A Geek History of Time - Episode 130 - Zombies Part VI

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, I'm not gonna merge it. Who gives a fuck? Oh my god, which is a trick on you, baby. You know what I'm saying? Well, you know, I really like it here. It's kind of nice and it's not as cold as Buckleman's.

So, yeah, sure, I think we're gonna settle. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone, yeah. I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah. So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier.

Good day, Sphere. If Sphere thought it was empty-headed, plumbian trash, it is not really good at grue. Because cannibalism and murder pull back just a little bit, build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's totally fine. Authorial intent doesn't exist.

Some people stand up quite a bit, some people stay seen quite a bit, so let me just... This is a de-Castry of Time, where we all connect to the real world. My name is Ed Leiland, history and English teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And in the not too distant future, like getting closer with every passing minute, I'm actually going to be able to say, I'm a homeowner here very soon.

My wife and I have been working very hard to play the end stage capitalist game of improving our credit scores. And we actually got pre-approved for a home loan. capitalist game of improving our credit scores. And we actually got pre-approved for a home loan on Thursday. And we're gonna be actually going and looking in earnest at houses this weekend. And it's actually kind of funny.

We have a list of, you know, these are, you know, absolute must-haves. We've been talking forever, the must-haves are minimum three bedrooms, minimum two bathrooms. Like that's a hard deck, you know, requirement. And we have already found a house that may very well force us to give up one of those.

We found a property in one part of town that my wife really wants to live in. That only has one bathroom. And she sent it to me and I was like, the bathroom's thing was your deal. Right. And she said, yeah, but, but I mean, look at the ceilings, look at like, look at how much property there is on this. It's amazing. We can do so much. I'm like, you're going to be the one that will have to share one bathroom with me and our

son who is still potty training. So like, it doesn't get better when he's older, just saying no. Yeah, I know, but like, if you're okay with it, then yeah, we can take a look. So yeah, but yeah, we're very excited. And I cannot wait to actually get my barbecue grill installed. Cause it's sitting in storage right now. That's a story for another time. Who are you?

Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin and a drama teacher of here in Northern California and my son is trying out swear words and What I mean by that is You're rough housing. So there's a bit of a history to this. We were rough housing. And at one point, and he says, you bitch. And I stopped everything. I was like, what? And he immediately realized, you know, he knew it was a bad word. And he immediately was like, Oh, I'm, I'm sorry. I'm like, okay, okay here's the thing you did not know the context of that word But I need to tell you you never ever use that word with another person

Okay, it's got too much weight to it if he's used it on the woman especially, etc So and he was you know he's pretty cool Well then he started using the word badass from time to time to describe cap marvel or things like that That's fine. I got no problem. Okay. Yeah, um, and then uh, and then he used Um, he tried bastard once And in minimal effect for him. He didn't get the joy out of it Um, I taught them how to play Liars dice recently He didn't get the joy out of it. I taught them how to play Liars Dice recently and

One of them called me on on my dice and and I was bluffing and I just lifted it up I'm like shit and he's like what was that? It's not that he hadn't heard me say that word. I've said that word plenty Yeah, but it was more like why are you swearing about that? I'm like, oh, cuz I got caught. It's you know, no big deal Okay, that night he's taking a shower. And the shampoo bottle falls and hits him on the foot. And we hear the thunk, thunk, thunk, you know. And then we hear, now my son is a redhead. He is very similar to his dad in a number of ways,

including the acuity with which he feels pain. And unfortunately, he's not felt enough of it enough in his life that he is also incredibly tolerant of it as I am. So I have very low thresholds, very high tolerance. Okay. I feel it immediately, but I understand what you're saying, unfortunately, but I'd say that's a credit to you as a parent, protecting him. Yes, but physical pain is a reality of life. And anybody who sells otherwise is selling something.

Selling something. Yeah, but so he still feels like he still cries at physical pain. He's 11, it's fine, he gets to. Yeah. I don't try to him for that at all. Just like feel it, move through it. And so you hear, I'm gonna back away from the mic. Oh

Oh And it's like okay, you know my daughter and I are sitting down there. It's like oh man I really missed to hit them right there on the bone and then we hear shit Shit Shit Shit And as as you know my son is Scientifically acknowledged as the sweetest human being on the planet such such such a such a cinnamon roll So to hear him saying shit while in pain

and knowing that he's trying it out, it's just so goddamn cute. And my daughter and I sit there just laughing at my son's pain, which is the worst lesson to teach her because she's kind of, she's that person that needs to get you back if you accidentally heard her. I'm working on that.

But so I go up and check on him later, I'm like, hey, are you okay? He's like, yeah, this just hurt. It really hurts. I'm like, okay, I heard you seem pretty upset. He's like, yeah, I was swearing a little. So, I hope he does not ever outgrow that, that, I do too. So I hope he does not ever outgrow that I do too.

I do. Innocence for lack of a better word. I don't know how else to describe it, but that wonderful better effect. Yeah, I was swearing. Yeah, I hope that I'm in change. I hope I'm the worst potty mouth in his life. You know, like. But okay, so without giving away my location or your location, I'm just going to tell you,

there's some nice places to live out here that satisfy your needs, saying out loud. Yeah, yeah, I know. And the area in which you are living is in neighborhood in which my wife really wants to move to. Sweet. I know who to work on. There are financial issues involved in terms of our upper limit of what we can afford right now right so you know as a matter of fact the the property I was just telling you about is out sort of in your neck of the

woods it's it's it's not in your neighborhood but it's in your part of town I'm I'm in favor already so yeah it gets you closer because I don't like to barbecue, but I don't mind other people bar barbecuing You you don't like barbecuing, but you you enjoy eating barbecue. Yeah, yeah, I don't like you know what we have figured out how to cook indoors And I ain't going back so Yeah, okay, whatever I Recognize I'm in the minority on this one. I yeah, I mean producer George or both like solidly looking at you as cans like you guys like my toys to make it more of a thing outdoors to like giant,

giant black metal toy. I'm like, all right, cool. I'm going to be inside with your wives. Yeah, no, mine mine's a big, big ceramic egg. Yeah, it's with a gold and a gold. Already lost interest. Just, oh my God, whatever. Sorry, whatever.

I mean, you know, you know, serious this, you do you. Yeah. Like, there's an emotional level on which I'm like, you fucking heretic. Like, right. I mean, did I'm like you fucking heretic like right? I mean, I mean you've got the tools to burn me so Did I? Is this is a god was one thing I'm willing to overlook that but like you're

Outdoor cooking Like that's your line in the same That's your line in the same. You know that's that. That's so far past my line in the same right there. Oh, I love it. Oh, speaking of barbecues, line in, say, I don't know. Let's talk zombies some more because it's only 2003 as far as my studies have gone.

And yeah, so you remember where I talked about Resident Evil a couple episodes ago, right? Yeah where I talked about resident evil a couple episodes ago, right? Yeah. I'm going to keep talking about it pretty much every episode because that was just an ATM machine or an ATM. ATM machine would be an asked mouth machine. And that's that's a different show. So different set of social issues to analyze there. A little bit, a little bit. But at least you use the word analyze. Antelize? Yeah, well done.

Okay, anyway. Any moving on. You know the difference between... Okay. But in 2003, there was a movie called House of the Dead that came out. And it came out to very modest success. And as you remember, we had just talked about human animal clone hybrids and stuff like that. But also because Resident Evil has really kind of...

