A Geek History of Time - Episode 137 - The Wilhelm Scream

Episode Date: December 11, 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 getting virgin. 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, Spree.

If Sysclothon it was empty headed, a plebeum trash, it was empty headed, pluby and trash. It was really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder, pull back just a little bit, build walls to keep out the radiance. And it's a little bit of a gruey. A thrill and tent doesn't exist. Some people stand up quite a bit,

but some people stay seeing a lot of the rest. Let me just... This is a geek has lived time. Where we connect an artery to the real world. My name is Ed Laylock, I'm a world history teacher and sometimes English teacher in Northern California. And I really don't have anything else I can think I have to talk about at the moment. No news is good news. Yeah, house's hunting continues?

And yeah, you all will hear about that as soon as we've actually closed escrow on something. Okay. But yeah, so that's pretty much what I have going on. I'm looking forward to hopefully soon or rather than later having a backyard. Mm-hmm. So when we've talked about that. Ready?

So how about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and drama teacher up here in Northern California. My big news, I guess, is that my neighbor's just moved away today. Oh, really? Well, as of this recording, it will have been almost a month ago, but yeah, they got a good offer, decided to take it, okay, for the market to bottom out again.

Right, as your parked in my driveway to the left. Okay. Good folk, good friends, been through a lot together, used to watch lost with them, used to watch true blood with them. Oh wow. Good folks. Yeah, so if you're looking for a house right next door to me.

Okay. It has a backyard. Yeah. Just saying out loud. Yeah. So get upside down for a while. Well, the market will bottom out. And then you can re-fi.

All right. Well, we'll see what happens. Yeah. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to tell you what it's about, but I'm going to get things started for you and you may or may not Know what's out. Yeah, all right, although you're a smart fella. I got a feeling you'll be good out pretty much within the first two senses Okay, in 1951 Gary Cooper started a movie called distant drums

Okay, distant drums was what came to be known as a Florida Western. Okay. All right. I'm going to stop you right before you get any further. A Florida Western. Yes. Well, it's a Western in theme and approach, but it's set in the Second Seminole War. Oh, okay. It's very specific. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now the second.

Yeah. That is, that is that is Nitch history for most of the rest of the United States. Yes, that I mean unless you are Descended from the seminal or or you are a Floridian Yeah, that's that's an interestingly precise Yes kind of moment, But anyway, Karen, although if you think about Westerns, they are also interestingly precise

because really the time period that all those movies are made of. Oh, it's between 1870 and the early 19th, yeah, it's about a 40 year span of time. Not even. Like it's usually 1870, it's usually maybe during grant. Yeah. But it's usually after reconstruction ends. Yeah. And before you even get out of the haze president, well, maybe maybe a little

past haze, maybe the the the the Arthur presidency. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, and if you're, yeah, if you're talking about a classic, classic, and quotes, kind of Western, there have been a number of modern Westerns that have stretched the timeline a little bit out later. Sure. You know, as we've moved forward in time, the time that's absolutely true, but like, but closer, closer, the frontier is usually a pretty hard, yeah, kind of ending to that. Yeah. Closure of the frontier is usually a pretty hard yeah kind of ending to that. Yeah, so okay So the second seminal war lasted from December of 1835 until August of 1842

Interestingly this spanned for presidencies from Jackson to Tyler Well some of that is because Harrison died Harrison yeah, so almost doesn't count as a presidency. Yeah since it lasted. And yet still considered a better president than the one that we just got done. Yes, well because how much damage was he able to do in that period of time? Yeah. How much did he corrode democracy? Kind of didn't. Yeah, well not all of his president.

And so it involves some of America's most famous military figures of the time. Such was the difficulty of the fighting against the Seminoles. That's true. There's fought a brilliant guerilla war before anybody knew what the term guerilla war really meant. Yeah. So here's a list of some of the people that fought. Yeah.

Francis Dade. For whom I assume Daveade County is named for. Winfield Scott. Yes. Richard Gentry. Okay. Thomas Jessup. Zachary Taylor.

Yeah. That's on the American side now. On the seminal side, Asocola. Asocola. Asocola? Yeah. Oh, that's right. I'm thinking I blended that with Ocala, which is the place where wrestling happened.

John Horse. Okay. Abiyaka. Yes. Mi Kenopi. Mi Kenopi. I want to say Mi Kenopi. Mi Kenopi?

That's probably the Floridian pronunciation. And Ko Kuchi. Yes. On the seminal side. Now, ultimately, the US one.. And Koakuchi, yes. On the seminal side. Now, ultimately, the US one, we know how that ends. And this particular seminal war, there were actually at least two others, is usually the one

that people talk about when they talk about the seminal war. It's considered to be the longest, the costliest, of all the US native conflicts. Yes. And by the end of it, almost all natives in Florida had been moved west with the remaining 300 in the whole state living on reservations. Yes.

So anyway, distant drums. Yeah. It's set in 1840 when Zachary Taylor played by the actor who actually played Ferdinand Esther Hasey in the 1937 film, The Life of Amal Zola, which was the guy who actually did all the spying that Alpha Drifest got pinned on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

So the guy who played him played Zachary Taylor. Anyways, Zachary Taylor is in his final year of being in charge of the war. Right. He sends an army of American, Western cowboys and soldiers. So here's this weird blending, because the 1840s was not a time where you had Western cowboys and soldiers. Yeah, no, you didn't. You know, yeah.

But frontier types. Right. And soldiers. Yeah. So, but you know, it's it's cinema in the 50s. Yeah, and so yeah. But they're led by a captain Quincy Wyatt who has played big Gary Cooper. But they're led by a captain Quincy Wyatt who is played by Gary Cooper, right? And his sidekicks, Lieutenant Tuffs played by Richard Webb of Star Trek's The Court Marshall episode played Ben Finney, okay, and Scout Monk, which is played by a guy named Arthur Honeycutt of the Twilight Zone episode The Hunt, where he's an old man in this one and he refuses to go to heaven because the person telling him you can get into heaven said but dogs aren't I remember that episode. Yes. Okay. Anyway, they get sent by Zachary Taylor on a mission to destroy a Spanish seminal fortress deep in the jungles of Florida Where an evil Indian army of seminal warriors of the evil dark side led by the dark evil chief Ocala are keeping people prisoner.

Okay. This was 1951 after all. Yeah, and so now you're thrown around dark evil. Do they actually use those words in the script or is that the shading and the coding? It's the shading and the coding, yeah. Literally shading and coding. Yes.

So unfortunate question, but I feel like I need to ask it. Sure. Do the natives in the film wear red face? So I'm, yeah. Because you're talking a great deal about, you know, dark. Yeah. And of course it was the 50s, 10 states. So that's, yeah.

Yes. OK. Yeah, yeah. Several do. There are some natives who are hired to be on the set was the 50s, 10 states. So that's, yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Several do. There are some natives who are hired to be on the set and as extras and things like that. Okay. But by and large, it is white actress portraying everybody.

Okay. So of course, one of the prisoners being held becomes the love interest for Captain Wyatt. Her name is Judy Beckett. She's played by Mary Alden. Mary Alden was a Lithuanian born actress who had a short and fairly unremarkable career on screen, with this one being perhaps the highlight. Anyway, they rescue the white folks, they blow up the fort and they have to go on the run with their fugitives that they've rescued. There's quicksand, alligators, rivers, swamps, etc. When they get back to why

it's home, because he lives there, it's been burned down probably by the evil Seminoles who've caught up with and overtaken them. Now luckily Captain Wyatt challenges the main Seminal antagonist to a Manoamano underwater combat. And wouldn't you know it, Chief O'Cala, played by the Hyper Obscure White actor Larry Carper, whom some actually claimed is an actual Seminal, but I've not been able to corroborate that claim. He accepts. Okay. Why it stabs and kills them underwater, which frightens the seminals into leaving and why it falls in love with the woman,

gives his weapons to tubs and settles down right there. There's also a small Indian child that he lived with, and I don't know if it was a war or a servant. There's a lot of bad decisions going on. Okay. Yeah. And the kid shows up not missing as it turns out by the end. Oh, also the sheriff from Bonanza was in this movie.

