an aspirant to greatness who, you know,
0:51:29 fell badly short in the Louis Strauss character who sort of brought the great man low and in a,
0:51:33 in a fundamentally unfair way. And then it’s sort of, the movie sort of sets up, uh, both, uh,
0:51:37 Oppenheimer and actually also specifically Albert Einstein as sort of the key moral authorities,
0:51:40 um, of, uh, of the era with respect to use of nuclear weapons.
0:51:45 Both, both claims of which I believe are like deeply incorrect, um, on substance. Um,
0:51:49 and this is my critique of it. So my critique of the movie is not an execution or any of the
0:51:52 performances. My critique is the morality of the movie. I think it’s very badly upside down.
0:51:56 Um, and it’s upside down in a way that kind of flatters our current politics, but like,
0:52:00 it’s very badly upside down in terms of what actually happened at the time. Um, and so the,
0:52:04 the movie basically tells the story of first, Robert Oppenheimer, the, the sort of person who ran the,
0:52:07 the Manhattan project, um, created the atomic bomb, which was then, you know,
0:52:10 at least a story where he gets credit for, you know, helping to end world war II.
0:52:13 You know, when, when, when the U S drop, drop, drop, drop, you know,
0:52:18 the only two uses of the atomic bomb in wartime, you know, to date where the U S dropped a bomb on
0:52:23 Japan twice in 1945. And, you know, and, and, you know, there, you know, there’s even still to
0:52:26 the state debate about this, but, you know, gender, generally accepted industry, I think is that,
0:52:30 that, you know, that ended the Pacific theater, uh, conflict, you know, sooner than it would have it,
0:52:34 it prevented the need for a land invasion of Japan, you know, you know, conceivably, you know,
0:52:39 save like a million lives or something like that. Uh, now, by the way, it was dropping the atomic bomb
0:52:44 on two civilian cities, right? So again, you know, like the morality of the time was, you know,
0:52:47 quite a bit different than, you know, than, than, than maybe ours today, but, but anyway,
0:52:51 so that, that’s, that’s kind of history of it. And then, you know, famously the Manhattan project
0:52:55 was sort of this assembly of, of sort of the finest minds, uh, in America, many, many of them,
0:52:58 by the way, were, you know, refugee, you know, uh, not, not often, I’m often, I’m often,
0:53:02 I’m often, I’m a character actually as a, as a plate, as a, in a movie, in, in, in reality.
0:53:05 And then the movie is German Jewish whose family, you know, had, who his family
0:53:09 had arrived much earlier. Um, and, but then a lot of the other key members of the, uh,
0:53:12 Manhattan project, you know, kind of in one of the great voice of irony where, um,
0:53:16 Hungarian Jewish refugees from, you know, from, from basically the Nazi kind of rampage through
0:53:19 Europe, you know, who came to the U S and, and, and basically, uh, you know, help, you know,
0:53:24 help arm, arm up the U S of which Edward Teller was an example of that. Um, and so anyway,
0:53:27 so the movie tells us, you know, kind of amazing story of, uh, of the Manhattan project,
0:53:32 but specifically in the arc of, of, of Oppenheimer, um, I guess I’d say that the, the,
0:53:37 the, the conventional, let me back up for a sec. I think the first half of the movie,
0:53:42 I think is actually quite historically grounded. And I think has like, I, I, like I, at least
0:53:45 I agree to this interpretation of history. And so there’s a following. So the first half,
0:53:48 and I think the movie is maybe a little bit schizophrenic and I should give it a little
0:53:52 more credit than I, than I was, but like the first half of the movie is actually a, it’s