I don't want to say taking the baton from the Romero movies, but it really has opened up the idea that you can be very financially viable. Like blockbuster viable. Not just, yes, we made our money back and then some were still be movie, but actual You know creating a franchise. I and high end big budget franchise and pull kind of kind of thing Yeah, and partly because it's a multimedia thing. It's not just the The movie it's the game too, you know, yeah, that was that was gonna be what I I, what I was about to bring up was the house of the dead, of course, is based on an arcade shooter. A Sega game. In 1996. Yes. Yeah. That's in, essentially, it's mechanically very different from Resident Evil, but it's in the same genre. It's a survival horror shooter first person kind of kind of thing. I remember playing it in the arcade. Oh wow. I hated it. Partly because I just like again the genre was never one

that I was that big on. Sure. And just mechanically I just didn't like the way it worked. It felt way too much like bullet spam. I could see that. And so I never got into it, but I know of people who were huge big fans, my buddies would go to the Nikolarcade and they'd put three bucks in that game over the course of, you know, an hour or more. And so, you know, I mean, yeah. And for the time, you know. So, and then what I think, what I'm going to theorize here is part of the reason the house did performance was as modest as it was. And this is where I'm going to start guessing. Is it largely because people took it as being a retread of Resident Evil because they're the same genre, they're both video game movies?

I think it's more because it was so 1990s that it hurt. Okay. Okay, so first off, UE Bull is directing it. And that is an acquired taste. And maybe not an acquired taste. That is a particular taste. You maybe not an acquired taste. That is a particular taste. You either like or don't like you, we both. And my friends who like zombie movies did not like you, we both. And also this, this movie takes place on a rave island off

the coast of Seattle. Okay, wait, back up. Yeah. I've only gotten one sentence into it. There's not much to back up. I understand. It's a complicated sentence and we need to break it down. Fair. Much like much like I'm having to do with my English students. Okay, we're going to so subject is here. Predicate is here. Okay. So a rave island. Yes. Off the coast of Seattle. Right. The out and Puget sound. The center of like grunge. So we're gonna have a rave island out there. But there's multiple music that happen in every place. So if you had a rave in Athens, Georgia, I would think it was weird, but at the same time. Sure, there's kids who like Janko.

Yeah, that was part of what I was gonna say was like, okay, yes, Grunge was epicentered in and around the Pacific Northwest, but Grunge was not ravey. Not at all. And I think if you're going for a movie you're going for a a vulgar mindset as in Vulgate and so setting it off the coast of Seattle is kind of Odd as a choice I Think maybe like I'm theorizing here. I lived in the Pacific Northwest

Maybe like I'm theorizing here. I lived in the Pacific Northwest. There's maybe this kind of conceptual idea that it's this eternally foggy, rainy, spooky kind of kind of place. Yes, yes, this is true. And so we're trying to get something atmospheric. Yep. Yep. So okay. I mean, I can see that. But by the same token, that is that's a pretty limited kind of view of what you need to do to get. I think if you'd done a few overhead shots of LA and then a boat going to Catalina Island, and then just said it was a rave island, you don't even have to film it there. You could establish a much more believable rave scene where excess and going out to a goddamn dioland that that seems very makes makes more yeah that's a

very Southern California play speaking as a Southern California yes I can totally buy that yeah right but instead we're a channel yeah so there's a boat that takes our two protagonists over to the Rave Island. Fun fact, the captain and the first mate of the boat are the captain from Doss Boot and Clint Howard. I was tickled by that. Not the Clint Howard so much, but the pairing with the captain from Doss Boot. Right. with the captain from DOS Boot. We have, right.

Money, your boy. But I also just like that he's a little bit pigeonholed into it's gotta be semi-naval. Like, it's just like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like,

it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like and everything but like this guy now you can't get off the fucking water so no matter how hard he tries so we have a party of six people right this fucking boat why the fuck do I always have to be sitting on a fucking guy you know I can see why you know you understand my my understated performances are based around the fact that I'm taking fucking drama mean twice a fucking day. I'm nauseous. I'm nauseous. That is why I'm such a red. I'm sick to my stomach and I'm fucking tired. Like, please. So yeah, so yeah, during the rave, of course, there's a zombie attack and our party of six

Of course, which is quickly whittled down and then added to again. They try to escape this, right? Um, oh Did I mention that do? He did I mentioned that the island off the coast of Seattle is called the Isla del Morte Right, right because Because it used to be Uh- it used to be. The Civil Northwest had been settled by the Spanish. Right. Well, this island specifically had been a saving island for Spanish Catholic priest who was banished from Spain in the 15th century for his dark experiments, which the Catholic

church had forbidden. And again, you could have done all of this off the coast of Los Angeles. What it made so much more sense. What made so much more sense? So much more sense. You know, okay. If you'd gone to Russian Orthodox, I could have, could have stretched for this. It would have been a lot harder, but yes. No, here's the thing.

This is, and now I have a theory. Okay. I have a theory. Okay. So they wanted to film the trip out to Catalina Island. They wanted an excuse to go out to Catalina Island to film. And then they realized they didn't have the fucking budget to film in Southern California.

They had to film in British Columbia, like everybody does. And they're like, okay, whatever. It's off the coast to Seattle, fine, fuck it, just go. Yeah, but they could have called it somewhere. Like, I've seen Vancouver get called Boston plenty of times. Oh, I've seen Vancouver get called, you know, some alien planet on Stargate SG-1, like any number of the running gag when my friends and I were watching Stargate was, huh, it looks like British Columbia. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing how the countryside of England in no way looks like Southern California. You know, it's that kind of joke.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so I think the deal is the script got written and they ran into the world we can't afford to film there. And then they were just like, okay, you know, fuck it, we'll do it live. And yeah, we'll just, you know, it it, we'll do it live. And yeah, we'll just, you know, it's Seattle instead of LA, but everything else, why? We'll just leave it alone. You could have called it those things though. Like, that's the thing. Like, this was

deliberate choices and I'm not going to be generous about the choices. No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to be jitter. I think it makes it actually worse. I'm not. No, I think you're at least begging like ignorance. Whereas I think no, these were deliberate choices. Like they didn't understand how budgets worked. And I'm like, no, this was their choice. Also that that priest during his exile, he had murdered the crew and enslaved the entire island's population of natives. And then he also murdered anyone who visited that place. Um, I'm sorry, was, was he per chance Black Adam? Like how? No, but funny you would mention that because he, I did of course mention in the description

right where the priest created an immortality serum with which he injected himself, allowing himself to live forever and return den souls to life and support his cause right? No. You left that part of the equation out which makes some of that make a little bit more sense but I'm still going to go with succeeding and enslaving the entire population of an island. Doesn't this feel like a Hades zombie movie? And then a little bit.

Yeah. And then killing everybody on the crew of the ship like, okay, if you're going to actually maintain control over a population, you can't only be one dude unless you're Jim Jones. And this doesn't sound like charismatic cult leader. Right, it sounds like it sounds like terror driving, like, you know, father, serotype shit.