Okay. Now this movie was shot largely on location in the Everglades and it was a holacious production for the actors and crew. The director hired two snake experts to clear water moccasins and ratlers from the swamps that they were filming in daily. Yeah. Yeah. Those two men struck a deal that in addition to their pay,

they could keep whatever profit they got from live or dead snakes. This meant selling the live snakes to a local fishing game lab to create antivenom, as well as selling dead ones to a cannery to make snake steaks a local delicacy. Yep. Welcome to Florida. Yeah, okay. Gary Cooper fell up to his waist into Quick Sand once, which I find to be semi-hyperbolic, given the public imagination's obsession with Quick Sand. Yeah, I think much more likely he

fell up to his waist in Muck. Yeah, having you know Having the ever glades a number of times. Yeah quick sand less of a thing that you might think yeah The muck of the ever glades. Yeah way more of a thing than you might think. Yeah, I also also saw grass is the devil yes Just like and swap cabbage is gross y'all Um, just like and swap cabbage is gross y'all. It just is. All right. But the cameraman almost got eaten by an alligator. You say that like it was only one cameraman.

I was eating like an alligator and I feel like I feel like that's a small miracle. Yeah. Like because this was what? What? 51. Okay, 51. They're filming in the Everglades. So my father was seven years old.

Yes. Living in Miami. Yep. And the stories I've heard about what Coral Gables was like in the 50s. It was like they were living on the edge of the fucking jungle. Now, Coral Gables is the woman who sang, all I want for Christmas is you in 1930s, right?

Amongst other things. Okay. Yes. Yes, Andy. But yes, and. You know, based on what I remember, my father's neighborhood looking like 30 years after that when I was a kid. Yeah. And then thinking about what the Everglades, which was actually the wilderness Yes. Had to be like during that time period. How is it that only one of them barely got eaten?

I mean, and then you have the two guys about like the snakes. Well, yeah. Okay, all right. Yeah, okay. They're doing truly Yoman work that made me. Yes. Dear God. Speaking of Yoman, Gary Cooper was quoted as saying Yeah, yeah, okay. They're doing they're doing truly. Yoman work. Yes, Dear God speaking of Yoman, Gary Cooper was quoted as saying that he'd quote,

given a gallon of his best blood to the mosquitoes and leeches. Oh, well, yeah, yeah. But Gary Cooper loved making this film. The mosquitoes be the size of your. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What got me about living in Florida was the gnats. Everything else I was cool with, but the Nats would fly up your nose and in your eye.

Oh, yeah. And they would buzz, like Nats and they would buzz in clouds. And it was all. It was all. Yeah, no, it was totally the mosquitoes for me. Oh, yeah. Because I didn't, I didn't ever actually stay in Florida long enough to acclimate to like this

or any of my mosquitoes all the time. So I was always coming from Southern California, which is a desert, basically to Florida, which is the antithesis of that. Like, it's, it's, same latitude, same latitude, but like the humidity level is now, no, we're gonna crank it all the way to 11.

Yeah. And, and no, there are mosquitoes everywhere. Oh yeah. And then there's, you know, in the summer. And again, the size of your hand. And in the summer, you had love bugs, which would fuck while flying. And your windshield would just be covered in orange. Yeah.

I, I heard about, I never, that might have been further up the shaft. That was further north. Yeah. That was, yeah, that was up, that was up near the, the, the tank was further north. That was up near the tank. Yeah, closer to that. Yeah, I would be down near the frenulum, but you know, or the top, anyway.

Forskins. Yeah, but yeah, the mosquitoes were terrifying to me. But where you lived, I mean, maybe not by the time you were in the world, but historically in San Diego, the big problem with San Diego was the fleas. Parts of San Diego. Well, like historically, like one of the reasons it took so long to settle it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there was a wonderful uh writings that I read from uh Sunset magazine. Um and just uh hilarious takes on here's how you can fight off the fleas. And it was basically cake your body and mud. And it was

pretty much. But yeah. Oh yeah. So that's why it took San Diego a while longer than LA. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so Cooper loved making the film. His stunt man largely just got to watch because Gary Cooper was doing as many of his own stunts as he could. Really? Yeah, and I read the review,

and it was reviewed with fairly placid praise, finding neither fault nor innovation with the movie. It was a steady movie through and through, and it was set for the 1951 holiday season audience. Now what's most notable about this movie though, the reason that it sticks in my head so hard and why I figured you would know what I was talking about is because there's a scene in which the soldiers are waiting through the waters waste high when one of them gets pulled under by an alligator and as he's falling he screams and then proceeds to be eaten by several Alligators now this scream is actually recorded a little bit later

Presumably by Cheb Wuli who's the guy who wrote and saying purple people later and it was known for he was known for recording Screams really well, okay. It's not entirely certain it was him, but most of my research and most of the sources that I read pointed to him, including his widow who was interviewed in 2005. Okay. Now that scream was saved as a stock scream, and actually it was one of six stock screams that were saved.

And they were spread throughout the film. Six short pain screams were recorded in a single take which was slated as quote, man getting bit by alligator and he screams. The fifth scream recording was used for the soldier with the alligator but the fourth, fifth and sixth ones recorded in the session were also used earlier in the film when three Indians get shot, one after the other during a raid on a fort. And although the signature or the classic screams take four through six on the original recording, they are the most recognizable, one of which was

used in 1953's 3D Marvel as the New York Times reviewed it very favorably because most of all the 3D gimmicks of all the things coming out the audience, but also because the fast-paced that undertook to tell the tale charge at Feather River. The scream is used three times and at least once in conjunction with a character named Private Willhelm who took an arrow to the knee. Okay, to the thigh. So, yeah, I was still okay.

Thus was brought into being the famed Wilhelm scream. Okay, so so so you're telling me yes, that all of that. It is love with the side bars. I have a brand to play in this film about a meal, Zola. Yes. Like, okay. So, okay. Now I had known what I remember knowing prior to all of that was that the Wilhelm scream was a stock scream.

Yep. And I knew that it had originally been of a man being eaten by an alligator. Yep. I didn't realize it was from a Gary Cooper flick. Yes. And because it was about a man being eaten by an alligator, I had assumed it was like a Tarzan adjacent kind of adventure film. Nope.

But no. It's a seminal western or a Florida western. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So tonight we're talking the history of the Wilhelm scream. Okay. And not just the history because that would only get me 2700 words. Yeah. The meaning that it's come to hold in our collective cinematic zeitgeist. Okay. Alright. I'm... I think this might be a two-parter. You have. Because, of course, I have a brand of perspective.

Like, let's get you to the point. No, this is your side of the street. You work in your side of the street here. Yeah. Okay. So. Okay, so. All right, yeah, I, you have my attention. Okay, all right. So here's a quick list from drums to star wars

because that's when it becomes iconic due to Ben Burt's efforts specifically. Okay. In between distant drums and the charge at Feather River, it was found once in a movie called Springfield Rifle, which is another Western. Okay, well, 51 to 53. Okay.

Then in 1954, you can find it in the command, a Western. This time a native screamed and when he was shot off a horse and that was the first time I ever saw it in a movie. Oh really? Yeah. Okay. Then for the first time, it was in a sci-fi movie in 1954. Oh, them?

Wait, yes hold on hold on hold on is that the one about the ants the radio active ants? Yeah, my mother saw that at a drive-in. Oh Yeah, and like kept her awake for for weeks Because you know because that was 50 what? 54. Yeah, so she's nine or ten. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, she was nine or nine. Okay. Yeah, so she was 9 or 10. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, she was 8 or 9. Okay.

So she wasn't supposed to be there. Right. You know, it was America's version of Godzilla. Kind of, yeah. Radiation. Yeah, well, there was a whole bunch, there was like, there was a whole genre, like the Japanese had Kaiju movies. Right.

And we had radioactive bug movies. Yes. There's another one that kept my mother awake for weeks after not having semi-sneaking into the drive-through with the family to see it, was about potato bugs or some kind of big pincher bug. There was one scene that my mother remembered vividly, you know, 40 years after the fact where where Somebody's head got caught between the pinchers and squished. Okay, and that that gave her nightmares

Sure, we have to word and of course it's all you know radioactive You know, you know because 50s and the red scare and oh yeah clear everything Okay, so. So in this movie, it had the scream three times. There was a ship at sea getting attacked by the ants. Okay. Okay, hold on. I'm not familiar enough with the film

to know the details here. How exactly do radioactive, admittedly they're giant, but how do giant radioactive ants attack a vessel at sea? Just warm it, you know, and then pick it up and people fall off it. From where? From the water. I mean, they're radioactive.

Oh, okay, all right. Keri. A guy gets throttled to death by a giant ant, and a soldier gets hit by falling debris while they're crawling through a sewer. Okay. And now, are they using, because you talked about, you know, takes, you know, one through six, they typically go from takes four, five and six.

Those are the most pure, most frequently used topics. Okay. Okay. And so it's not the exact, it's not like number five getting used every single time. I didn't go that deep. Okay. All right. I know it's surprising.