0:53:57 one of the only recreations on film of what American elite culture and society and American,
0:54:01 um, uh, research establishment of kind of the leading experts at the time, the nation,
0:54:06 20s and 30s, like how thoroughly saturated that, that world was communist. Um, and,
0:54:10 and specifically it sort of recreates, uh, you know, this sort of the, there’s actually,
0:54:13 there’s actually a joke in the movie. There’s a line in the movie that’s sort of one of these,
0:54:16 one of these jokes is not really a joke, which was the joke is, you know, cause the, there,
0:54:21 a lot of the movie takes place as, as set up as at UC Berkeley. Um, and, uh, there’s sort
0:54:24 of a, a, a joke, a joke in the movie, which is like, you know, well, you know, you know,
0:54:28 it’s so-and-so on the Berkeley faculty, you know, as a communist, somebody else will
0:54:31 says, yes, like half the faculty are communists. Like every, like everybody knows that, like,
0:54:34 it’s just completely taken for granted. And of course, you know, the, the politics in that
0:54:38 aside, the issue becomes, okay, now they’re working on a classified weapons program. Um,
0:54:42 you know, the U S is, you know, is kind of variously at odds with not just Germany,
0:54:46 but also with Soviet Russia. Um, and, you know, there’s this very big concern, you know, we’re,
0:54:50 we’re, you know, the, the, this effort is, is, is inventing this, you know, super weapon. Uh,
0:54:53 and there was a, you know, very high degree of concern that the, the secrets of the atomic bomb
0:54:57 were going to, you know, just walk their way out the, out the door from Los Alamos. So we’re
0:55:01 going to end up, you know, bad people’s hands, you know, and one fear obviously was they ended up
0:55:05 in Hitler’s hands, but another fear was they would end up in Stalin’s hands. And by the way,
0:55:12 spoiler alert, that’s exactly what happened. So, so in fact, the nuclear secrets walk right out the
0:55:17 door. Um, and, um, you know, and, and basically the, both the, the, the concepts of the atomic bomb
0:55:22 and that actually the specific wiring instructions, uh, for the atomic bomb were actually walking right
0:55:26 out the back door of Los Alamos into, into, into, into Soviet hands and Stalin got the bomb very
0:55:30 quickly after that. And it was directly derived from the work that actually happened on the Manhattan
0:55:34 project. And so it turned out to Manhattan project, like it really was riddled with time to
0:55:38 spies. And there’s these famous names in history, like the Roseburgers, like David Greenglass
0:55:43 that you can go through and read about if you want. But like, like the, the fears of all of the people
0:55:47 who are worried about this were actually correct. It is actually what happened. Um, by the way,
0:55:51 there’s a character in the movie, uh, Boris Pash, who is sort of the security officer at the Manhattan
0:55:55 project, if both in real life and in the movie, in the movie, he’s sort of portrayed as this white guy
0:55:59 with basically a, essentially a stick up his butt, like this, like guy who’s like, you know, like
0:56:03 constantly like, you know, cross-examining and not trusting the scientists and thinks that I’m a higher,
0:56:07 Oppenheimer is probably a spy and the whole thing. And he’s kind of portrayed as this like over the top,
0:56:11 you know, kind of thing. But like, if you, if you go, if you read his Wikipedia entry of like what his
0:56:14 wife’s story had been up until that point, he’s another one of these guys were just like, yeah,
0:56:18 just this, this incredibly impressive backstory of why service to the country and fight the communists.