Yeah, anyway, carry on. So there's tunnel chases, chases, in tunnels and out of tunnels. The priest ends up wearing somebody else's face at one point. He ends up attacking everyone. He plans to use their flesh. Someone to capitates him, but the corpse still continues on until someone squashes the head. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So. And by the way, I love specifically how you say he plans on using their flesh, not their bodies. Right. They're flesh. Somebody, somebody like, and I'm guessing here that you're taking the use of the word flesh from lines in the film.

Yeah, I mean, well, and also like, you know, he's going for the immortality thing. Doesn't mean your flesh is immortal. So you gotta keep replacing. Look, when you have a car, you have to replace the tires from time to time. Yes, you have to replace the tires from time to time. Yes. You need to replace the oil from time to time, but the engine stays strong. Okay. Yeah, there's replaceable parts. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I, I just find it

entertaining. Yeah, within the context, sorry, within the context of these kinds of movies, writers so regularly go to using the word flesh. Yes. You know, not meat, not muscle, not tissue, but not syriosh. Yes. You know, because there's something about the inflection of that word that is just naturally creepy, creepy, yeah. And then add to that a priest, add to that the power dynamic, add, there's a lot, yeah, there's a lot of pages. So many, so yeah, seven layers at least. This is an onion, yeah, nice. Thank you.

Depth of, yeah. Because it's Mexican food. So this is very much a studios or at least a late boomers attempt at understanding youth cultures Ray's yo Hello fellow teenagers right Now it occurs to me now that I've mentioned Kids wearing janko jeans. So for those of you who don't know what those are, just type in JNKO in a search engine. And you'll see, like, here's the thing.

Fashion is always a retread of what happened a generation before because I think this is a Damien Harmony special, I think that it is driven by spirit days and high schools by the girls because the moms save all their clothes because women don't vary in size nearly as much as men do from high school through parenting older teens and so the moms save their clothes with that hoof-floppedemism of getting back to that shape even though they won't and their daughters are actually gonna go through their closets and raid them to find stuff for spirit days And then they'll put their own twist on it. My proof is that in the 90s Gals were starting to wear low-rise jeans and

hip-huggers and Bell bottoms and mid-riff shirts. Yes. That was one of the styles. Now there were others. There were also the hip-to-ankle dresses with a T-shirt, which was absolutely my favorite aesthetically. But I can see that because it just looks so comfortable. Like, yeah. I'm just, oh, comfort is hot. I've just always been that way. Man, I tell you, that's a woman in a jumpsuit. I'm just like, oh, it's got pockets. So, you could fit snacks in that thing, you know? But, so, and then if you backward from 20 years from that,

you had virtually the same thing, but it was much more denim-based, much more earthen tones, and the 90s was a little different. But it was kind of the same thing, and now 20 years after that, I'm seeing students doing the same thing. Like, it's like 30 years after that. Yeah, it's 30 years after that. You'm seeing students doing the same thing. Like, it's like 30 years after that. Yeah, it's 30 years after that. But what's just reinforced is your idea

that it's a generation thing. Yeah, because people had kids later. And so now we're seeing that again. Now, Jankos were the boys equivalent to it. So there were bell bottoms, and Jankos were like, you know what? Bell bottoms are not flared nearly enough. I want to look like the Emperor Palpatine toy,

where the legs were just these giant billowies. Nice, nice things. Yeah, yeah. I want to do something that like would pass for a Haka Ma. Yes. If I were transported if I were transported to Japan, Denom Haka Ma. It will look like I'm wearing the mechanic who wears Haka Ma. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be. Yeah. So Haka Ma, Haka Ma, but make it goth. Yes. Like, so I love the idea of a rave happening in like the mid-south, because you could just call

it, you know, jankum and jankos. Just nice. Thank you. Thank you. All of that together. No, that is, that is, oh my god. So, so you said, you know, you know, go into a search engine and look these up.

Yeah, you did. And, and Schmuckbate, I did. And it brought a rush of memories back. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I am so glad I graduated from high school in 93. Oh, yeah. So that I didn't have to see this. Oh no, that it was in the high school in 93. Oh, yeah. So that I didn't have to see this.

Oh no, that it was in the high school. It hit big while I was in high school. Like there were, there was a small contingent of people because I went to a very white bread school. But, but it did still hit. Because we had people still dressing up like cowboys, which was ridiculous. Oh, well, yeah,, yeah, that's eternal.

The thing is that that particular subculture in countries is just that's a thing. Like everybody I've talked to in this suburban Bay area. Like what do you do? It's not Halloween. What are you doing? Yeah, no, it's it's it's it's an identity in subculture. It's just a thing. I was I was I don't know how to describe it,

I was kind of, you were a square. I wasn't a Jason when I was a square, yes, I was a dork. I just, the square is giving me too much credit. But, but I was raised by my mother who is, you know, herself half-oakie. So, like there were aspects of that. That kind of carried around, but I was not, you know, I didn't walk around looking like a shirt tucker through a lot of high school. But like, no, I grew up in the burbs of San Diego and we had a couple of people like that.

It was only a couple, but they were there. You know, the bigger groups we had were the kids that were really trying, really hard to look like they were members of the Vietnamese gang. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, that was a big aesthetic for a number of kids. And then we had a whole lot of preppy white people.

Yeah, yeah. So in our preppy, very, very white bread school, I must confess to my aesthetic. My aesthetic was, I never asked my parents for money for clothes. And so what that meant was, things would wear out and I wouldn't replace them because I'm also cheap. So I would wear shorts with not quite long johns, but essentially long johns, but they were electric bright blue. Okay. So the shorts themselves were tan, and they had these electric bright, bright blue. I'm going to call them looses, because they weren't tight underneath, and then whatever concert t-shirt or whatever.

I had a friend at the time who she was much more of a square, much more of a preppy type person. She cared about things like fashion and all that. We've been friends forever, and I asked her one day, and I was like, so how come, I know I'm a decent person, and I know that I'm funny, and I know I've got a personality but like, very, very specific subgenre of people were interested in me.

Why weren't like, most of your friends and stuff like that? And she said, Damien, did you see what you wore? Like, there was no hesitation, there was no, let me think on that. It was, I mean, I guess she'd been ready with that card forever. She was just too polite to pull it. I just want to help you. Yeah, and I'm like, well, yeah, I saw what I wore.

I was comfortable and warm, but, you know, they let in the air, so I wouldn't get sweaty. It was nice. And she's like, and she just shook her head and walked away. So. Yeah, okay. So my own aesthetic was five steps above mine. Five steps above mine easily. Yeah.

Yeah. But like nascent grunge, like as grunge was starting to become a thing, I realized that, hey, you know what, a flannel shirt actually looks like feels comfortable. So a young Bobby. Buttoned up. A young Bobby. Yeah, pretty much.

However, however, a very big part of my aesthetic was, I sort of inherited an old raincoat of my grandfather's. It was a Houndstooth check overcoat with a black lining in it. The sleeves were too long, so I went everywhere with the sleeves rolled up a couple of times. So it was almost like I was wearing a trench coat. So it's like a silent bob like. Kind of. A little bit silent bob ask. Yes. And yeah.

And again, I didn't have a friend who ever looked at me and said, did you see what you were wearing? But I'm pretty sure my what? It was comfortable and I think it looks cool. Would have totally been my response to that. My mind was much more like the, an eight year old is designing a character on a role playing game on the Xbox. I love that analogy.

That's really what it was. That's pretty cool. Like, let's give them blue tight legs. Okay. Cool. And what color is pants brown? All right. What's it's shirt like?