I'm a little disappointed. Not good alive. Yeah. You have a brand to protect after all. True. Oh god, now I kind of want to sing Mamba number five, but with well-homescremes. No. You know, a little bit of Wilhelm on my mind.

Yeah, okay. So. Okay, so after that, the very sad Judy Garland and James Mason movie, a star is born. Wait, shows up twice there. How? Well, one, they're watching charge at feather river. Oh, that's fucking matter. It is that happened so meta and it happened so often. Okay.

And then there's another one during a rehearsal scene. And then you fast forward to 1955. Okay. How is somebody screaming during a rehearsal? I feel like she runs up to someone and someone falls backward. I think it is. Well, okay.

Yeah. Then in 1955, the C chase with John Wayne and Lana Turner. Okay, set in World War 2 Right the land of the pharaohs with Joan Collins when victims are getting thrown to the alligators Okay, then in 1956 Helen of Troy with Bridget Bardot. Oh, oh, yeah, all right. Talk about typecasting And then nothing. There's a veritable desert until 1960, when Sergeant Rutledge comes out. Now Sergeant Rutledge is a Western about a black soldier on trial for raping a white woman.

And this starred Woody Strode, who was the same guy who played Straba in Spartacus. Okay. I don't want to be your friend, because you know, that guy. Yeah. Um, 1963, fast forward, PT109, which I didn't realize that movie came out the same year that he died.

Wow. Yeah. And so Japanese destroyer crashes through the patrol boat. Yeah, and you hear it, okay. 1966, so we're seeing these three or gaps. Because again, it's a stock screen. Yeah, you hear it. Okay. 1966 so we're seeing these three or gaps because again, it's a stock screen. Yeah, yeah Harper starring Paul Newman and Lorraine Lauren Bacall Okay, Janet lay and Robert Wagner. Oh wow. Yeah, is it Lee or lay Lee Lee a Jennifer Jason Lee? Yeah, Janet Lee Yeah, the well-hummed scream is in that one

When will when Paul Newman strikes Roy Jensen's character. Okay. Punches him. 1968, the Green Brace, an enemy soldier gets thrown in the air after a grenade explodes. Oh, okay. This is the first time I see it being done

with an explosion accompanying it. Yes. Which becomes the thing. Yeah. 1969, the Wild Bunch, Chism 1970. Also a 1970 movie called Impass, Bert Reynolds, and a thug fall to the bottom of the stairs in a warehouse fight. And then seconds later there's a fall from a balcony as well.

Oh wow. So yeah. I hope that they did more than number four twice. Yeah, yeah. And then nothing for four years. And then we hear it again in the Scarlet Blade in 1974. Ooh, okay. Hollywood Boulevard in 1976.

And then it gets found by Ben Burt and from there it takes off. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Ben Burt and his discovery. Benjamin Pickering, Burt, Jr. was born in 1948 in Jamesville, New York. Okay. Jamesville or Jonesville. I'm going to say Jonesville. Okay. But this small town in New York, now that's only about 10 minutes down the road from where Rod Serling had been born 23 years earlier.

Okay. And there's no other connection. I just thought that was kind of neat. All right. I even went on Google Maps to double check is like well if you walk for two hours I'm like shit walking for two hours gets me there. It's like 10 miles Anyway, his parents were a chemistry professor and a child psychologist And so clearly he had a family that had the means to send him to school and the drive to expect good things from him And as a child Ben Burt made his own films and eventually studied physics and college graduating from Pennsylvania in 1970.

Okay. However, he also made films to the point where he made war films that won an award at the National Student Film Festival. He specifically, yeah, he specifically loved aviation films and he made amateur films at the old Ryan Beck Aero Dome in Red Hook, New York. Okay, cool.

Which I think it's interesting that he focused on aerial films considering what George Lucas used kind of to storyboard dog fight scenes, right? Now, because of his work on special effects in a film called Genesis, which I Genesis, which I could find nothing about, he got other than that name and that connection. He got a scholarship to USC and he graduated with a master's degree in film production. Now, I couldn't find the year that he graduated from from film school, but

this is the 70s. I don't really know if there was any possibility of overlap with the other autours, but it seems like he was in the same... Well, he's in the same, same melting pot. They're hanging out in the same circles. Right. If he didn't graduate at the same time, he's still has in that environment. Yep. You know, yeah, yeah and and because you know, you have those connections and stuff like that, you know, so Yeah, so What do you call it?

1975 He gets on his first film. I'll's uncredited, for sound design. Death Race 2000. Really? Yeah. Okay, cool. Now, the next year, he was a special effects artist for Milpetus Monster. Okay.

Which is an indie film, but it's set in Milpetus, which is Southern Bay Area. That's an interesting kind of image. Yeah, I read some reviews on it, but it seemed like fanboys writing reviews on his student film. Oh, yeah. But evidently based on that portfolio, he was hired on by George Lucas.

And it was his emphasis on found sound. That was a quote that kept coming up. That really helped to make a flash Gordon threesome with Kira Sawa movies and old-timey dogfight film strips into a viable believable movie set in space. I love your description of Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So why didn't he was working there as a sound engineer or sound designer? There's a lot of terms he finds the Wilhelm scream. But in trying to find good sounds and keep them handy for the sound effects for Star Wars, he also went looking to tickle his own memory.

Specifically, he found the actual studio reel that had the sound and he made sure to use it. Here's a quote I found of his quote, I tracked down an old movie scream I loved as a kid. I called it a will helm after the character in an old western who got an arrow in his leg and let out that scream. Every time someone died in a Warner Brothers movie, they'd scream this famous scream. That scream gets in every picture I do as a personal signature.

So yeah, remember what you said about a tour? Yeah, yeah, he's clearly swimming in the same water. Yeah, okay. Now he named the scream after doing a ton of research and he discovered the actual written records at Warner Brothers from the editor of distant drums, including a short list name of names of actors who were scheduled that day to record lines of dialogue for miscellaneous roles. For drums. Yeah. I mean, we're talking like thumbs through the files

of like old file cabinets that have been opened in 20 years. I mean, that kind of thing. And this. Real, debitting historian. Yeah. Yeah. I love his dedication to finding out that, you know.

Now this is how he came to find out who the most likely voice was. And with the success of Star Wars that we know, Bert got a special recognition by the Academy Awards for sound effects editing because there was no such award yet. You couldn't get an Oscar for me. Yeah, so they gave him a special award.

Right, okay, well. A special award. Right. Okay. Well, special recognition. Special recognition. Yeah. Now, after that, his career understandably took right off, right? Yeah. And he had steady work. Every year, he was working on something until 1987.

Yeah. Now, 1987 is just the first year that I couldn't find anything that his name was attached to. So, okay. I don't know if he like, you know, really booked 1986 and 1988. Yeah. Or what, but yeah. Okay.

So, you know, he's had steady work and it's not like in 87, he's like, oh my God, what's gonna happen? It just, there seems to be a gap here there. Yeah. I don't know if he had a kid then or what. There's scant amounts of stuff online about Ben Burr. He's remained kind of ashamed. Yeah, he's remained fairly,

I'm not gonna say anonymous, but fairly private, it seems, at least on the internet. Slightly obscure. Yeah. Okay. I wonder if there's not a book written about him somewhere, some sort of monograph.

Okay, yeah. But in many of the films that he could, he put that iconic screen into and there are over 400 films that have the Wilhelm scream. So I'm not since Star Wars or total. I'm not going to list them all, but here's some that surprised me. 1979's more American graffiti. Okay. 1989's always, 1995's a goofy movie. Okay, well, okay. Yeah, goofy, the will home screen, and any of goofy's anything,

they're spiritual kid. That is fair. Okay. 13 days in 2000. Okay. Now, I listed these next three because I find it really fun. Spider-Man, 2002. Okay. Star Wars Episode Two Attack next three because I find it really fun. Spider-Man 2002. Okay.

Star Wars Episode 2 Attack of the Clones 2002. Okay. Lord of the Rings 2 Towers 2002. In 2002, the Wheelhombscreen was in all three of the Holy Trinity of properties. Of major prep. Did you know where in the 2 towers it was used? I assume somebody falling off of one of the towers. Well, okay, yes.

No, it's probably a rock hitting something and people flying. Could be, you know. Well, I'm trying to think of what, because, okay, so two towers is Ortheneck, where Saruman and all his Urukai, suffered a defeat at the hands of a bunch of walking trees. So it could be that I'm almost wondering if Peter Jackson...

Oh it's the guy following off the oil of fun. Oh okay, yeah that makes sense. That makes sense. Cradle to the grave from 2003. She's blew off my levels with that bark left. Oh my god. Okay. She's the man in 2006. Okay. Juneau in 2007 and Ironman in 2010. Okay. All right. Okay. You know, Ironman, Ironman, I can see. I can, you know. His explosions galore. Yeah. Okay.