0:56:23 Um, and then, you know, and then like, you know, whether he was right about Oppenheimer to talk
0:56:27 about, but like, he was right that like, tip was almost with Ronald of kind of disguise. And this
0:56:31 is going to lead to catastrophe, you know, with, with Stalin getting the bomb. Um, and then, you know,
0:56:34 the, the Strauss character was also very worried about that. And again, you know, outside of whether
0:56:37 he was right about Oppenheimer per se, he was, he was right about the, he was right about the broader
0:56:42 issue. Um, and so, so, so that is what actually, that, that, that is what actually happened. Um,
0:56:46 and so like all of the security concerns that are kind of a setup to what, you know,
0:56:49 is sort of portrayed as the persecution of Robert Oppenheimer, like they were all completely
0:56:54 genuine security concerns. And in fact, the worst case scenario actually did happen. Like all the
0:56:58 secrets, like walk right out the door, went straight to Stalin. The first Soviet, we now know this,
0:57:03 the first Soviet atomic bomb was wire for wire compatible with the U S Nagasaki bomb. Right. So,
0:57:06 so, so, so, so they got literally the wearing threats and, you know, for, for people who’ve read
0:57:10 about nuclear weapons, like it’s actually very hard to detonate a nuke and they have to be wired in a very
0:57:14 specific way. Uh, it’s like, you can’t, they’re, they’re, they’re very difficult to set off. And like
0:57:18 the Soviet spies on the Manhattan project, literally like transfer that information to,
0:57:23 to, to, to, to Russia made their power. Um, and so anyway, like within that, there’s this arc of
0:57:28 basically Oppenheimer, you know, was he, or was he not? And there’s one arc actually, which is,
0:57:32 was he, or was he not himself a Soviet asset, which is, it’s generally viewed historically that he wasn’t
0:57:36 literally a Soviet asset. Although I think there are still questions around that in fairness. And we
0:57:40 can talk about that, but then there’s just this broader thing, which is even if he wasn’t like,
0:57:44 was he trustworthy and could, could he be relied upon? And then there was a specific thing that
0:57:48 actually happened, which the movie presents a version of that I think is not, it’s my understanding
0:57:54 history is not correct, but which is Oppenheimer basically, um, worked his butt off to, to deliver
0:57:59 the atomic bomb for the purpose of beating Germany and Japan. Um, but then immediately upon that
0:58:03 happening, the U S weapons program shifted into making the hydrogen bomb, which was going to be the,
0:58:07 you know, the big one that was going to be used ultimately, you know, ultimately was going to be used
0:58:11 to the cold war, you know, as a, as a deterrent against the Soviet union, you know, as a project
0:58:16 led by Edward Teller. Um, and, um, and, and the accusation always was Oppenheimer deliberately
0:58:20 slow rolled the development of the hydrogen bomb. Like he tried to prevent that from happening at
0:58:24 first the, the, the, you know, and, you know, Oppenheimer’s version of the story is it’s one thing to
0:58:28 like have a new thing that could take out a city if to end a war. It’s another thing that a new thing
0:58:31 could take out the planet, uh, you know, and, and, and so like, you know, should we really be doing
0:58:34 this? But there’s another version of the story, which is you were completely in favor of beating
0:58:38 Germany and Japan. And then, but the minute it came to beating the Soviet union, you know,
0:58:42 you got cold feet, you know, isn’t that interesting, right? That, that, that that’s the thing that you
0:58:47 didn’t want to have happen. And then there’s just the reality that like Oppenheimer’s backgrounds
0:58:52 and political activities and like all of the people around him, including his wife and his girlfriend
0:58:57 and his brother were actual, like, I don’t believe this would be the case. I think his wife, his
0:59:02 girlfriend and, and his brother were all actual communists, like actual capital C car carry
0:59:07 communists. And then Oppenheimer himself was like embroiled to communism and it’s, it’s sort of
0:59:11 communist, you know, sort of adjacent organizations, you know, his entire life. He, he’s not known ever
0:59:15 have been a member of the communist party. Although again, there’s, there’s, there’s, uh, there’s
0:59:19 ambiguity there because the Soviets had a practice of having their best placed assets actually never
0:59:22 become members of his party because of course they were trying to protect him against exactly
0:59:26 the kind of persecution that Oppenheimer got, got, got, got leveled against him. Uh, but as anyway,
0:59:30 so in, in the movie, ultimately he has security clearance, gets, gets stripped and he sort of
0:59:35 resigns to disgrace. The movie paints this as like a great act of moral heroism on his part where
0:59:38 basically he won a credit for the little bomb, but he didn’t want the big bomb to happen and
0:59:42 certainly didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Um, you know, and, and look, you know,
0:59:46 he’s dead, they’re all dead. Like, you know, I, I don’t know that we’ll ever know like what,
0:59:48 what, what, what lay in their hearts, but there are very interesting questions around this.