Something colorful. Looks like the 90s. All right. Cool. Yeah. All right. So in 2003, long after that, you know, I was I was much more fashionable. I was wearing our giles with knickers. Um, it's amazing. I got married twice.

But so in 2003, there was a zombie movie. Oh, Ed is just leaning back. So there's a zombie spy movie called Corpse's Our Forever. And it was played with the same amnesia motif that we saw in Resident Evil. There's a CIA agent who specifically made an amnesiac in order to make room for him to get injected memories from patient zero in order to beat the zombie plague. It turns out the patient zero was Satan. Oh, hey. Yeah. There's a twist.

Right. So, okay. A couple of things right off the bat. Okay. That is so not any way how memory works. Okay, yeah. Like at all. Yeah.

Like in the least little bit. Yeah, but Johnny and the Monika had been mildly popular. So yeah, but Johnny and Monika at least, like the mechanism of, well, you know, you have access to this, but you don't have access to it. Like you're carrying this, right? But you can't actually, like, no, there is, there is because it's because it's a William Gibson story, right? So it's actually science fiction.

Mm-hmm. There's actually like a meaningful reason why that works that way here. Yeah. I don't know why I'm getting worked up over it because I mean it's a fucking spy zombie movie But anyway, it's a post 9-11 spy zombie movie so notice that your hero is a CIA agent A specifically pointed out good guy CIA agent who's selflessly sacrificing his own comfort for the greater good So that was 2003 2004 Steaming pile of bullshit. Yeah. 2004 was a pretty

big year for zombie movies. Curse of the Maya came out. Okay. Which was not like that has. Yeah. I mean, this one quite honestly is is not a good movie. A horror. Here's, let me blow through the... You've seen things. Well, it's not good. Okay, I'm going to explain the plot and then I'm going to explain why I'm having this reaction. A former junkie moves to a border town in order to stay clean.

They make friends with a guy who maintains windmills in the area. It's okay, it's a terrible movie, but at the time, again, remember, it's the Bush presidency, the US-Mexico border was a bit of a hot topic, especially in this new era of our being afraid of terror to the point of ruining our own economy and that of many other countries. It was so bad that it's listed as a comedy, despite the fact that it did not mean to be a comedy. And this is the memory that it's bringing to mind. Oh, man, okay. Yeah, so there was, I was in drama as were you. There was a kid who was a couple years younger than me, who was also in drama, and our final project was to do something.

And I didn't do a very good job of what I did, but I just, I lacked the imagination, but he had quite the imagination and he had done a really good job of playing a character that had some special needs and so yeah well it was in a play called The Diviners it was a really good play but yeah it's it's I don't want to say it's problematic I just want to say that like maybe maybe if you don't have an actor who has want to say it's problematic. I just want to say that like maybe, maybe if you don't have an actor who has special needs,

maybe it's not the best thing for a high school. I don't know. It was the 90s people. Hey. This was still representation. It was a different time. Yeah, yeah, no, I understand. He could play a few colors really, really well.

But he got to the point where he thought he was able to do all the colors because I mean, he kind of was the central character in the play. And so he made a movie, the movie was called Scottish Pride, Scottish Pride. And remember, this was 1996. So Braveheart had already just come out. And so he and his friends are, and where we live, there's beautiful open space, so there's a lot of wonderful scenes that you can film. And he and his friends, they helped him out a lot. It was, it was a good 10 minutes of really, really bad accent work. Wooden characters kind of all centered around

getting this scene where they're all charging at each other and he was doing different cuts. And then there was combat and it was so bad, it was hilarious. And I thought that it was a parody. I thought that he did it to be funny. I thought that that deserved a lot of praise. And so afterwards we're talking about it and everybody is finding ways to compliment it. And I was just like, this is great. Oh my God, I thought this was hilarious. You, it was so ridiculous. I mean, that was so, I mean, talk about commitment, man.

Like that was, that was fantastic. Where'd you come up with the idea to make a comedy based on a parody of Braveheart? And the uncomfortable stairs, as everybody waited for his response. And I was genuine. I was genuine. Oh, yeah, and his response was It it wasn't a parody And I was like I was mortified Everyone was mortified, but I said what they all thought

Everyone was mortified, but I said what they all thought. Well, yes, yes, yes. And so I immediately apologized. I was like, oh my God, man, I am so sorry. I did not see it as that. If I see it again, if you show it to me again, I'll look at it with a different filter. But I'm sorry, I thought you were doing a parody. To tell someone that they're magnum opus at this point, which everybody as a sophomore

is derivative as fuck. To tell someone that they're magnum opus is a laugh worthy parody. Yeah. And this movie reminded me of that. Yeah. So, so did I ever tell you the story about when I acted in Antigone in high school? Oh, would you play? I wound up getting cast in a combined role that wound up being the messenger. And there were two kind of supporting bits. One was the messenger. I don't remember when I was a soldier. Yeah, the century. Yeah, character. Yeah, the century. Yeah, I think the century. Yeah, I played the century. Okay, and so our director kind of meshed the two of them into the same character. Yeah, okay.

And so we were working with a director who was not our normal drama teacher and director. He was one of the English teachers who had coveted the job of drama teacher for like years. Oh, we have the opposite of that now. No one wants it so they killed a Latin program to get it. Yeah, well, yeah. So, you know, he had wanted to be doing drama forever. And this was my senior year.

And so our drama teacher was gonna be moving the following year to the brand-spank and new fancy high school up the road, where he was not only going to have a bigger, fancier theater to work with, but he had been given the boys' varsity basketball coaching job that he had been coveting for years. So Antigone was this other teacher's audition, essentially,

for taking over the drama department. And he had spent a bunch of time in the drama department at San Diego State University. And so he was very big on us doing this show at in a cathartic, very stylized kind of way. We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna really look at how the Greeks would have done this. And we're gonna we're gonna try to try to update that a little bit, but we're still gonna be rooted in this very stylistic kind of way.

Sure. And so my moment in the show was when I'm describing to Creon, how Antigone and- Yeah, how the body of Paul and Icy's looked after Antigone had given it his final rights. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they sawpically is equivalent of Jesus' ain't in the tomb anymore.

Yeah, basically. And so, you know, I had to fall to my knees and whew, as I'm describing all of this in Tarwan. And then Crayon grabs you by the throat, picks you up and threatens your life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and as I'm describing it,

the, the directorial, you know, trick he'd come up with was, there was gonna be a scrim at the back of the stage. And, the, the suicides involved were going to be projected onto it. Projected up onto that as a shadow play, as I'm describing it. And so I have this huge cathartic moment where I'm throwing myself to my knees, and I'm wailing about the senselessness of all this, you know this this the horror of what happened And I have this big moment and I'd leave it opening night. I leave it all on the stage. Mm-hmm And after the show my parents were there because opening night they always were My my mother comes up gives me big hug tells me you know, you did great. I'm really proud of you

And my dad God bless him My dad comes up and puts his, you know, gives me a hug and then, you know, kind of, kind of holds me out, you know, kind of in arms length and kind of paths me on the shoulder and says, well, you're a comic player at heart. Yeah. Thanks, dad. That's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. So, I. That's awesome. Yeah. So yeah. So I kind of know that feeling. And yeah. So imagine being the perpetrator of that. Well, I'm, you know.