And after a while, it wasn't just Ben Burt, his friend, his friend Richard Anderson, no relation to Richard Dean Anderson. Yeah. Took up the charge as well after they'd worked together on Raiders of Lost Ark. And it was archived at Skywalker Sound, where later on Gary Rydstrom and Chris Boyz

would continue its use. Now between these four men you have LucasArts, Warner Bros. Disney and Pixar, smothered and covered in Wilhelm. Okay. Or infused. Frasing? Okay. Sorry. I was thinking Waffle House. Okay. Still. So here's the question. So it was originally the recording. Yes. It was originally used in a Warner Brothers film. Yes. So when picks our Lucas film, everybody has, when all these other studios and other folks used it. What's the royalties situation for? Yeah, I was wondering the same.

How much ownership? I don't think there was much, because I think probably because it was in the... What do we want to say? It wasn't quite the golden years of Hollywood, but the silver years of Hollywood, since 1951. And I think finding that screen and making your own tape of it,

there wasn't as much legal eagles like, oh, this is proprietary. Yeah, the stack-fisted control of intellectual property. Yeah, okay. So now Richard Anderson and his company, which was called Weddington Productions, now it's a part Technicolor Sound Services, also archived it.

So now you've got two groups that have archived it. And from there, editors like Mark Mangini, Mangini, David Whitaker, Steve Lee and George Simpson also took it and jammed it in elsewhere. Only a few studios actually have the master of the Wilhelm screen. However, you can find it, quote, in the clear, which I looked that up for an hour,

and I presume it means that it exists with no other background sound. Yeah. And, or you can use it as free use. Yeah. I immediately went to, you can use it as free use without having a credit. But I was thinking, sound guys would be like,

oh, this is one that doesn't have anybody talking over it, right? Now regardless, directors have often learned of the history of the screaming and sisted on using it again, more often and louder in their movies. For instance, Quentin Tarantino, he had it put into reservoir dogs in 1992. And then he learned about the significance of it. Now he's a huge centipile. And so he called a break from his like editing process and had his entire sound crew and him go into a nearby room with a small TV to watch distant drums

on a local station to hear the scream. Oh wow. Later, Wilhelm appears in his film Kill Bill Volume One in 2003 as well. Yeah. Now, well Peter Jackson was told the history of the Wilhelm scream during the sound mixing of Lord of the Rings two towers. He was so excited that it was included. He had its volume raised. And he insisted that it also be used in return

of the king. Yes. Now, the Wilhelm scream has become a trope unto itself. It is its own fourth wall break and that's what I think is so neat about it. So here you have something that almost exclusively shows up in action films now. But its existence in those films pulls you out of those films only for an instant, but it keeps you from taking those films too seriously. And I think that that has to do with a couple of things. Okay. The homogenization of the studio system. Yeah.

Both during the DVD and broadband era. But also, what do I blame everything on? 9-11? Yes. Okay. I eat. Okay. Yeah.

I think 9-11 is directly responsible for the Wilhelm's work. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think 9-9 is directly responsible for the Well Home Scream showing up in more and more movies. Okay, because we need the escapism. Yes. We need the wink and the nod because if you look at the data, 69, nice, of the Well Home Scream movies. But 69 of the Wilhelm screen movies and TV shows occur before 2000. Okay. Between 2009 and 11, it happens 11 times. So that's a total of 80. Okay. This means that of the over 400,

the other 320 plus occur after 9.11. And you can't tell me they weren't making more movies before or after, right? After, yeah, okay. And at last count, only 21 are since 2016. This means that 300 movies and TV shows, the vast majority, occur from 9-11 until the election of Donald Trump. Okay. Now, yeah. That is quite a pair of bookends. I going to tell you why. There's a huge shift that happens as a, yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So while 9-11 was terrible, it led us to a behavior that we only really recovered from with the election of a piss baby dictator wannabe. Don't share your code, David. What are you really thinking? We needed to be taken.

We needed to be taken what? We needed to be taken out of the moment and reminded that action isn't bad. We needed to be given a security blanket during explosions and other such disasters to be reminded that it's a movie so that we don't just retraumatize ourselves over and over. And we needed that for the entirety of the Bush presidency. And by the time we got to Obama, there was an increased focus on whimsy and continuing to divorce ourselves from the reality in the world around us. Okay, Obama, America's first black president, America's first post-racial president, and a thoroughly classy man who actually understood the seriousness and commitment that his job

required, something not seen willingly taken up since Clinton, continued the Bush doctrine and kept going the unending war even stepping up the drone strikes. Now, I always point out he stepped him up because he could. That if Bush had access to that kind of technology, he would have done. But I do think that there's a difference in both of these and I think that different people are using it to escape for the same things. So under Bush, there is a divorcing from reality. It's dissociation.

Yes. Under Obama, there is a, this isn't my country anymore, divorcing from reality. So you think it's different groups of people? I do. And yet they all come together. It's the Wilhelm scream hits that quadrant. Okay. Folks. Now, here's here's why I say for Bush. Bush told us on November 27th, 2001. Get down to Disney World and Florida. Take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed. And we've got a role, the government's got a role.

Not only do you have a role to play, which you're playing in such fine fashion, but the government has a role to play as well. We've got a significant responsibility to deal with this emergency in a strong and bold way. And we are doing so. He's telling us to reengage in the economy. Yeah, well, yes. Okay. And because the Ocon and well, go out and consume because, yeah, okay.

Because, because, you know, that way we can not raise taxes to pay for an unending work. Yeah. But also it was a reduction of our civic virtue, conflating it with commercial enterprise. Uh, He continues. Quote, we're also a nation that is adjusting to a new type of war. This isn't a conventional war that we're waging.

Ours is a campaign that will have to reflect the new enemy. There's no longer islands to conquer or beach heads to storm. We face a brand of evil, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time in the world. These are people who strike and hide, people who know no borders, people who are, people who depend on others. He interrupted himself there. And make no mistake about it, the new war is not only against the evil doers themselves, the new wars against those who harbor them and finance them and feed them. We will need patience and determination in order to succeed. We must understand that sometimes we will see our resources deployed and sometimes we

won't. But we will use every resource at our disposal." End quote. Okay. So. Yeah. The new, the phrase phrase the new war. Yep. Is remarkably ominous. Like I'm trying to think I'm like I want to say or wellian but I it'll be a miss use to the

term or wellian. I would say Truman doctrine quite honestly, okay. This is a huge shift in the old way that we did things. Yeah. And we have to wipe it out everywhere. I mean, it's got the same overreach. Yeah, no, it has, it definitely has the same overreach. I'm just talking about the Verbige, the New Wars. Yes. There is something very,

dystopian, like young adult dystopian novel. Yes. Or, you know, Orwell. It's the kind of phrase that, you know, you would expect to hear in that kind of work. You know, we are fighting the new war. Or, oh, dammit, watchman. Arthur Miller. No, nice.

No, I'm blanking, but you know, it's a guy. Are you talking in the character or the author? The author. Harvey Schiller. No. No, Harry Scher. No. Michael McKean.

Anyway. Nancy McKean. No. Michael McKean. Anyway. Nancy McKean. No. Ruma Klanahan. Anyway. It's the kind of, you know, it's the kind of rhetoric you'd expect to hear from the Norse fire party and V for Fendetta. Yeah. It is like, you know, I hear you reading that quote and there's a part of me that looks back on my own

reaction to those things at the time as they were happening and I'm like I kind of want to go back and grab 2001 me by the lapels and be like okay Look I have yeah for fuck sake. I'm from the future using a phrase like the new war. Yeah, don't fall for it Don't know yeah like no so I have two little stories Okay, one a very good dear friend of mine still a very good dear friend of mine said thank goodness He's in office and not Al Gore and my comment was Would they even have a different cabinet? Which I think I'm right, but also Al Gore might have like I don't know paid attention to the presidential day of the brief

Yeah, and and actually listen to the intelligence instead of manufacturing it So that's one story. Well, okay, we wouldn't wound up going to warn Iraq right with Gore right because Yeah, the personal motivations involved in all of that wouldn't have been there. Well, okay, we wouldn't have wound up going to Warner Rack with Gore. Right. Because the personal motivations involved in all of that wouldn't have been there. Yeah, yeah. And would they have had a different cabinet? Well, it wouldn't have involved Rumsfeld.

Okay, it wouldn't have involved Cheney. That's true. Those two things are true. I mean, a whole lot of the other ones, yeah, okay. Interchange, I mean, it might have been different people but the ideology would have been interchange a lot of them. Yeah. But Rumsfeld and Cheney would not have been different people but the ideology would have been interchangeable. Exactly. A lot of them.