0:59:52 Um, and then there’s the, the, and then there’s my most stinging indictment of the movie,
0:59:57 uh, which is, uh, Einstein was the exact opposite of a moral exemplar. Uh, Einstein was a Stalinist.
1:00:03 Like Einstein was like a full on, like Einstein was pro-Stalin, like not even just pro-Condinist,
1:00:07 was actually like pro-Stalin and Einstein thought that like American democracy was like not going to
1:00:10 cut it. And like, we clearly needed to get to Condinist dictatorship. And there’s a, there’s
1:00:14 a book that goes through this, uh, called When Reason Goes to Holiday, uh, that came out a few
1:00:16 years ago that kind of goes through all of Einstein’s writings and speeches,
1:00:21 kind of reconstructs this history. And so the movie kind of presents Oppenheimer and Einstein
1:00:26 is like the adults. And especially Einstein is like the moral adults in the room, uh, to a degree
1:00:30 that I just think is like basically at this point bizarre. And the re and the reason is bizarre is
1:00:33 because, you know, the whole thing is set up of like, Oh my God, what if the atomic bomb destroys
1:00:37 the world? Oh my God, you know, it’s this whole thing. And all politics evolved in that. So the
1:00:41 ending and so forth, but like, we’re sitting here 80 years later. And the thing that we know today,
1:00:45 and I don’t know that any of us would choose to have had the events play out this way. And maybe
1:00:48 the world would be better without the bomb or whatever, but like, what we know today is world
1:00:54 war three did happen. Um, and so basically like everybody, everybody in sort of the military political
1:00:58 establishment in 1945 kind of took it for granted that there was going to be world war three with
1:01:02 Soviet unit at some point. Um, and it was going to be a land war, you know, in Europe and around the
1:01:05 world. And it was going to kill probably, you know, in the order of 200 million people. And it was just
1:01:09 going to be absolutely devastating. And like, you know, in any other era, like of, of, of sort of
1:01:13 geopolitics, like that almost certainly would have happened given how, given how tense of it it got,
1:01:17 especially in the sixties and seventies. And like, literally it didn’t happen. Like world war three
1:01:20 is, is, is the dog that didn’t bite. And the reason world war three didn’t happen is sort of,
1:01:24 I think fairly obvious, which is mutually assured destruction, right? Then the fact that both sides
1:01:28 had nukes basically meant that neither side to go to war with the other. And that resulted in 80,
1:01:32 you know, it resulted in a cold war, but not a hot war. Um, and so I, you know, I think if you kind
1:01:37 of stack up Oppenheimer and Teller and these guys, you kind of say, you know, by, by, by, by building
1:01:41 bombs, it could destroy the world. They prevented at least one, you know, major world war. It’s just,
1:01:46 you know, by the way, it’s, it’s not many. Uh, and by the way, the existence of nukes may prevent
1:01:49 another world war for 500 years, right? Like, you know, we don’t know yet, but like, you know,
1:01:53 like that, that mutually assured destruction is, is, is still in effect. So yeah, they may be,
1:01:57 they may be, uh, they may be causing us to not have a hot war with China, right? Does the fact
1:02:02 that both the U S and China had nukes. Um, and so anyway, so, and by the way, that’s all debatable and you
1:02:06 could argue that, but like, that’s the argument, that’s the argument that ought to happen. Like,
1:02:09 especially with what we know today. And I just thought the movie, like, I thought the movie just
1:02:13 like really cheated on the morality of it. Cause it kind of presented this, this guy just slammed
1:02:16 on that if the nuke was bad and that these people were bad and the whole thing was bad and that
1:02:21 Einstein was like a, or sorry, that both Einstein and Oppenheim were moral heroes in some extent kind
1:02:24 of trying to line up against this. And I just thought that, that really cheated the audience.