Yeah. Only in your case, it was unwitting. In your father's case, it was, I love you, kid. But this is not your thing. Right. Right. So because the 2000s were heavily derivative, though Don of the Dead saw a Zack Snyder remake.

Yeah, same basic plot, modern twists, right? The producers wanted to quote, make the old fans happy and make a lot of new fans. In other words, they wanted to make a lot of money based on nostalgia as well as growing market share of the interest in zombies. And since video games were popular, they made it similar to one. James Gunn in writing his script for it, which I mean, what a combo, right? Oh, yeah. He said, quote, I think that in the end, don't of the dead is about redemption because it's about a bunch of people

who have lived certain lives, who have maybe not been the best people. And suddenly they have everything that they've used to define themselves. Their careers, their churches, their jobs, their families are stripped away. They're gone. They start at nothing and they have to become

who they really are in the face of all that. And some of the people are redeemed and end up becoming good people. And some of them are not redeemed and they end up, you know, not redeemed. And that's what kind of drove me throughout the story was it was a story about redemption. I also think there's a lot about how people survive and what people turn into in turn to in the face of such tragedy. The tragedy in this case being flesh eating zombies. And really it's a good, it's a group coming together to work as a community who wouldn't

otherwise work together. So there is that foundation of love, that basic message within even dawn of the dead. Okay. I'm, I feel it needs to be said. Yes. That's about as, as opposite a world view from Romero as you can get. Thank you for catching that. Now you see why I had to put the whole goddamn quote in there. Yeah, like I mean, understand I love James Gunn. Yeah. I, you know, and his, and his, his positivist sensibility is part of what I love about him.

So I mean, that's awesome. But like this, this is going to be quite the remake if, you know, if like, well, okay, we're going to take this deeply cynical nihilistic story about consumerism and how soleless it is. And we're gonna turn that into a survival movie where people are stripped out of their raw essences and some of them are redeemed. Well, I would point out that again, this was in 2004 and George Bush had told us all,

don't worry, we're gonna get revenge for the buildings, go to Disneyland, keep consuming. Okay, so that last line, it immediately made me think of they live. Yeah, which isn't technically a zombie movie? No, it's not. That's why I didn't make the list, unfortunately.

But I don't know if I want to do a watch along with that or if I'm just going to use a Marxist narrative and now I just have it. Yeah, somehow, yeah. But yeah, I mean, this is exactly bush doctrine, not the preemptive strike stuff, but there's going to be a lot of redemption. There's some shitty people.

And also we're going to... But it's all going to be okay. Right, it's all going to be okay. And we're going to literally invert the message of the mall before. So of the, uh, the mall before. So now here's my favorite part of this movie. Do you know what movie it unseated as number one at the box office? Tell me the year again. Uh, art for.

Oh, I don't know. I was trying. Passion of the Christ. because of course it dead it's still the same shot right oh can we now I'm gonna have to take it I know I know he's a lich I know I know I know I know I know Oh, damn it. No, because zombies are mindless on dead. He was a religious leader high level cleric. Okay, he had agency. Okay, not a god damn zombie. Also, didn't himself drink blood,

although we drink his ritually, but that's a different thing. So bitch, bitch, bitch, not zombie. I mean, they're both, they're both redemption narratives, right? Yeah, actually they are. And that's the thing. And they're both, you know, Jesus is going to help us in some way. Like, we're going to be saved from what's going on. Like,

there's, yeah, there is a reason that movies, yeah, they're selfish narratives based on what gun said, anyway, yeah, well, and I believe it because I mean, he's the one that wrote it, you know, or did the rewrite and updated it. So that's what he thought. We've also, we've also established that Authorial intent means jack shit. True, but it is interesting that you have these two movies, as well as the movie The Alamo all coming out right around the same time. And all three of them are bitched about the Alamo. I did, but I ended up like, we never, we never wound up doing it.

It's the lost, it's the lost episode. Yeah, but they're all redemption. It's the lost episode. It's the lost episode, yeah. But they're all redemption. It's got so pissed. They're all redemption. Yeah. And they're all blood redemptions. Oh wow, yeah. Okay.

So now some critics went after this. That's kind of fucked up. Yeah, think. Like, you know, it's in moments like that that again, you know, looking at the pattern on the wallpaper moments, we were all fucked up. Yeah. Well, there was a national trauma and the solution was go to Disneyland and, and, yeah, you know, and keep buying shit. Yeah. and then also the president of our country called the president of France and told him that mob and mug-ob were in the desert.

And the president of France hung up, it's like, what the fuck is it talking about? And they're like, oh, it's an ancient biblical prophecy thing. He thinks he's bringing about crusades. Like that was all true. That all happened. I know, I know, I know, but so Wow, all right. There were critics who said that this attempt traded on the value of Romero's satire but didn't deliver the same.

Quote with the politics of consumption now in established academic field and shopping now considered a statement of identity, the film was unmoored from its satirical roots thereby losing its power as such. Romero himself said, quote, It was better than I expected. I thought it was a very good action film. The first 15, 20 minutes were terrific, but it sort of lost its reason for being. It was more of a video game. I'm not terrified of things running at me. It's like space invaders. There was nothing going on underneath. of things running at me. It's like space invaders. There was nothing going on underneath. You okay? Stephen King linked it more to 9-11 than to Romero. He said, quote, by 2004, only three years down river from 9-11, rampant consumerism was the last thing on our minds. What haunted our nightmares

was the idea of suicide bombers driven by an unforgiving and unthinking most of us believed, ideology and religious fervor. You could beat them up or burn them, but they just keep coming. The news reports assured us. They would keep on coming until either we were dead or they were. The only way to stop them was a bullet in the head, and that's exactly what the Snyder zombies are. It seems to me.

Fast moving terrorists who never quit. You can't debate with them, you can't parlay with with them and you can't even threaten their homes or the families with reprisals and quote you know king is a smart guy dude the other two I mean Romero nailed it as well yeah well yeah no I'm not I'm not saying he didn't yeah just the the okay so I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna distill this didn't. But just the, okay, so I'm gonna take this, and I'm gonna distill this down to the actual fucking point. Here you go.

I'm... I'm not considering how long his book's fucking are. Some of them, he varies pretty widely. Like some of them are, you know, door stoppers and, you know, some of of them much less so. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you just put some out at ridiculous fucking pace.

And I think, oh, gone. No, no, I think what we're seeing here is the complete and total shift because it's a remake of a Romero film. It's a complete and total shift from the genre that it was to action zombies. I think that's what Resident Evil kicked the door open on and I think that this one very much crystallizes. The whole movie had a lot more action than depth to it.

And as a result, the character and message depth was sacrificed. It is, after all, Zack Snyder. But all in all, it was a very good zombie movie that kept him momentum going. Now there's a reason for that. Look at its source material. It is hard to fuck up a Romero remake. It really is. They tried, but... They did their damnedest. Yes, but when the source material is forged from sheer awesome from near the Earth's core, it's really hard to fuck it up too badly. Yeah. Um, you know, and I think I'm gonna say, I think there's a virtue for lack of a better word

in a creator, like if you're gonna do a remake, and you're gonna change shit, just taking ownership of the fact that, no, no, I'm gonna change some shit. Yes. And committing, I think the virtue is commitment. Like whatever it is you're gonna do, like fucking commit. Don't have acid.