But Rumsfeld and Chady would not have been there. You have a very good point there. Yeah. And here's the thing, at the time, that statement, I'm glad it's him and not Gore. Yeah. I heard that too. Yeah, there's 75% of America loved it.

From my, you know, I really hate to say this but Girlfriend at the time who went on to become my abusive ex-wife, but that's neither here nor there But I mean that was that was a common yeah everybody was glad that we had yeehaw as a foreign policy Is weird yeah, well, yeah, I wasn't but I was woke guy in the middle going, what would have been different. Yeah. So, I can't really say I was, you know, now the second thing is I was in a, so this would have, if you fast forward three years, or yeah, I think three years, I was in a a grad level course and we were having a discussion about the war and things like that. And the professor was like, no, they manufactured all of the evidence. And I was

like, no, they were going in. I was, you know, very much woke guy in the middle. And I was like, no, look, everything that they're doing is not the right way, but they were doing it in good faith. And he's like, nothing about this is good faith. And he's an historian, so he's looking at the sources and all this. And I was like, yeah, and yeah, I was totally wrong. And he was totally right, which I figured out shortly thereafter. Yeah. But yeah. So, so you've got this quote. And it's telling us that our way of getting involved is to accept what's happening and to buy shit. Now Boston University historian, Andrew Bocovich, in 2009 made a convincing case. This is after the Bush Presidencies over that it was a part of a broader pattern of encouraging financial irresponsibility. Okay.

Okay. Quote, Bush seemed to have calculated cynically but correctly. Now, first off, I'm going to break that quote right there. Bush seemed to have calculated is a really weird phrase. But, okay, so Bush seemed to have calculated cynically but correctly. That prolonging the credit fueled consumer bench could help keep complaints about his performance as commander in chief from becoming more than a nuisance.

Okay. So keep everybody spending money. Keep the keep the economy. Keep the bubble growing. Keep the bubble growing. Yep. Yeah. And nobody will have the attention span of the bandwidth to actually pay close enough

attention to to point out that the emperor has no close. Exactly. Now, Bush seemed to agree, because here's more of his speech from September 27, 2001, quote, and we must stand against terror by going back to work. Everybody here who showed up for work at this important industry is, he gave a speech in middle America. I think it's Ohio. It's making a clear statement that terrorism will not stand that the evil doers will not

be able to terrorize America and our workforce and our people. End quote. Evil doers. Evil doers. But look at how he's focused on, you all need to work. You do the work. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like, now in retrospect, we're two years into a pandemic. Uh-huh.

And everybody, not, like literally everybody on that side of the aisle, and then a significant number of quizzlings within the opposition to that side have been beating the same drum since two months into the first lockdown. Yep. You know, oh my God. Oh God, the economy. The economy, everybody, my God, you know,

the thing we need to do for, you know, our civic duty is to go back and be productive citizens. Mm-hmm. Okay, no, like, stop. Yeah, to go back and be productive citizens. Like, okay, no, like stop. Yeah, stop. It's a big deal. Fucking stop. Like, here's the deal.

At this table, I am the capitalist, right? Yep. Like, and I freely will say, no, no. Yeah, I, I, I think capitalism needs to be like, have the fuck regulated out of it. Yes. And you know, tax structures need to be a thing. But like, you know, I'm always the one to say, okay, look, that's a late stage capitalism.

Like, let's not go too hard against Adam Smith, like right out the gate, but here's the deal. Mm-hmm. Again, like, no fuck that. People are dying. In the wake of September 11th, the argument could have maybe been made that okay, it was a terrorist attack.

We need to not let ourselves become shell shocked and cocoon completely and shut everything down. Like okay, I get that, but to beat the drum that hard. Well, you know, during the world, about go out and, you know, max out the credit cards, right, you know, go to Disneyland, go here, go there. Yep. Like, well, and if you go back to World War I, World War II,

they were encouraging people to buy bonds, put more money into the government so we can buy more shit to blow up and other places because that will actually help the war effort. This helped the war effort isn't about raise more revenue because that's what that was. That was we don't want to tax you. We need you to donate.

Yeah, because we're holding a bake sale to buy a bomber. Right, because we don't want to tax you because we don't want the economy grind to a halt. We know that you need to do this. But hey, if you got an extra 10 bucks to the end of the month, please get this thing. You know? But here, none of that because he did tax cuts. Well, because here's the thing, because somewhere along the way, the idea that the American people should have to sacrifice for anything.

Well, that went away when the draft went out. Yes, went out. The window. Yes. And because they use it wrongly. Yes, well, yes. I'm not, yeah, no. In the case of, in the case of the draft, I'm not, I'm not going to argue against it. I'm certainly not going to say that we as a people should have had to sacrifice for Bush's

personal crusade in Iraq. But here's the thing, if the only option had been, okay, I'm going to have to raise taxes on everybody in order to go pursue my personal campaign of vengeance against Saddam Hussein for trying to assassinate my father. Right. Like if that had been the narrative, there would have been more people going, whoa, okay, hold on, timeout.

Yeah. You know, because self-interest would have motivated a lot more people to think more critically about it. And this idea that, well, you know, as long as we don't raise taxes on people, we can get away with whatever the fuck we want to do because we can control the narrative. I think it is partly subconscious, and I think it is partly cynical and very conscious. I think chaining and rumsfeld, like 100% were actively aware of it, that it was corrosive to the American people.

I think it's taking ownership of what was being done by the military in foreign parts. Keep them spending. Yeah keep them keep them Consuming and and then you can keep scaring them make well make sure make sure the party never stops right now They don't actually have to feel any sting mm-hmm. Yeah, now this was September 27th Yeah 2001 he's on this shit Now meanwhile MTV chose not to play new music videos. Films were tanking at the box office even brilliant masterpieces like glitter. A few weeks prior to this speech, Conan O'Brien said, quote, I have no idea what we're, what we've, how to do what we've been doing.

David Letterman was quoted as saying, I wasn't sure if I should be doing a television show. Howard Stern said, I wish I was in the military so I could go kill people, I wish we could level six countries. But if I'm actually looking at iconic bell-weather mainstream media consumption side of things, I look to Saturday Night Live. It was in New York. On September 29, two days after Bush's

speech, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was actually stepping up and doing things that weren't batshit for maybe the one time in his life, appeared with several firefighters, police officers, and port authority agents. He talked about how tough New York was and then Paul Simon played the boxer under an American flag. Afterward, Lauren Michaels asked, can we be funny? And the show went on. And I do, I do credit to the writers. Yeah. Jillianne's response was, why start now? And his pause was perfect. Yeah. I mean, that was well done, well delivered.

But you know, really they weren't funny and I get it, I get why. I mean, the comedians were really uncomfortable and they were still stunned. Yeah. Well, it was less than three weeks after the event. And literally everybody was shell-sharred. Yeah. SNL did bring back its old hits, Liberty Jeopardy, for instance. But they also likely could still smell

the after effects of 9.11. And I mean that literally, as it had just happened, like you said three weeks earlier. How do you perform at comedy when tragedy is literally hanging in the air? World Trade Center dust was hovering around the firefighters' jackets. Reese Witherspoon, originally there to plug legally blonde, was instead the expected voice of healing somehow.

Beautiful as she is, and a fantastic actress and a wonderful voice that she has, odd casting for that. And Darryl Hammond reprised his black face of Jesse Jackson appealing to the Taliban leaders to meet. Wow! of Jesse Jackson appealing to the Taliban leaders to meet. Wow. Now Hugo, or not Hugo, Hugh Fink of SNL stated that when it came to that particular episode's cold open, he said, quote, I remember going, wow, this is not the message I was expecting

in a Saturday night live to be sending. This is flag waving, this is very patriotic, but there's absolutely no edge and it's not funny, it's just dead serious. He goes on. It's how I feel about Super Bowl halftime shows or the preamble to the Super Bowl think at it. It's like they're going to bring out the flag,

they're going to bring out kids from a Christian group. They'll just throw every possible symbol that represents knee jerk, Ra Ra America, and I feel that's what the cold open did. In later episode, in October, Will Ferrell switched his portrayal of George W. Bush from a moronic party boy to a dumb John Wayne Avenger, and there's a difference there. He defanged any real critique of the man. Make no mistake, we're coming for you Ben Laden.