1:02:30 I, I, I think, uh, I think you and I are much closer on our critique of it. My, my sense is very
1:02:35 similar to yours that it started out very strong, right? Like your, your portrayal in Berkeley,
1:02:40 like was a very interesting, you know, like you, you kind of, you saw this complex figure
1:02:44 and complex character. And then there’s this whole middle section, um, on the Manhattan project that
1:02:49 kind of culminates in what I would say is like incredible, like visuals and sound, like actually
1:02:54 like the movie excels in both score and sound. And if you saw it in a theater, you were like the,
1:02:58 the, the sound editing is like the thing that won the Oscar. I think they won 10 Oscars. I mean,
1:03:03 they won everything, but it’s like, like sound editing and score, like just incredible movie
1:03:08 making. And then to your, to use your word, schizophrenic, like the third part, which is all
1:03:14 about, you know, Robert Downey Jr.’s, Jr.’s character being like a villain. It sort of ends with this, you know,
1:03:19 there’s this brilliant scene that I think everyone remembers where they show him giving a speech to all
1:03:26 the people at Los Alamos and then they show like him envisioning bodies, um, in, in, you know, in, in Hiroshima,
1:03:33 right? And you kind of see the juxtaposition. You see him sort of losing his, his sort of, um, his, his sort of,
1:03:38 you know, conviction that he did the right thing. And I feel like if they had just stopped the movie there, it would
1:03:44 have been the commentary on like, okay, like we don’t really understand his legacy, but instead they had to tie it up
1:03:47 with, it was almost like if, you know, for, for writers and artists, like if you don’t know how to end
1:03:51 something, you kind of tie things up with neat bows that have nothing to do with the thing that
1:03:56 happened before. And it felt like the third section on the security clearance and on him being a hero
1:04:00 was almost like the filmmaker’s apology. Like actually, no, no, I’m going to side, I’m actually
1:04:05 going to paint this for everyone and side that he was actually a good man. And, and there’s, there’s no
1:04:09 sort of moral ambiguity about this, this figure. Like he was actually a good man. And actually the,
1:04:15 the real villains are the national security hawks and the people in Washington and the bureaucrats.
1:04:18 And like, and then it was just this sort of portrayal of, you know, the evil bureaucracy
1:04:23 coming for the beautiful scientists. And, and it sort of mimicked, I think also a conversation that
1:04:29 was happening in 2023 when it came out, which is all of these great AI scientists basically saying,
1:04:33 oh, well, no, AI is actually going to kill us all. And, you know, I know this because I’m an expert.
1:04:37 It was like the same sort of thing. And I kind of felt like that was also the, the sort of language of
1:04:42 the end of the film is like, no, no, it’s normal for people who, who build incredible things to like
1:04:48 actually regret their innovation. And it just felt like way too buttoned up for a film that has a lot
1:04:52 more complexity. And that if they had just ended at an hour or two, it would have been a masterpiece.
1:04:56 Yeah. It felt like if you wanted to conform to President Amorales, like very badly.
1:04:57 Yeah.
1:05:01 Yeah, exactly. And so that, anyway, so that’s my like, like long extended argument for why
1:05:07 Lewis Strauss was actually the hero of the movie. But he was correct. Oppenheimer could not be
1:05:11 trusted. Oppenheimer needed to be rejected from the project. Also, Lewis Strauss has shown the movie
1:05:15 as being very jealous of Einstein. But if you squint, you could say he also had Einstein’s
1:05:20 number. He knew Einstein was not to be trusted, which was a hundred percent true. And then,
1:05:24 yeah, Catherine, to your point, like it, like if you, again, if it, I guess exactly right,
1:05:28 what you just said, if the comparison AI, like if you read the history of those people at that time,
1:05:32 specifically people like Oppenheimer, you realize, yeah, the people who invent the technology
1:05:36 have no special moral claim. They have no special predictive power for the consequence of the
1:05:41 technology. And they have no, no basis for a superior moral claim on the implications of the
1:05:44 technology. And I will say this, the movie, you know, the movie being made by geniuses,
1:05:49 like there was a scene in the movie that actually did kind of hit that, which was, which was, which
1:05:53 was based on a real life thing that happened, which was Oppenheimer after the war visited Harry Truman
1:05:57 at the, in the White House. And basically, and this is sort of in the, in the histories and in the real
1:06:01 world histories, Oppenheimer basically went to Truman and basically, essentially basically confessed
1:06:05 enormous guilt for having built the atomic bomb and for, for having, you know, for the U.S.