And even if you fuck it up, there's still going to be the kernel of your dedication to it. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. And so James Gunn being James Gunn, and just saying,

okay, this is what I think we're going to do this story as, and this is how we're going to do it, and then, you know, doing it. You know, like you can say it's empty, and it doesn't have the same intellectual power that the original did and you're totally 100% correct, but it's still not a bad movie. Right.

Because nobody half-assed it. Everybody showed up and everybody said, no man, we're doing it. You know, I think if you really look at every bad movie, somewhere along the way, either because the budget just was not there for them to commit to what they really wanted to do. Right. I mean, there's any number of movies you can look at.

And like, this is a really great idea that did not, like the technology didn't exist, or the budget just wasn't here. And there was just no way to truly commit to this. You know, or, you know, the scriptwriter half-assed it and you know, the only thing that saved this is that everybody doing this movie was having so much fun. They were all here for it. Yep. You know, and you can have a mediocre movie that really should be a shitty one. And I don't know where I started out trying to go with that. But just, you know, it's if you've got a good source material.

It could be a good movie that betrays the source material. It could be a well done betrayal. Yes. There you go. So also in 2004, Resident Evil came out. Like I said, it was a good movie, a good year for zombie movies. Yeah. You just also had the, you know, curse of the Maya. Um, so Resident Evil apocalypse comes out in 2004, uh, and they are capitalizing quickly and successfully on the success of the first one.

You remember the first one comes out in ought to Or maybe out one it was panned again and again it made a ton of money This time the whole city is quarantined By the military executive in the umbrella corporation As the one bridge out of raccoonon City shows signs of human infection. And this time, the Corporation releases genetically engineered soldiers in alluding the nemesis, a big ass hunter killer android, to kill the scientists responsible for the outbreak. And of course, they're hunting Alice too, because what would be Resident Evil without

Mielejowavic, the heroin from the last one who had some memory of what's happened now. She goes on a saving spree, which I think is a really good way to put it. As the military folks on the ground are trying to find insecure locations for zombies can't get to folks. There's also a mad dash to a helicopter because that's becoming tropey,

an ambush by umbrella military personnel, and a fight ensues, and eventually the survivors, including Alice, leading them through Wonderland, get in the helicopter, kick out the major in charge of everything, who is then devoured by zombies, and they're getting away. On of course until the nuclear bomb goes off, knocking the helicopter into a crash. Once again, Alice wakes up, and once again, she has to escape umbrella, but this time it's revealed that this is also part of umbrella's plan, setting up for yet another movie. Well, of course.

So what I want to note here in this one, it's 2004, there's a lot more corporate corruption being acknowledged, a lot more genetic tinkering and tampering, a lot more corporate corruption being acknowledged, a lot more genetic tinkering and tampering, a lot more chase action, and ultimately it's a pretty postmodernistic look with zombies. There's a lot of questions about power, the right of that power, and the impact on morality with that power. But central and climactic to it all is the bringing back of nuclear fear, as well as the links to which a government or a corporation will go to in order to cover up its own lies

about its own missteps. Okay, so by 04. Yeah. I'll agree. I knew they're, yeah, okay. And we knew by that time their hand and men WMDs. No, you know WMDs and that the US government had known that there were none and had suppressed that information and forged ahead anyway as though they were.

Yeah. And that they had fed information to the New York Times and then said see the New York Times had said the same thing. There's a lot of cover-up shit going on. Oh, yeah. And all of it. By the time this movie hits the theaters in September 10th, 2004 There's one month to the election where there's one guy who's a war veteran who took a stand against the very war that he fought in after he came home

And then the other guy did mountains of cocaine married a woman who killed someone in a car accident and avoided going to that same war by flying planes badly in Texas. Oh, no, no. I'm sorry, you're giving him way too much credit by saying that he flew airplanes badly in Texas. No, no, he didn't fucking show up to fly airplanes badly in Texas. Not all the time. I mean, he did log some flight hours, but not many. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I'm not saying he did his duty. He skipped school on the fucking national card. Like, come on. Yeah. Now, the best part was that somehow the veteran who had multiple purple hearts was the coward

and the fake cowboy who got out of the war was a war hero. Well, because one of the things that the right in this country has gotten very good at doing is weaponizing perceived masculinity, machismo, and John Kerry for all of his manifest virtues in many ways does not match the traditional view of what a rugged manly man ought to look like. He has a very narrow face. I mean, that in and of itself is a mark against him. He looks, he looks really patrician. He does. He really, really, really patrician. And He does. He really, really, really petrition. And despite his, like, you can look at his military record and see his proven physical courage, his, the way masculinity in our culture is expected to manifest itself. Is in these ways that like if you are cultured,

if you are a wine drinker, if you speak French fluently, like all of these things count against you for like masculinity points. If you're a good statesman. Yeah, we don't want that. I want to have a beer with him. He's not, he's got so many bodyguards you'll never get near him. So you're getting anywhere.

It would number one, number two, this is the popularity contest. Why the fuck? Anyway, I want to have a beer with him. But we want someone who's going to actually be able to pronounce the Japanese prime minister's name. Yeah, that'd be nice. Now, my favorite part about all of that is that during the entire campaign, we were in a land war in Asia, and the whole campaign was about the other land war in Asia that had already been settled 40 years before.

Oh, yeah, decades before. Yeah. So, there's a new segment that appeared in the film stating that reports of corporate wrongdoing were false and that people should thank the umbrella corporation. That lack of subtlety would have made Romero blush. Clearly an allegory of lying corporations like Halliburton and KBR as well as the executive branch and the government at the time. Oh, and black water.

That comes, I think, a little bit after. I want to say that's during his second term. I could be wrong, because you're right, because the contractors in Fallujah were black water contractors. Yeah. And I think I distinctly remember it was like in 2003 or 2004. It was that massive. Yeah. Huge. The gunfight. I call it a shootout, but it wasn't actually a shootout. It was just a bunch of I I'm convinced drunk or high blackwater contractors firing out

into the street. Right. Because, you know, just because. Yeah. Yeah. into the street because, you know, just because. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because because one of them had an accidental discharge and all the rest of them thought somebody was shooting at him, right? They just unloaded into a street and killed innocent civilians and then, you know, tried to cover it up. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that happened. So while you got all this existential dread, shambling across the screen in 2004. Um. Shambling? I thought we were talking about fast zombies.

Well, that was the other one. This one, you still have some shambling. Zombie movies keep on coming, right? There's a Thai comedy called SARS-Wars, and it was a zombie film. Oh, shit. Yeah, it was too good. Honestly, like, I try to keep this to American films, but that Sar's Wars is just too good.

Yeah, the title is just too good. Not too bad, yeah. But then also in 2004, you have another slight shift in the genre. You have the first rom-com, zam-com movie, Sean of the Dead. Oh. first romcom, zomcom movie, Sean of the Dead. Oh. Now it only released two weeks after Resident Evil Apocalypse. So we're seeing a saturation in the market and yet it keeps building

because movies and video games are beginning to coalesce and its media and people consume more per genre. Sean of the Dead releases in the US in September of 04. At this point, it's clear that zombies are a big deal in the US. It was a very loving send-up of the night of the living dead. Specifically, Sean and his friend Ed are two idiots who woke up come over one morning to find that a zombie apocalypse was already in full swing. The near-do-well Sean goes around slowly acclimating to what's needed to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Any collects various people from his life to try to save them. This includes his stepdad, and then they head toward his mom and Winchester. Philip, his stepdad, is bitten and ends up turning, and Sean's mom is also bitten and ends up turning. And Sean has to kill them both once they've turned. And then they end up holding up in a pub with their party dwindled to two non-bitten folks, Sean and his ex-girlfriend Liz, and one bitten person, Sean's buddy Ed. And just as things look the most bleak, the British Army breaks through and Sean and Liz are saved.