I'm gonna make you my own personal Werder's Waldo, and unlike those frustrating Waldo books, I'm going to make you my own personal Word as Waldo and unlike those frustrating Waldo books, I'm going to find you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but maybe tomorrow. So he's kind of this dumb avenging angel. Yeah. Which no more criticisms of him. Indeed. Now Tracy Morgan, whom I love, he is the man who is capable of saying the word Episcopal, the funniest way anybody has ever said it. Okay. But Tracy Morgan also came on to Weekend Update during that same episode that that happened in October, the one where the new George W Bush depiction. Yeah, to quote, set the

record straight as he'd become a fan of racial profiling. Having a black man specifically a black man in New York, Capping for racial profiling is a special kind of American cognitive dissonance. Yes. Here's what he said. I know in the past I've popped off a lot of jokes about the police and how they get down and I'll be driving in my lavender color Jaguar with the hip hop blaring and they pulled me over for no reason and I would be pissed off, you know. But never again, I'm here to set the record straight.

I like racial profiling. I got new eyes. Racial profiling is a good thing. Officers, I support you. And I don't care if the dude is white, black, green, blue, whatever. If something doesn't look right, shake him down. Now I'm not saying you beat his ass or nothing like that, but just shake him down. See what's happening. You're working at the airport and someone looks suspicious, shake him down. He got a long, zz top beard, shake him down. You see a pasty face white dude with a Jesus saves backpack

wrapped in the Confederate flag? Shake him down. The dude got his head and all wrapped up and he ain't Erica Badoo, shake him down. Hey, that probably ain't even guilty, but shake him down. They'll get over it. Look at me, I have. So law enforcement officers, Tracy Morgan, completely understands racial profiling. I support you. And remember, if a guy's got a little bit of weed in his car and he ain't hurt, nobody don't make me throw it out. Now, obviously, having him keep going with the Shake them Down thing on one level, it's very funny. On another level, what the actual fuck? Yeah. Now, a few weeks later, Drew Barrymore hosted, and there was an anthrax scare at the building. Yeah, I remember that. It was a scary, overly real very weird time. And starting largely in that year, Jimmy Fallon starts breaking

character more and more often. It becomes a bigger and bigger part of the show. Now, the first time that Jimmy Fallon broke character was during the cowbo sketch in 2000, and for a while other cast members tried to get him to break it as an inside joke. Okay. Keep that in mind. But after 9-11, it becomes a regular feature peaking in 2004 and I think this breaking character I think that this fourth wall break was something that we clearly wanted and

needed as a society because it's somebody looking at the camera and waking at us letting us know yeah this shit is too much let's take a breath. Okay. So also in 2002, we see the obviously rising wave of reality TV, which isn't, um, never has been. Yeah. And to be sure reality TV has existed since Queen for a day debuted in 1945. And I might need to do another marathon on how reality TV has changed through the years. But with the success of fish bowl shows, like the real world and big brother and competition shows like survivor, reality TV was gaining steam as a genre. American Idol hit the airwaves in 2002. Okay.

So I'm going to, I'm going to argue because I I think I think I kind of know where you're going with this, but I'm going to preemptively throw in an argument that there's also the fact that during the same time period production companies and the networks are all feeling the squeeze of the, at that point, very rapidly expanding cable market. Yeah. And reality TV is really cheap to produce. Yes, it is. And it is designed in a way and done in a way that makes it very, very, very hard

to pull your eyeballs away from the screen because it for advertising purposes. Okay. And because it hits irrespective of the zit guys, just because we are monkeys and we live in troops, it hits all of our subconscious buttons. Yes.

Now, I'm not saying that to completely discount the course of the Zit Guys. That doesn't discount at all. But I'm going to say, I think the Zit Guys may have been an accelerant. I think that what is going on at the time made it fertile ground for reality TV to shift in this new direction. Like I said, there were competition shows including American Idol, which you start to see the judges kind of breaking, kind of breaking the fourth wall to tell the audience, this guy's terrible and that guy was awful. Yeah. Yeah.

Still, that's a big production. It's a big competition. And then the game changer comes, the simple life. Okay. Fox, of course. Of course, Fox. Yeah. Quote wanted to see Staletto's in cow shit.

That was literally the guy who green lit Paris Hilton. He said that. Wow. And fresh off her sex tape being leaked by her ex boyfriend. And never having been paid for the damages that she saw and one in court, she then instead capitalized on the fame that it brought instead and embarked on a four year journey with her then friend Nicole Richie. I would point out, Paris Hilton won an award in court for damages that were never paid to her. She managed to capitalize on it in other ways and people have their own pet theories as

to whether or not she did this thing on purpose or whatnot. Well, of course, you made a sex tape on purpose, but whether or not you made it for a mass consumption of other people is a different thing. Oh, yeah. No, I'm, I'm, this wasn't found footage. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm fully on, on board with any series that says, no, no, she, she knew that the recording was happening, but the idea that she then orchestrated with it being distributed is a load of horse shit. Yeah, it's, it was one of those, it's gonna get distributed.

How do I make this work for me instead of shame me? Yeah, after the fact, okay, what do I do? What do I do as damage control? Yeah. Or how can I spin a loss and do a win? Yeah. Cause this is a gross violation of my privacy. Yeah.

So, now, Hilton and Richie were socialite erases and the show with the two of them lasted for two years. Yeah. Then they stopped being friends after the second season. But they were easy for us to poke fun at. And they would travel around the country for half an hour at a time, reacting to low paying jobs in middle America, struggling in manual

labor, and working underpaid jobs for which they were unqualified. This had two impacts. First it showed the quote real America, popularizing the cracker barrel, common sensical authentic, slightly grumpy, bewildered by stupid elites, denizens of the places that grow our food. Yes. And they were the foils to the second impact. Two thoroughly unrealistic by any standards in competence, whose exploits were a wink and a nod to the audience the whole way through. The whole thing was a fourth wall break, masquerading as a show.

And this becomes the formula for many to follow. Laguna Beach, real housewives of, duck dynasty, every channel also had its own version of look at these goddamn people. Let's pause a minute and all agree that this is too much. So now this entire genre is exploding of look how let's all stop for a minute at what we're looking at and acknowledge to each other the shit's bat shit and then go back to looking at it. Now, what is the only thing that could possibly take us

out of that self-induced repeated auditory summer holiday? Wow, that's a phrase. Okay. Because again, the Wilhelm scream is exactly doing that at that time. All this action, all this action, all this action. Oh, right. And then we move on. And you have that. Yes. It's a take a breath. Okay, back to the show. Not even a commercial break, yeah, just just a moment. It's and you'll have this happen as you and your your boy are watching a film

You'll invariably have him watch something that he's not quite ready for because kids are weird that way Yeah, um, and you'll turn to him. It's okay. That's not actually happening. Oh, yeah That's what the real home screen is okay, okay, okay So, the only thing that could take us out of that, a circus peanut Hitler wannabe who governed by unreality. Okay. Actually, electing Ubu Roy. Yes. Now, recall, the reaction of everyone after Trump got elected.

Self-flogging. Much of it deserved, but plenty that was an effort to ignore the bigger elephant in the room of how comedy got Trump elected. The same thing that allowed us all of our fourth wall breaks after 9-11, that same need for whimsy during the unending war under Obama, and that unending need for whimsy during the black guy being president, how dare he. It's now being excoriated as what led us to this guy as president. Now, I reached out to Emily Newsbomb, who wrote on January 15, 2017, she gave me permission, we had a lovely talk on Twitter. She wrote in the New Yorker that it was exactly jokes and humor that enabled a grain of reality which led to a tyrant getting elected Like I said, she gave me permission, which also she pointed out to me That's not necessary since it was published in the public spear and I said yeah, but I still like to do these things

So so I'm quoting her article as I need okay now. She also said she didn't mind giving us a listen when this is done So Miss news bomb hello. Thank you. Yep Okay, now she also said she didn't mind giving us a listen when this is done. So Ms. Newsbomb. Hello. Thank you. Yep. Uh, she did say quote. I'd only object to listening if it were the actual Wilhelm scream for an hour. Now after she hears this, she might have a different opinion. Yeah. Now news bomb writes that she. Sorry about the swears. She writes that she quote had the impression that jokes like Woody Guthrie's guitar were a machine that killed fascists. Comedy might be cruel or stupid, yet in aggregate it was a rebel stance. Nazis were humorless. So humor was a way of breaking the fourth wall of reality itself that's back to me talking. uh but and I think this is true for the humor in the Bush Obama years and I'm combining them now okay quote by that by 2016 the wheel had spun

hard the other way now it was the neo-fascist strong man who held the microphone and an army of anonymous dirty joke dispensers who helped put him in office online jokes were powerful accelerants for lies a A tweet was the size of a one-liner, a quote, dank meme carried farther than any op-ed, and the distinction between a Nazi and someone pretending to be a Nazi for the lulls had become a blur. Ads looked like the news and so did propaganda and so did actual comedy on both the right and the left, and every combination of the four was labeled quote satire. Now, Trump got elected at a time when reality was destabilized.