1:06:10 having dropped it on, on, on Japan. And, and, and actually in real life, Truman is, I forget the
1:06:15 exact quote, but it’s in the Truman biographies. You know, Truman basically said, it basically, you
1:06:19 know, basically got him out of his office as fast as possible and told his chief of staff, like, I
1:06:22 think, I think the exact line was never let that weepy son of a bitch in here again.
1:06:26 And then I think the line of the movie is based on something Truman apparently actually said, which
1:06:31 was, you know, Robert, you, you didn’t make the decision to drop the bomb. It’s not on you. I made
1:06:36 the decision. Right. Which, right. Which, which is like, which is like an incredibly powerful thing,
1:06:41 which is the duly elected commander in chief of the country made that decision as he should have.
1:06:46 The, the, the, the, the scientist does not have the moral authority inside how the technology is used.
1:06:50 It’s the, it’s, it’s our, you know, in our system of government, the, the, the, the commander in chief
1:06:55 has that authority, you know, in our elected representatives. Um, and so I like to the movie’s
1:07:00 enormous credit, it did include that. It did show that. Um, and, and again, like in my fantasy cut
1:07:05 of the movie, that’s the end of the movie. Um, so they kind of nodded with that, but like, you know,
1:07:10 like I said, they, then, then, then, then they let him off the hook, um, uh, at the end.
1:07:14 Shall we close with, uh, with Fight Club? Fight Club? Well, we could spend an entire,
1:07:18 we could spend hours on just Fight Club and we probably should at some point. I would just say about
1:07:23 Fight Club. Fight Club’s an amazing, I think it’s like, I think it’s, I think it’s, it’s 100% true
1:07:26 art with capital A. I think it’s amazing. I think it’s, you know, definitely going to stand the test
1:07:30 of time, you know, already is. Um, you know, it’s one of those movies and it’s, it’s one of those
1:07:34 movies that has that characteristic we talked about last time where like, if you watched it the week
1:07:38 it came out versus a year later versus five years later versus 10 years later versus 20 years versus
1:07:43 30 years later, like it, it has new meanings, uh, as, as, as our society evolves and it’s got,
1:07:47 and you can kind of, you can, at any, at any kind of point in time, you can kind of use it as a
1:07:53 on our society. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing in retrospect, I guess my, my sort of
1:07:58 social, social, political kind of, kind of analysis of it would be like, it was clearly intended as a
1:08:02 left-wing movie, uh, at the time. Cause it was sort of, it was sort of, um, you know, and the novel
1:08:06 that, you know, that’s the famous novel that it’s based on, you know, and, and it’s sort of this,
1:08:10 you know, almost like, what was it? Remember the original, like it was the sort of left-wing
1:08:14 anti-capitalism of that era, like left-wing anarchism. Um, you know, a little bit like that,
1:08:20 it’s like, you know, capitalism is this, you know, basically this horrible right-wing machine
1:08:24 that’s like crushing everybody’s spirits. Um, and of course in, in the movie, Ed Norton plays,
1:08:28 you know, it’s sort of an office drone who just like, absolutely hates his life. Um, and, you know,
1:08:31 has no future and, and like hates himself and, you know, ends up doing all the things that, you know,
1:08:34 kind of play out in the movie, which, you know, and then, and then by the way, the movie culminates
1:08:38 in basically the, the, the destruction of capitalism. Um, you know, basically, uh, what does it,
1:08:41 he, they, they, he, he takes down the buildings containing, I think it’s like all the,
1:08:45 what is it, all the bank records or credit card records, uh, to kind of, you know,
1:08:50 wipe the slate clean and start, start, start the economy society over again. Um, so at the time,
1:08:53 it’s just like, wow, that’s like a really left-wing message. Um, and of course it’s, you know, it’s
1:08:56 like, it’s, it’s, you know, David Fincher and his Ed Norton or Brad Pitt. And it’s like one of the