And you fast forward six months and Sean and Liz reconciled. They're playing video games together. Ed is zombified, but they keep him tethered up in the backyard. Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, now on the surface, this sounds pretty simple and unremarkable, but in 2004, it's a pretty groundbreaking zombie film. Um, it's point of view, view, being the two deadbeats who are dumb as, who are really dumb, is a new take, especially as one survives.

They have no particular skills or competence in a post-9-11 world. Such a take is actually refreshingly idiotic. And in some ways, the film's comedic approach was a way of addressing the fears and anxieties, post 9-11, for Americans, with a very earnest but ultimately shrugging attitude. The fact that the main character is so self-involved that he doesn't notice his ambia poccalips

as it's happening right in front of him, because he's nursing his own hangover and dealing with his own stupid, mostly self-inflicted problems. It kind of gives the viewer permission to be self-involved again. Yeah. So I just want to point out, you're describing the dynamic of the main characters there. characters there. And Simon Pegg and Nick Frost who are Sean and Ed respectively are both Gen-Xers. Yes. It is a Gen, it is, it is, I'm going to argue, it is the first Gen-X zombie film. Okay, I don't need to read the lessons. The paragraph. Okay. But go for it, man. You're already...

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, I mean, the first, the first big explosion of our generational identity on the screen was reality bite, which is centered around the experiences of a bunch of genxers who've graduated from college and like, well, what the fuck are we going to do? Graduating into a world that you're overeducated to get a real job in. Yeah.

I mean, to way over simplify. And then beyond reality bite, then who are two of our biggest pop culture kind of avatars for a generation or Jay and fucking silent Bob? Oh, I was going to go with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton from Fight Club. Okay, well, yes. But okay, two. Yeah, but you're right. I'd argue they're kind of the Yin Yang.

Yeah. You know, the duo's are kind of, you know, because what are, you know, pit and norton, but the dark side, I don't know if dark side is the right word, but the angry counterpart to J and silent Bob, really, you've got one loud obnoxious one and one kind of retiring introvert. And like our defining characteristic as a generation has been, yeah. And so we have Simon Peganick Frost as this pair of, you know, Gen-Xers with a like, okay, you know, I really don't care about getting ahead in the world. I'm not that ambitious because like if I set my sights to it, I'm just going to be disappointed. All I want to do is be able to go to the pub

and play video games with my friends. Like the fuck. Well, and also, oh, go on. No, go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say also, he never really shoves his concerns aside during the apocalypse. He carries them with him. So it's a bit of a chance to have other people relate to the fact that there are problems, no matter how trivial, don't stop just because the United States went completely apeshit and invaded a second country in a thoroughly unconnected war with the war on terrorism.

And in that way it's a very British Gen X film. Yeah. But I also think that it's a very Gen X film in that Gen X, you know, we're the we're the our generation where the ones that were like looking around going, are you fucking kidding me? Like the boomers were like in full power. And X is just like, oh, forgot sake. Like, yeah, and we knew, I think without ever verbalizing it, we knew that we just didn't have...

There wasn't really very much we could fucking do first off because we were kids. Right. And then by the time we weren't kids anymore, we're outnumbered by the generation who came before us. Yes. Like, they're just weren't enough of us. Yeah. You know, so like what the fuck do you do in that situation? Oh, absolutely.

You develop a really unhealthy dark sense of humor and you have any number of not so great coping mechanisms. Like, you know, and then, you know, and then we got sandwiched between you know, the boomers and the millennials who came after us. And yeah, and now we're, I think anyway,

I'm erogating here to myself, the attitude of an entire generation. Now I'm looking at the Zoomers going like, y'all are bad asses, you go. Yeah. You know, we were not able to do this. the zoomers going like, the all their bad ass is you go. Yeah. You know, we, we, we were not able to do this. We did not, we did not have the, the gumption or the get to itiveness.

Well, we lacked the vocabulary, but we had the attitude. And then the millennials gained the vocabulary and had the attitude and see, um, yeah, they're just out of fucks to give. Yeah, yeah. Like, like, we're out of fucks to give to, but it's a very different kind of out of fucks to give. Yes. Yes. Like our out of fucks to give is man, they're out of fucks to give is, oh, yeah, no, fuck this. Yeah, we reject your paradigm. We're creating reality. We don't care if it's on your corpse or not. Yeah. I reject your reality and substitute my own like. Yeah, yeah. So, so Sean of the Dead was also a satire in a very different vein than Romero's

night of living dead was a satire. Romero's satirizing society through a zombie film. Sean of the Dead is satirizing the entire zombie movie genre and all that it was indicating. The undead and all the existential crises that came with them basically served to interrupt the idiocy of these two fellows as they bumble through a new day. You know, and I think there's something to be said there. It's a bit meta, it's a bit pomo, but at the end of the day, it is a, okay, sadarizing a shitty reality hasn't gotten us anywhere, so I'm gonna make fun of the sadarizing now.

Yeah. So now. I think that's a good analysis. Yeah. Now all told, in 2004, I counted no fewer than 21 zombie movies. Many were independent, interestingly enough. To me, that echoes what Romero did in 68, but the difference was that all of these

are answering to the zombie craze that was exploding. And when Romero had made his film, there was no such thing. And I'm going to end this episode, talking about Romero's dip back into the zombie film genre. Okay. He made land of the dead in 2005. It's a continuation of the rest of his films, showing us what happens next.

The film is based in Pittsburgh now. Although that's just one town with similar story. The undead rule the earth with a few hamlets here and there are human re-emergence. Pittsburgh is fairly futile and naturally protected by a few natural defenses. There's something called the Golden Triangle, which is a spot in Pittsburgh that's flanked on two sides by a river and they've set up an electric barricade on the third. The Golden Triangle is where the French fort called Fort Duquesnez, Duquesnez, Duche-Snez.

Duche-Snez. Jesus. Oh, yeah, of course. It's, I know, I know. I've talked about this before. The French don't know how to fucking spell anything. Oh my God. Like, but it's Duche-Snez. Okay. Yeah, Fort Duche-Snez. And that was taken over by the British during the French and Indian War, but not before the French destroyed the fort themselves

Currently, it's basically akin to the financial district in San Francisco Yeah, so it's a somewhat scathing geographical choice Given the Romero satire is on consumer culture as well as a feudal system that arose in Pittsburgh in this movie's history Now culture as well as a feudal system that arose in Pittsburgh in this movie's history. Now there is a high rise where the rich and powerful live. It's much easier defended from zombies and such, obviously. The majority of people live in the squalor below, and there's one man who rules it all, though.

His name is Paul Kaufman. He's played, of course, by Dennis Hopper. Because who else would you be played by? Right. He's a Vinalist. Unless it's Michael Lyre. Besides, it might be able to get. That would be his lieutenant.