Remember they hate us for our freedoms. Yeah, that was m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m- What's worse, he probably did so because the guy couldn't take a joke. Right. You'll recall that the 2011 White House correspondence dinner where Obama went after him for his birtheurism. And Obama did it in a classy ass way, like a well-performed set. Yeah, well, okay, here's the thing. Okay. Yeah, well, okay, here's the thing. Okay, and this was one of, in our last episode, you went after Anakin Skywalker for droid theft.

Rightly so. Yeah, yes. And in a similar way, over the course of the Trump administration, I repeatedly, on several occasions went after him for his utter humorlessness. Like his absolute inability to make a joke that was not... Punching. Punching. Yeah. Somebody. Yep. almost well always down. Yeah But but like the man has no Sense of fun. That's true. He's joyless like he is utterly joyless

Yeah, and and there's there's no there there. Yep Obama Mm-hmm like I mean we can we can Disappear with policies for all of his flaws the man Yep. Obama, like, I mean, we can, we can disagree with his policies. For all of his flaws, the man had a sense of comic timing. Yep. He had a genuine sense of humor. Yes, he did. And along with that, and more to the point,

this is what really wound up getting me, was there is an element of basic humanity. I was going to say humility too. Well, yeah, but you're absolutely right. But there is an element of humanity that's involved in being able to tell a joke and being able to take a joke. Bush, both of them. Mm-hmm.

I mean, you know, we can, they also could do that. They could. Yes. We can, I mean, like, you can, you can argue rightly against any number of policy decisions they made, like all of them. But they do have humanity.

But they had humanity. They weren't joyless fucking robots. Huge manatee. There you go. You know, and, and, and. You're right. You're 100% right. So it is, it is so remarkable to me that I hear that argument about, about humor getting

him elected or jokes getting him elected. I don't even want to call it humor Because the jokes from that side weren't right jokes. They're all punching. Yeah, but you know It's it's not just jokes. It is humor and it's a long long game. Yeah, here's why so I need to rewind a bit to address reductio adhit lera Now with Bush people began comparing him to Hitler. It's true. Yeah. Largely it was from anti-war activists, civil libertarians, and historians do largely and specifically to the Patriot Act, as well as the invading of two countries with flimsy excuses that enough of the

country bought. Yes. Now after 2009, people largely funded and enabled by the Koch brothers had been making comparisons of Obama to Hitler because he pushed for universal health care. And then people said, see, you did it to our guy. Now we get to do it to your guy. And it really took the seriousness out of the comparisons to Hitler out of the culture. The thing was, these two things weren't equal. If it was, it was funnier if they were quite honestly as South Park had told us glibly they were in fact the same because in 2004 South Park ran the episode douche and

turd. South Park is a smarter version of what the simple life is in many respects. It's one big nod to the fourth wall. Look at how fucking ridiculous these people are and the mirror is what we're holding up. But it's the same basic sentiment. And since they attacked everyone equally, it was considered super smart. And the thing is, it creates a false and convenient narrative of equivalents. The Dushan Turd episode does this in October of 2004. Yes, John Kerry was an aristocrat, crat from a wealthy family who went to Yale. And yes, George Bush was on paper, almost exactly that same description.

But when you don't reach below the shallow surface, you miss a lot of context that mattered. John Kerry fought in a war and later decided it was a mistake. George W. Bush avoided a war and later decided we should have had another one. John Kerry and the Democrats had a platform for making sure not to privatize Social Security. They wanted to reduce the lag time for naturalization, support of the Dream Act, wanted a passive citizenship, funding for drug rehab, got an F rating by the NRA, was staunchly pro choice,

was threatened with excommunication as well as the denial of communion as a Catholic, co-sponsored in fact 53% of Catholics voted for Bush. Co-sponsored the Hate Crimes Prevention Bill, fought against housing and other discrimination based on sexuality, introduced the vaccines for new millennium act, supported same-sex marriage, voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, the fan the federal marriage act or federal marriage amendment was strong on the environment and he also supported the war that bush started yeah he was rich as fuck and he had been in politics since the 70s bush and the republicans agreed mostly with pro-life groups wanted public money to go to private religious groups to do community aid and wanted to make his tax cuts permanent, repealed air pollution regulations, rejected the Kyoto Protocol, endorsed

the Federal Marriage Amendment, courted the idea of using Chile as a model for Social Security, which is privatization. There really wasn't much to his platform in 2004 besides don't change horse's midstream and that guy was a coward. And still, he was rich as fuck and part of the political dynasty family. So on the surface, turd and douche, basically the same. But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, South Park is a cartoon that has to paint with a broad brush to save time. And this episode's analysis of two very different candidates was very effective in equalizing them completely. I'm also going to throw in here the two masterminds behind it are textbook examples.

Text book, fucking examples of what you complain about all the time, which is, well, you know, obviously the truth has to be somewhere in the middle, like everybody's, they're all out, so I'm smarter because I'm picking on everybody. Like, no, fuck you. Right. You know, if you were a genuine satirist,

like if you genuinely, if you weren't just being an edge-lord douchebag, I have major problems with South Park for a variety of reasons. But the biggest one is, if you weren't just busy jacking off to how smart you fucking think you are, you wouldn't rely on lazy ass writing like that. See, and I think that's my... That's my... That's my... ...ginuensaturus actually do rely ultimately on lazy writing eventually like that. See, and I think that's why you and satirists actually do rely

ultimately on lazy writing eventually. Okay. They, and South Park, they take down plenty of groups that take, they take down people who take themselves too seriously. But the problem is they equalize two different sides thinking that it's what I talk about when I talk about the grammar of it, right?

Yeah, so this equalization that they do carried a lot of weight. Twelve years later, people were making the same poorly raw argument and analysis of Clinton and Trump. News bomb points out, quote, as season 20 opened, the show was doing precisely what a year earlier it had warned against. Treating Garrison's Trump as an absurd borderline sympathetic joke, figure, and portraying him as him and Clinton as ID identical dangers, a choice between a quote giant douche and a quote turd sandwich. So now people are and I have plenty of friends who are like, oh, neither is worth it. And it's like, on the one side,

a guy wants to fuck his daughter. On the other side, you have the most qualified woman to have ever walked the earth to become president. One of the most qualified people ever to become president. Like, and I would point out, the resume compared, like, yeah, if it were a job interview for any position else,

anywhere in our country, he would get the job. You're right, because he's a man. Okay. If you were actually looking at qualifications, yes. Yeah, okay. Poorly poor, I didn't put that together right, but yes. I get what you're saying.

Yeah, but here's the thing, you can absolutely hate Hillary Clinton. You can absolutely think that she is a terrible, terrible human being. And you still cannot argue that she is not more qualified than Trump was. Oh, yeah. Now, here's what I'm talking about with the grammar. That they were grammatically the same. A turd sandwich and a giant douche.

Clinton and Trump, because you said that they were same, in a contrived sentence that the the same. A turd sandwich and a giant douche. Yeah. Clinton and Trump, because you said that they were same, in a contrived sentence that the jokes writer used, doesn't mean that they were factually morally ethically the same. And the sublimation of everything else into that grammatical similarity is a very dangerous one. The very thing that had been helpful to cope with the hyper unreal reality of Bush Obama years was now coming back to enable Trump's Ascent to power. And in so doing, it helped render itself obsolete. There's no need to look at the fourth wall as the unreality and the reality are totally fused now.

In 2007, Newsbombs said quote, I'm sorry 2017, Newsbombs said quote, I'm sorry, 2017, Newsbombs said quote, it could be surprisingly hard to look at the phenomenon of Trump directly. The words bent, the meaning dissolved. You needed a filter. Television was Trump's natural medium and television had stories that reflected Trump or predicted his rise, warped lenses that made it easier to understand the change as it was happening." We were now the reality show. So back to reductio outhitlarum, comparisons of Obama to Hitler sharply rose from the right due to that

grammatical similarity sublimation. As such, a counter to that was, as was the norm in the Halcyon days of the early 2010s, mocking humor. On Tumblr, the phrase literal Hitler came into fashion. It was initially used to mock those who compared Hitler to Obama so thinly. But as news bomb points out, quote, it morphed as jokes did so quickly last year, into a weapon that might be used to mock any comparison to Hitler, even when a guy with a serious Hitler vibe ran for president, even when the people using the phrase were cavorting with Nazis.