1:09:00 best, most entertaining, you know, most captivating movies ever made. It’s, it’s phenomenal, but like,
1:09:03 it’s fundamentally a left-wing movie. You watch it today and you’re just like, wow, it’s like ultra
1:09:08 right-wing. Like, it’s like ultra, ultra, ultra right-wing. Cause it’s a, to start with,
1:09:11 it’s a white guy. Right. Um, right. And so they’re like, it’s literally,
1:09:15 you view it today and you’re like, wow, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, the stereotype would
1:09:18 be, it’s a right, you know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a white, you know, it’s a privileged white male
1:09:23 incel, uh, you know, basically. Right. Uh, you know, with like every advantage in the world who
1:09:27 said that, you know, who nevertheless has built up this persecution complex. Right. And you just,
1:09:30 so for today’s lines, you’re just like, wow, that’s like an ultra right-wing movie. Um, and then by
1:09:35 the way, the, the sort of argument the movie makes about like capitalism is like the great,
1:09:39 you know, atomization of society and like nobody has any type, anything. And people are just like
1:09:43 interchangeable cogs in the great, you know, kind of, you know, in the great kind of machine
1:09:47 of modernity. Um, you know, they kind of put on this assembly line through complete menialism until
1:09:51 they die. And like all concept of white family community is like completely ruptured. And like
1:09:55 capitalism is like, you know, basically the machine that does that, you know, neoliberal capitalism is
1:10:01 the machine that does that. Like sitting here today, that’s a Reitman critique. Um, and so, and so I,
1:10:04 I probably shouldn’t name names, but I did talk to somebody who was involved in the making of the
1:10:08 movie. I said, I don’t want to, it was a, uh, I don’t want to, I don’t want to represent his,
1:10:12 his views, but I specifically by name, but I talked to somebody who made the movie and I laid up my
1:10:15 theory that it was a left-wing movie at the time and now it’s a right-wing movie. And this, this person
1:10:20 basically said, oh no, he’s like, it’s very clear in the movie that at the end, you know, that he
1:10:23 greatly regrets what he’s doing. Like he, you know, he, he like has, you know, he’s filled with regret.
1:10:28 Like it’s a very, you know, kind of sad, tragic ending. Um, and, and I was like, oh, well then if you just
1:10:32 like used AI to just go in there and tweak the final scene of, of, uh, the Ed Norton character
1:10:36 standing, you know, watching the building stem down. And if you just tweak the final scene to where he
1:10:40 would have like a slight little smile on his face, like all of a sudden, like the entire movie becomes
1:10:45 like this, you know, basically ultra right wing can start to finish. Um, and anyway, I’ll, I’ll pause
1:10:48 there. I just, I was just going to say whichever way you interpret it, like, I think that movie
1:10:52 definitely is definitely AR. I think it’s amazing. I think it’ll, I think people will be watching it
1:10:56 and discussing it, you know, a hundred years from now. Yeah. To bring it back to the original
1:11:01 thesis of this podcast, monitoring the situation that’s going on in the internet. Um, what went
1:11:07 viral this week related to fight club was the PSAs that Brad Pitt and Edward Norton put out before
1:11:11 the movie came out in theaters. And if you have, I won’t, this is one thing I won’t spoil, but it was
1:11:16 going viral. Like, why don’t we make PSAs about like staying silent in the theater like this, uh,
1:11:23 anymore? You have to watch it. It’s like 90 seconds. Um, and it just confirms that Brad Pitt is the
1:11:27 goat. He is hilarious. Um, and that he puts serious thought into everything he does,
1:11:32 including the please stay quiet in the theater, uh, PSAs that went out before the movie came out
1:11:37 in theaters 25 years ago. So watch it. Uh, I’m glad it’s going viral again. And we should definitely
1:11:43 make actors do those PSAs for theaters. So Catherine, that really came out in what?