That would be his lieutenant. That's a good point. He never plays the guy in charge. That's true. Even in V. He's a Vinal and ruthless Pluto crat who lives at the top of a high rise that is preceded by a huge mall.

Yes. The zombies are strangely more intelligent now too. Many have retained the knowledge of their former lives, somewhat aping, going through the motions of their prior lives. In the beginning of the film, we see two zombies who are teenagers holding hands. We see a zombie who's at a gas station who appears to be tending to his post there and his name tag says big daddy on it. The people that we follow through this

movie are folks who've acclimated to the zombie reality. They're not scientists who are trying to study it. They're not trying to reverse it. They're folks trying to carve out a new existence. It's a fairly diverse cast overall. It's Romero. There's one zombie who seems more intelligent than the rest who seems to have an intention to him besides hunger. It's big daddy. He tries to shake the other zombies out of their confusion at fireworks. There's this defense mechanism where you just fire off a bunch of fireworks and zombies say, what? And then they ignore you.

He tries to shake him out. He expresses rage when he sees another zombie suffering. And he becomes a bit of a leader after he grabs a machine gun off the enormous bus tank train mobile weapons platform. He doesn't know how to use the gun, but other zombies start following him. And meanwhile, because it's Romero, we get to see what Pittsburgh has become, and it's a tale of two cities. One is the high class and exclusive, and the other looks like a rundown version of Venusville from Total Recall. It's called Chihuahua. It's run by a little person of the same name, Chihuahua. There's even a fun little moment where Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright from Sean of the

Dead are zombies in a booth where you can take your picture with a zombie. That's meta upon meta. Yeah. Now Romero offered them a role and they said only if we could play zombies. Nice. Yeah. Because of course, why not? Yeah. So yeah. That would be their requirement. Yeah. Yeah. Now what's interesting about this society is that even though there's so much that's broken down, there's still an emphasis on money and the power of that money to hurt people. There's a prostitute who's angered Kaufman and she gets sentenced to be in a bearbating cage with two zombies, for instance. Jail still exists and there's enough money that exists for folks to be scrounging to try to save it. There's a lot of human on human shiftiness that seems fairly central to the plot, but

also Big Daddy is slowly, I mean really the movie is about Big Daddy slowly realizing things. He's slowly realizing how awful the people of Pittsburgh are to his fellow zombies, and he aims to take them all down. And eventually, as the humans are being awful to each other for the sake of money, Big Daddy is leading a zombie insurrection, which it's a hell of an evolution. He's also Yeah, yeah, it's a paradigm shift. Yeah, he's also a good point. Good call. He's also learned how to use a gun and he's teaching other zombies. And after much effort Big Daddy breaks into the mall with his zombie horde and they tear up the upper-class Kaufman Pittsburgh. They chase after

Kaufman who then gets into his car but Kaufman, Kaufman as a man-servant who ends up fleeing with the car keys, turns out money doesn't buy you everything. Big Daddy sees a fuel nozzle and he uses his memories of being a human To soak the car with gasoline before leaving Big Daddy ends up finding a protein propane tank setting it on fire and throwing it at the car exploding Coffman. Oh wow. Meanwhile our protagonists are escaping the huge thing the huge tank thing right? The tank train bus. Dead reckoning. Yes.

And they head to Canada for relative safety and isolation. One of them takes aim at Big Daddy who's leading the zombies out of what was Pittsburgh, but he decides not to shoot him because Big Daddy, after all, is doing the exact thing, exact same thing he's trying to do. Just find a place for his people to live. Hmm, now this one is wildly different than the other ones that Romero had done.

Romero's other movies were isolated stories of people barely keeping it together and just trying to survive. In this one, some of them have found a way to thrive and typically off the misery of others. Zombies are far less a threat than human cruelty. And at the same time, the zombies are more intelligent and capable than they've ever been. It's not just mobs and hordes and swarms, it's now strike forces and invasions. And now to the analysis. Actually, you know what?

Given the timing, I think we're going to hold off on the analysis, which, sorry listeners, we're splitting a Romero movie into here. But it's better to actually get into it in depth next week. So I'm going to stop it there. So do we wanna just jump out and then give people something to wait for, or do you wanna talk about what you've gleaned a little? I think I wanna glean a little bit. Gleaned away.

I think it's interesting that we have moved so profoundly from like 110 percent. No, no, this is horror, which has one specific set of goals as a genre. And we have moved from that to a lot of these being like horror-flavored action films. That's exactly right. It's not about fear anymore, as much as it's about a conflict and survival and what are the forces that are in conflict, if that makes sense. Yeah.

The big idea behind it has shifted really dramatically. And I think beyond that, I wanna do the in-depth analysis in the next episode, but it's remarkable to me what a major paradigm shift we're seeing over the course of this time. And I think it got started by the Resident Evil movies without the Resident Evil movies understanding what they were doing to the genre. I agree completely.

So yeah, well, and I think what you're really describing there, and I got nothing against action films, nothing against them. But the shift goes from thinking movies to something else to spectacle. Yeah. You know, versus maybe, eh, wouldn't even go that far. I think I think the shift goes from intelligent satire to my to spectacle. Yeah. Converses maybe? Yeah, I wouldn't even go that far. Okay. So I think the shift goes from intelligence satire to mindless entertainment. Okay. And again, I got no problem with mindless entertainment.

I really don't. But I do think it's interesting at the same time that we had a sitting president telling us, don't worry about it. Go and consume. Like literally don't think about it. Yeah. And we all seem to kind of listen. Yeah. And it's showing in our zombie films. Yeah. No, I think that, yeah, that works. Yeah, cool. Reading anything? Student work. Sorry.

I'm sorry. Yeah. How about you? I'm just kind of plowing through the plays that we bought for our school. So I've been reading Twilight. Lot of really good monologues. Really, really good stuff there.

I hate how prescient it continues to be. It's about the Rodney King riots in LA and reading what the cops are saying. There's not that much different. Sadly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm reading. Yeah, that's I guess don't I don't know that I even recommend it to be honest. Let me read it for you Because it's a lot of monologue stylized and that's not gonna be everybody's cup of tea

So there I think they're probably better research books out there for it. So all right cool Well, where can people find you on the social medias? I Could be found on social media at EH Blalock on Twitter and at also EH Blalock on TikTok and Mr. Blalock on Instagram. How about you? You could find me at doharmini on Insta and Twitter. Those are two good places to find me. And then yeah, every Tuesday night,

I am on twitch.tv-capetal-puns, delivering just wonderful, wonderful puns. So, that is not a contradiction in terms. No, I think Twitch and TV go together pretty well. So. Nicely, nicely done. Thank you. Where can they find us collectively?

Collectively, we can be found at Geek History time on Twitter and Geek History www.Geek History of Time. Or is it just Geek History time? I can't ever remember because I don't know who it is. Geek History of Time. history of time on the worldwide web. I like it. So those are our needs to shout at us about having gotten something wrong or believing that we got something wrong in our interpretation, which, you know, screw you, you're wrong unless you're not, that would probably be best done at Twitter. that would probably be best done at Twitter. Otherwise, you can find the podcast itself, us here, on Apple Podcasts, on Stitcher, and on Spotify. Wherever you get us, please hit the subscribe button. Please review us, give us the five stars that you know we deserve.

And that's about it for me. That's plenty for us. So, all right. Cool. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock, and until next time, they're coming for you. coming for you.