Literal Hitler was one of a thousand such memes, flowing from anonymous internet boards that were founded a decade ago, a free universe that was crude and funny and juvenile and anarchic by design, a teenage boy safe space. Literal Hitler started as a Wilhelm scream. Get a load of this shit. But then it ceased to have the impact that it started with. It got overused and turned into a dark parody of itself. Finally enabling a literal, as in, he and his wife used the same rhetoric, his staff used the same tactics, and his supporters sported shirts in praise of the fucking holocaust when they stormed the Capitol, Hitler. And after it's done, it's a dead brand.

It's a meme that's lost its mojo. It's no longer a rebel yell poking fun at the power structure. It's a tool of those in power to take the wind out of the sales of those who would object. The joke protected the non-joke," NewsPom said. She continues, like Trump's statements, their quasi-comical memeing and name-calling was so destabilizing flipping between Sirius and Silly that it warped the boundaries of discourse. We meme to President into existence, Chuck Johnson, a troll who had been banned from Twitter, bragged after the election. These days, he's reportedly consulting on appointments in the White House, news bomb said in 2017.

Yep. That same President has now been banned from Twitter. Yep. Trump succeeded in- Should it have happened a long time ago? Oh, God yeah. And Trump succeeded in destabilizing reality to the point where a fourth wall break

isn't the transgressive catharsis we once used it for. No. So that was a lot. I have a conclusion here, but I wanted to give you a chance to address, rebut, or just say, let's keep going. Let's keep going. I'll have a response after you tie everything together.

So, once our collective culture's absurdity surpassed our desire for unreality, the Wilhelm scream died off very quickly. The Fork's Awakens used it, but that was in 2015. And after that, it has not been heard in a Star Wars 4 film since. And I know this seems silly, but really look at the data. 69, until it hit big. Ben Burt and his crew turned it into an inside joke amongst themselves. And then it takes off after the fall of 2001, growing in a crescendo of use and popularity, a lot more people are starting to use it and see the value of it.

And it grows from 2001 all the way to 2015 as a way of just taking you out of the action for a second. And then it stops almost entirely, even from the very franchise that popularized it by 2016. It's as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Oh, nicely done. Thank you. So, that's the history and the impact of the Well Home Scream. Okay.

I find it interesting that this is a case where I think the Wilhelm scream itself is one of the few times where I can look at one of these things that we've talked about in the Zit Guys. And I can very confidently say, I think in and of itself, the wheel home screen is more a reflection of the Zit Guys than a driver within it. Yes. Because... Oh, 100% is. Because a whole lot of the time we we talk about things that are that have Mm-hmm some kind of a positive feedback loop right where right or it's prismatic

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no this is 100% mirror. Yeah, yeah, and and You know along with the wheel home screen we have you know the the other You know winch and nods mm-ed and nods going on as a subtext in so much of everything that we're watching. And, you know, talking about the South Park, that I remember the very beginnings of South Park like the very first short film Uh, Jesus versus Santa. Yeah, yeah back in 90 I want to say it was 96 95 96. Yeah, 5 96 But South Park didn't

take off Yeah, it didn't become a juggernaut. Right. Until after 2001. I would say it was the election. So I know that it hit the the airwaves with carton receives an anal probe in 1997 or 98. Okay. Yeah. And then from there, everybody, it caught fire for everybody. It was just us, you know, cool kids. Yeah. And then the election of 2000, that episode where they were electing somebody to be president of kindergarten, I think, launched them into stratosphere. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But I think they're, they, they got a hold of their position and ran with it. Yeah.

I think largely because of the forces that you're talking about, because of, you know, the, the, oh hey, you know, look how ridiculous this all is, we're so over the top. Because of where the Zitgeist was and needing that kind of thing as our entertainment. And so yeah, I had not considered that connection until now.

And 300 and something films over the course of, 15 years is really telling. Yeah. And yeah, then everything about that need to have a moment to see the unreality or see the ridiculousness, leading to the most ridiculous individual you can possibly think of winning the Republican nomination for president. Like, I remember the level of incredulousness from everybody who was not a Trumpite

at the beginning of that whole campaign cycle. Yeah. Like, who is this motherfucker? Oh, oh, oh, oh right. And what it is, because now it's the Trump party. Yeah, well yeah. But it's, yeah, it didn't go the way that people took it. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I will say Parker and Stone even said, we were still busy making the jokes when this guy ended up was swearing in as president.

We were like, guys, all of us expected Hillary to win. All of our jokes were premised on the fact that, oh, she's gonna win this. Yeah. Yeah. And so they, I dare say they had a lot of regret about what they did. Oh, I'm sure.

And what I'm also gonna say is, the way that the viral, memetic manner in which Trumpism wound up dominating the Republican party is almost a reflection of the same kind of thing that it was, oh my God, look how ridiculous this is. Republicans, mainstream Republicans, at the beginning of the election cycle. Oh, yeah, we're like, oh my god, who is the city it? And I think it's worth noting that until

the convention He never won an outright majority in any of the primaries That he won one Yeah, he had the highest plurality. He had the highest plurality. And his plurality was 30%. Right. You know, if there, if it had been a year where it was Donald Trump or you can pick between

Donald Trump or Jeb Bush, we wouldn't be where we are now because it would have been, well, I mean, this guy's a joke. Obviously, everybody who's a mainstream country club Republican is not going to vote for this asshole. Right. We're going to vote for Jeb Bush, who's one of our people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and, and, you know, and what we probably would have seen was an electoral defeat by the Republican Party because the people who were really behind Trump would have said, fuck all y'all, I'm

staying home. Right. Because they were pissed off at just everybody. Yeah, they would have cartmaned. They would have, yeah, completely cartmaned. And instead we elected cartman. Instead, cartman wound up in the fucking White House. Yeah. And it wasn't until the convention, when it became clear that, okay, no, look, he's only

ever one 30% but those are the most rabid 30% you've ever seen. Yes. And like, if you turn him down, you're gonna die. Politically, the electoral speaking, you're gone. It was a more extreme version of the bargain that John McCain basically had to strike when he decided to use Sarah Palin. Yeah. Well, yeah, because, because again, when, when for the last eight years, it had been been you know, we're gonna we're gonna up the tone We're gonna up the gain. Yep. You know, we're gonna super saturate all the colors. Mm-hmm That's what happens

Your retinas get burnt out and you can't see anything unless it's super bright now So ultimately the the sound stages were saturated with the well-humscream Yeah, to the point where it burned itself out. Yeah, it is no longer a the sound stages were saturated with the well-hummed scream, to the point where it burned itself out. It is no longer a viable thing because we don't live in a world where we need an escape from reality. We have thoroughly detached from it.

We are living in an unreality. And I need, actually here's the deal, I need an escape from reality, where you're not winking at me, to pull me back into reality. Yep. I need, no, no, no, tell you what, make another avatar movie.

Like, like, I wanna put on an Oculus headset and like, not be on Earth. Yep. Like, that's, yeah. Because that's the only way to escape in it. Yeah. So there you go. Well, there you go.

OK. Anything you want to recommend for people to read? Or not this time around. OK. I'm going to recommend people go watch Star Wars, a new hope. And turn on the director's commentary because invariably Ben Burke gets interviewed for most of these. So, well, yeah.

And listen to what he has to say, because it's some pretty cool shit. Okay. There might even be some special features in some of the blue rays or whatnot, talking about the sound of Star Wars. Okay. Which is really neat.

My girlfriend and I were watching the sound of Star Wars on the YouTube's. Nice. Because I wanted her to see like, here's how Chubuck's roar came. Here's what they used because I already know all this shit. Yeah. You know, she's a musician so she's gonna appreciate sound. Yeah. And you know, she was pretty wowed by it.

So cool. Yeah, I'm gonna recommend that. Working people find you on the social medias. I can be found on the social medias at EH Blaylock on Twitter. I can be found also at EH Blalock on Instagram and Mr. Blalock on the TikToks. And if you're looking for the two of us collectively, you can shout out us about anything we got wrong on Geek History Time on Twitter and also at www.geekhistoryoftime on the inner webs through your browser. And of course, you found us here either through the Apple podcast app or through Spotify

or Stitcher. So wherever you found us there, please subscribe and give us the five stars you know we deserve. And where can you be found? Ah, you could find me at duh harmony on the Twitter and on the Insta. You can also find me the first Tuesday of every month doing a puns-slinging digitally on Twitch.tv-4-slash-capital-punds.

And if you are in the town in which I reside and feel free to hit me up on one of those things and ask, but you could find me on January 14th, February 4th, March 4th, or April 1st, doing puns live in person, you have to be vaccinated. Yeah. So at Lunas. So, well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time.