1:11:44 1999. Yeah, 1999.
1:11:48 Which is kind of universal. I remember just like a year of like absolutely amazing movies.
1:11:52 Yes. Maybe that that maybe the best single year for movies in the last like 40 years
1:11:58 or longer. So, um, question, um, could that movie? So number one is that movie was at least
1:12:02 according to the accounts that I’ve read, that movie was very difficult to make. Um, and then once they
1:12:06 had in the can, like people, the original people who saw it, like, were, you know, it’s just like a lot
1:12:10 of people just like, didn’t know what to make of it, you know, cause it is very simplistic reading
1:12:14 of it. Right. Which is just like total nihilism and like just destruction and, and, you know,
1:12:18 size of violence, you know, to no purpose. It’s one of those movies where like you have
1:12:21 to have a lens on the movie. You have to have an idea of the movie or the movie has to get
1:12:24 its idea across to you and you have to, you have to catch the idea before you can actually
1:12:27 watch it properly. Cause if you just watch it, otherwise it just seems like it’s just like
1:12:31 tremendously nihilistic, which I, you know, very much, I very much don’t believe that it is,
1:12:35 but, uh, you know, I think it was very controversial at the time. Um, it was very hard to get
1:12:40 made. You know, it’s, it was misinterpreted by many people over the years. And by the way,
1:12:44 the people who made it might be me as misinterpreting it. Um, and so that, that movie
1:12:48 could get made during that era. Could that movie have gotten made, uh, after the nineties?
1:12:56 I feel like it’s the, like the consummate nineties film, right? Like, like just the, the, as you said,
1:13:04 like the critique on consumerism, like the, uh, sort of early critique on, um, you know, kind of the
1:13:09 consumerism affecting masculine like traits, right? Like, like the whole, the whole reaction of,
1:13:14 you know, we’re going to have a fight club to kind of reclaim our, our masculinity and sort of
1:13:17 our life and our, you know, that, that felt like was actually, I mean, it’s, it’s interesting because
1:13:22 it’s the same critique. It’s the same conversation that’s happening right now, but it really was also
1:13:27 a nineties conversation, um, to sort of, you know, and that’s the same thing as, um, I believe 1999 was
1:13:32 also American beauty. And that’s a similar sort of like all of these movies had the same sort of,
1:13:38 to your point, nihilism, but sort of this David Foster Wallace-esque sort of consumerism is
1:13:41 destroying us. We’re moving to the suburbs and we have to reclaim in some way. And like
1:13:48 the sort of, I don’t like the portrayal of any man feeling like constrained in there.
1:13:53 And it was always, it was always sort of like the consumerism and the suburbanization of America is
1:13:58 destroying sort of like masculine freedom. Right. So there were like, oh, that was like a very nineties
1:14:04 or coded end, end of the nineties film era. Like, I don’t, so part of me is like, I don’t,
1:14:08 it could probably be made, but it would probably be made with totally different ethos and maybe a
1:14:14 totally different take on that, um, thesis now. Like the thesis is slightly different than what
1:14:18 it was in the nineties, which is that like, you know, like Walmart is destroying you, right? Like
1:14:22 it’s a very different, now it’s like tech is destroying you, but at the time it was Walmart
1:14:24 and capitalism are destroying you.
1:14:26 Mark, Catherine, thanks so much for coming on and talking about movies again.
1:14:28 Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark.
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